Society & Culture - Posted by Patty Mattern-Minnesota on Friday, April 29, 2011 11:53 - 5 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...High-profile royal weddings go way back
Spectators gathered along the route to Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace to celebrate the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. (Credit: garryknight/Flickr)
U. MINNESOTA (US) — As far back as the Wars of the Roses royals having been tying the knot in grandiose affairs intended to draw big audiences.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in London—watched by more than 2 billion people worldwide—is a rather modern take on a long tradition of high-profile nuptials, according to John Watkins, a professor at the University of Minnesota and expert on British history and culture.
Crowds in London line the Mall to celebrate the wedding. (Credit: garryknight/Flick)By the fourteenth century’s Wars of the Roses, says Watkins, when rival claimants to the throne tried to bolster their claims by high-profile marriages, lavish weddings advertised kingly power.
“They occasioned lavish feasting, masques, poetry and the all-important procession through the City of London,” Watkins says. “The citizens would stage elaborate displays and short skits celebrating the wedding.”
By modern standards, of course, a Tudor parade through London might look pretty low-budget. But it meant a lot to onlookers, Watkins says.
By the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, weddings to a foreign princess sealed important treaties and alliances, Watkins says. “They took months and often years to negotiate and arrange.”
Watkins notes that the glamour was always there.
“Of course the explosion of national wealth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant you could really go over the top.”
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5 Comments
The Wars of the Roses were in the 15th century, not the 14th. And the only high profile royal wedding at the time was that between Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI, which indeed involved masques, processions through London, but these were more associated with Margaret’s arrival, rather than the wedding itself. (For an excellent post on this see:
http://susandhigginbotham.blogspot.com/2010/04/happy-anniversary-to-henry-vi-and.html
Edward IV married his bride (Elizabeth Wydeville) in a very low key, inexpensive and (above all) secret ceremony. Richard III’s wedding to Anne Nevill (while he was still duke of Gloucester) was so low key that we don’t even have a date for it!
Probably the most lavish wedding of these times was that between George, duke of Clarence and Isobel Nevill. They were married in Canterbury, but the festivities continued in Calais for some days after.
I want that cowboy hat! I love the british flag!
I love royal wedding
Of course the explosion of national wealth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant you could really go over the top
I couldn’t imagine 2 billion people watch me wed, and now it makes sense of why it cost 32 million dollars to put on. What happened to the days of going to Vegas and getting hitched? Or more importantly, where did it start?