When Queen Elizabeth II died, last week, the home pages and Instagram feeds of many American outlets were filled with tributes and tiara-heavy glamour shots, a testament not just to the Queen’s longevity but to her ability to drive social-media click-throughs. She graced the cover of People magazine nearly sixty times, a number of them posthumously.īut, if Diana was mostly known for trauma and tragedy in the American press, the 2010 royal engagement ushered in a modern era of earnestly approving coverage of the British monarchy.
Princess Diana was a tabloid fixation Stateside, of course the photographer Phil Ramey, the California king of the paparazzi, once reportedly rented a submarine to sneak up on her. This magazine even covered the press hullabaloo at the time. When King Edward VIII nearly broke the monarchy, in 1936, by abdicating the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson, an alluring divorcée and rumored Nazi sympathizer from Baltimore, American newspapers were all over the story. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s 1895 wedding to the ninth Duke of Marlborough was brokered by her overbearing mother, who also did a fair amount of leaking to the press the wedding was mobbed by spectators, and a newspaper published a spoof cartoon of the young bride, chained to her mother. In the Gilded Age, moneyed Newport types wanted to marry their daughters into aristocratic lines. The United States has always contained elements of uncouth fawning over the British monarchy, an institution it fought a bloody war to separate itself from. Across the Atlantic, the engagement was met with an enthusiasm that came from desperate need the American celebrity press was in the midst of an A-list drought, and the new royal couple was like sweet summer rain. Softly stammering out answers, she and her newly announced fiancé, Prince William, would soon be splashed, as they had already been for years, on the cover of every British tabloid and newspaper-two beautiful, preppy string beans.
Only its aristocratic association saved it from being hopelessly tacky. Kate Middleton-newly styled “Catherine”-wore a liquid drape dress (soon to sell out), an impeccable blowout, and a sapphire ring the size of a Gobstopper.
On November 16, 2010, a thin brunette from Bucklebury, Berkshire, made a nervous appearance at a photo call.
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