Kate Middleton & The Trouble With Fairytales

Don’t get me wrong. Growing up, I wholeheartedly enjoyed my share of Disney animated features, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Robin Hood, you name it I re-watched it countless times. But I am discovering that those story-lines did not influence me nearly as much as I see they have with other women and girls. Could this be because I grew up in Bangladesh with a higher dose of Bollywood films, and was more concerned about how to coordinate my dance moves with my countless array of backup dancers, grooving our way to synchronized dance heaven? Perhaps growing up in South Asia made my idea of the perfect courtship look less like an animated fairytale and more like this, (please note the backup dancers):

I suppose we all harbor some form of fantasy influenced by movies and cartoons that our cultures place value on. Or perhaps the movies and cartoons project an exaggerated version of our society’s belief systems. Whatever it may be, I feel as though the upcoming Royal Wedding is causing a deluge of all our wildest fairytale fantasies at a time of severe global economic recession for one key reason: we desperately need the escape. And the public, not only in Great Britain but the United States and the world over have decided to find this in Prince William and Kate’s wedding.

Then my cousin pointed out the following Guardian piece to me that brought up several scary and valid points that question how can we even try to make a modern-day fairtytale out of this couple’s relationship considering what we know about the Royal family. Columnist Kira Cochrane states in her post, “Royal Wedding: Does Kate Middleton Know What She’s Doing?” that everything we know about the royal families’ relationships, both personal and with their society, is dysfunctional. Even more terrifying is the history the British Royal Family has of emotionally destroying the women who marry into it:

The dread about Middleton’s predicament derives, of course, at least in part from the stories of her predecessors. There was Sarah Ferguson, a woman who had once seemed bold, funny and unfettered, ever ready to prod someone’s bottom with an umbrella or poke fun at herself, reduced a few months back to hustling for money in a hotel room, trying to sell access to her ex-husband. There was Sophie Rhys-Jones, now Countess of Wessex, who went into her marriage to Prince Edward as a proud career woman, but was soon accused of trading on the royal name, and retreated, chastened and very likely chagrined, into the wings. And then there was Princess Diana, the shy, naive, as well as brave and intelligent woman, whose story has become so iconic that it doesn’t need to be retold – suffice to say, it ended badly. The royal family does have a knack of taking women who are either independent, or on the brink of independence, and bringing them very low.

Cochrane disturbingly points out not only what happens to women in the royal family, but what kind of woman one must be to even be considered to be allowed in it in the first place.  One of Kate Middleton’s biggest advantages with Queen Elizabeth is the eight years she has had to convince her that she is no Diana. Which testifies to the caliber of women the palace prefers- passive and submissive:

The royal family have learned to manage women who enter that family, instead of learning how to embrace a normal young woman – with a job, a history, who’s complicated, has made mistakes, recovered from them, lived a life that is useful and engaged and connected to her generation. None of those things will apply to Kate…And this fact means some potentially very irritating months ahead, in which marriage is once again cited as the greatest possible achievement for a woman, in which prospective wifedom is put on the highest pedestal…The wedding will be represented as a fairytale for people to look up to –when it’s not that at all.

Which brings us back to our whole obsessions with fairytales. Why do we refuse to let them go? And why are we all only too happy to rejoice and take part in watching this woman, who is clearly only too willing to exchange pretty much her life for her fairytale fantasy, despite us all knowing by now that fairytales don’t have the best track record of ending well?

I guess it may be unfair and slightly premature to start raining on Kate’s parade. But there are certain undeniable truths about the sacrifices this young woman has already made for her upcoming nuptials in addition to her career in fashion (Kate shortly worked for the British clothing brand, Jigsaw), and her photography (Kate had planned an exhibition she ended up not showing). As Cochrane states, “What’s deeply dangerous about Kate for the monarchy, is that she looks as purposeless as the rest of them.”

In many ways, Middleton has already failed to use her entry into this family as an opportunity to make them more modern. Instead she has convinced the Queen that she will not been reaping havoc and causing scandals galore like Diana, making herself much easier to “manage” (read: control). Kate is more willing to adjust to the royal family’s ways than have them adjust to her, and in the process allowing the monarchy to remain unchanged when what it so desperately needs is to change.

All this being said, Kate clearly loves William and maybe at the end of the day, she is doing all this for love. But something about that doesn’t sit too well with me. Perhaps it is the whole fairtytale factor thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, Kate Middleton has bigger plans than any one of us could imagine. I mean, Queen Elizabeth is not getting any younger, and guess who happens to be waiting in the wings to be Queen? Perhaps that was the ambition of “Waitey Katey”, as they British press famously dubbed Middleton, all along.

Maybe it’s Ms. Middleton that will get to have her fairytale, the last laugh, and show us how it’s done- as the Queen of England.

Cross-posted from Anushay’s Point.