At Public Seminar we are feminists, so we don’t raise our daughters to be princesses. We are open-minded leftists, so we don’t fawn over the ruling classes, but we don’t long to guillotine them either. And we are anti-racists, so we haven’t declared an end to racism worldwide just because a multi-racial American TV star has married into the British royal family — but we do acknowledge that this change in the House of Windsor may be a very significant moment for English culture.

In other words, our general distaste for royalism does not prevent us from admitting that Prince Harry and Meaghan Markle not only seem like nice people. Their union is a landmark of sorts in the history of race and empire, prompting the first and (probably) last post you will ever see here about a royal wedding.

So, without further ado, here’s some coverage to help you recover from this much-anticipated event.

• Harry and Meghan will be the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a title conveyed to them by the 92 year-old Queen Elizabeth II as  a wedding present, and one that has been vacant since 1834, when the twice-married Prince Augustus Frederick, the sixth son of George III (yes, that George III — making sense now?) died without “legitimate issue.” His children were bastards because George III had never given poor Augustus Frederick permission to marry in the first place, but perhaps they were at odds over his politics: he was an anti-slavery activist and supported full rights for Catholics and Jews.

There’s more! To read the rest of this post, published at Public Seminar on May 20 2018, click here.