Will and Kate…a Real Life Fairy Tale? Perspectives on the Royal Wedding

For the past decade, our country has been obsessed with the celebrity couple du jour. First it was Bennifer (Lopez). Then Bennifer (Garner). Then Brangelina, TomKat, Vaughinston, Speidi, PatStew, the slightly creepy Swiftenhaal. And the newest celeb couple to hit the pages of Us Weekly: WillKat. Or is it Katilliam? British royal Prince William and his girlfriend of eight years, Kate Middleton, have taken the tabloid world by storm since they announced their engagement last week. But while to those of us only glimpsing at them from magazine covers while we wait on the supermarket checkout line this dazzling couple appears to be just another passing celebrity fad, to the Brits they represent the continuation of a centuries-old line of royalty, a real-life fairy tale in the making.   

In England, Will-Kat has been a national sensation for the eight years they’ve been together, ever since they met at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland. But this intensely private pairing has stayed almost astonishingly under-the-radar stateside, garnering very little tabloid attention until their engagement. But now that they’re forced into the spotlight, Americans are confronted with constant media coverage of the first royal wedding since Charles and Diana almost thirty years ago. How have American perceptions of royals changed since then? Do Americans still care about the fairy tale of British royalty, or are Will and Kate just another celebrity couple? And how will this wedding change how we see the royal family? HC talked to American and British students, as well as Syracuse University professor and pop culture expert Robert Thompson, to find out.