Published: May 5, 2011

There is something about the British royal family that fascinates Americans. The model of a monarch and the hierarchy of princes, princesses, dukes and duchesses is system that the United States intentionally separated itself from during the American Revolution, but for some reason we still get excited by any move made by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the Windsor gang. In some way, this fairy tale family manages to give us hope when things don’t look too good close to home.

Thus, last Friday’s royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a fascinating look into American culture as it stands in early 2011. On the homefront, Americans are being hit by job losses, an incompetent government, rising gas prices and controversial military action in Libya. There’s not much to look forward to in this country at the moment, really. So why not turn across the pond and see what’s going on there?

A royal wedding is a grand event on the scale of something that eight-year-old girls dream of; it’s the ultimate fantasy. With the wedding party arriving at Westminster Abbey in enormous state carriages carried by teams of horses, followed by “lesser characters” in Rolls Royces and Range Rovers, it would make an American wedding procession look pathetic.

And, of course, you can’t marry the future king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth Realms by the priest from the local church; no, it’s a deed to be done by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with other officiants such as the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of York present.

In America, we never have events on this scale. Our leaders are transient; at most, a president will serve the country for eight years before someone who is most likely not related to him takes over. America has its great families—the Kennedys, the Rockefellers and unfortunately, it seems, the Kardashians—but none of these have the global, enduring stature that the royal family of one of the world’s most powerful nations has.

So, in a time where things are rough in America, we turn to Britain for hope. It’s a place that we have a fascination with because it’s a lot like America in some ways and completely different in many. It’s a place where we think they drive on the wrong side of the road, drink tea and eat finger sandwiches everyday, go out to country estates every weekend to fox hunt and live in thatched houses in a quaint Shakespearian village with a cozy pub down the road.

Never mind the fact that normal people in Britain usually live in postwar semi-detached houses, spend their holidays in rented cottages in the Lake District or Cornwall or down at the beach in Spain, don’t drive as much as use their trains and buses (which do not run as reliably as everyone thinks they do) and almost never have anything remotely considered a “high tea.” The only part of the stereotypical American perception of Britain that’s true is that people do manage to spend a lot of time in pubs, where they get rather into soccer and rugby games.

And yet this romantic notion of a nation we were once part of is something that we can look toward in times of stress in America, the “land of opportunity,” when life seems to be changing for the worse rather than the better. And when there’s a royal wedding, we can take every romantic notion we have about the United Kingdom, combine them into one fantasy and appreciate the fairy tale characteristics of a real-life wedding.

And so, last week the future king of Britain was married and a one-day queen consort was created as millions around the world sat glued to their television sets before the sun had even risen. The hype will die down by the end of this week, and we’ll all go back to bickering about healthcare, the budget, wasteful spending and the economy here.

We may not want our own royal family in America, but it sure is fun for us to watch the exploits of someone else’s when we don’t have much to look forward to here.