Royal wedding: Kate Middleton will be first middle class queen-in-waiting
Kate Middleton will permanently change the Royal family when she becomes Britain’s first middle class queen-in-waiting.
For a future king to marry a woman from such an ordinary background amounts to a revolution in Royal terms.
Opinion is sharply divided over whether her marriage to Prince William will rejuvenate or diminish the monarchy in the public’s eyes. Some commentators have suggested Miss Middleton will bring stability to the monarchy, while others believe she will remove its much-needed mystique.
She will not, however, be the first commoner to marry a future king.
The Duchess of Cornwall, Queen Elizabeth and Anne Boleyn could be classed as commoners in the strictest sense of the word, though all were either from aristocratic families or were distinctly upper class.
Although the then Camilla Parker Bowles was the granddaughter of a baron and a direct descendant of William the Conqueror, she had no title, something she shared with Elizabeth Woodville, the woman who broke the mould when she secretly married Edward IV in 1464.
Widely regarded as the first commoner to marry a king of England, Elizabeth was a Lancastrian sympathiser who became a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, as her marriage caused the Yorkist Earl of Warwick to withdraw his support for the king....
Read entire article at telegraph (UK)
For a future king to marry a woman from such an ordinary background amounts to a revolution in Royal terms.
Opinion is sharply divided over whether her marriage to Prince William will rejuvenate or diminish the monarchy in the public’s eyes. Some commentators have suggested Miss Middleton will bring stability to the monarchy, while others believe she will remove its much-needed mystique.
She will not, however, be the first commoner to marry a future king.
The Duchess of Cornwall, Queen Elizabeth and Anne Boleyn could be classed as commoners in the strictest sense of the word, though all were either from aristocratic families or were distinctly upper class.
Although the then Camilla Parker Bowles was the granddaughter of a baron and a direct descendant of William the Conqueror, she had no title, something she shared with Elizabeth Woodville, the woman who broke the mould when she secretly married Edward IV in 1464.
Widely regarded as the first commoner to marry a king of England, Elizabeth was a Lancastrian sympathiser who became a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, as her marriage caused the Yorkist Earl of Warwick to withdraw his support for the king....