History of Royal Weddings
As Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton prepare for their wedding, Emory history professor Patrick Allitt analyzes the history of England’s royal weddings and how they’ve changed. Until recently, royal marriages were almost always based on the foreign policy of the English monarchy. Allitt says kings spent a lot of time negotiating marriages to suitable European princesses. Just as important was finding a wife who would provide the king a son. “The kings were very afraid that if they died with no children or only daughters, it would plunge the kingdom into civil war,” Allitt explains.
British monarchs started having more choice in their partners around the 1950s and 60s. Queen Elizabeth had a very traditional marriage to Prince Philip in 1947, a member of the exiled Greek royal family. Her sister, Princess Margaret, though, married a commoner, Antony Armstrong-Jones. “It was the very first wedding to be televised,” says Allitt.