Anyone trying to sell promotional umbrellas must have a certain bitterness that they were not around in the days of Henry VIII. The opportunities were tremendous. It was unfortunate that there were three Catherines and two Annes, giving the peasants the opportunity to recycle, but there were two marriages in one year and five in a decade. It was an entrepreneur’s dream.
The years that followed Henry’s death were much more barren with both Edward VI and Elizabeth remaining unmarried and Mary opting for the King of Spain, a spouse with considerably more baggage than Ms Parker-Bowles. Mind you, he had four wives so a lost opportunity there for our Spanish colleagues.
With the possible exception of George IV, who may or may not have been married to Maria Fitzherbert, no monarch of the UK has had more than one spouse. Charles could, of course, change that. It is unfortunate that Chas ’n’ Cam has elements of CCTV at the Grand Canyon.
There are no such problems for ‘Edward and Kate’, which has a certain ring to it, and one unfortunately denied the more downmarket ‘Zara and Mike’. Still, two royal weddings in less than half the time there was between Henry’s to Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard is something to be exploited.
Do not forget Adam and Jane. Indeed it has been all but impossible to avoid them. We have had monthly televised updates of their affair since 2005 when Jane and her two kids moved into Adam’s flat because, we are led to believe, he had access to fast broadband.
They are not royalty as yet of course, but they are going to tie the knot with almost the same amount of publicity. Not only that but the public has been asked to organise their wedding by choosing the dress, the music and the wedding car. It would have been fun to do that for the royal nuptials.
Without apparent irony, their wedding is covered in the BT ‘Life’ blog where it is described as the second biggest wedding of the year, something that Zara might disagree with if asked.