Wills and Kate fairytale: Their idea or ours?

The royal wedding has brought out the bunting and the trestle tables. It has also raised the question: would William and Kate much prefer to be having a simple wedding in a country church, surrounded by their university friends and family, rather than playing up to a fairytale myth foisted upon them by centuries of tradition and the royalist mainstream media?

In short, do we need them more than they need us?

Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph argues that it doesn't matter how illogical the institution might be, the British people still feel a powerful affection for the monarchy.

"We are a country that values ritual, custom, tradition... The monarchy does not merely define us as a nation: it defines us as individuals. Our respect and affection for the Queen is rooted in our collective unconscious. There is something deep, instinctive and even primeval going on here, which goes right to the very core of our nature as social beings."

Oborne believes the monarchy "works" because it humanises an impersonal state. "People who find if very hard to relate to an Act of Parliament, to a Brussels directive, a law lord or a permanent secretary (all essential parts of government) get the point of the Royal family. We share their tragedies, joys and family dramas. There is something about hereditary rule that people like.

"This observation does not just apply to backward societies – it is also the case in the United States, with its dynasties of Bushes, Clintons and Kennedys. So the monarchy brings us together as a nation."

Richard Quest, an English broadcaster who will be covering the wedding for CNN, also admits that the monarchy is illogical, anachronistic and unrealistic. "[But] that isn't the point," says Quest, who is 49. "The Queen has been on the throne all my life and then some. The knowledge that Charles will take over has been omnipresent - never really questioned except for a brief hiatus during the Diana debacle. From the moment William was born in 1982 we knew he was the next one. That is the way monarchy works. Ever present. Consistent."

Quest witnessed the power of the monarchy "to draw us back in" when he covered the Queen Mother's death in 2002. "The palace had feared no one would show up to pay respects at her lying in state. We turned up in our tens of thousands."

There have been suspicions that David Cameron insisted on a Bank holiday this Friday for much the same reason: there was a fear that not enough people would be interested in William and Kate's wedding unless they were given a day off.

Yet a recent Ipsos-Mori poll showed 75 per cent of Britons still preferred a monarchy to a republic, a proportion that has barely changed in recent years.

But the Queen Mother belonged to a different age. Do we really expect of Kate Middleton the same dutiful adherence to the traditions of court we demanded of William's great grandmother, or indeed his late mother? After all, as Matthew Engel wrote in the FT Weekend Magazine, we have all learnt that "being a princess is no fairytale".

Well, one man who clearly thinks the monarchy plough on regardless is royal biographer Hugo Vickers. "After a suitable honeymoon," he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, "we will need to see the happy couple - they must not disappear into Anglesey altogether [their current home].

"If I were masterminding their plans (which I am not), I would have them back, refreshed and tanned in time for President Obama's state visit (May 24 to 26).

"Then we should see the couple at Prince Philip's 90th birthday, the Birthday Parade on June 11 (William riding as Colonel of Irish Guards), the Garter Procession (William beplumed) on June 13, in a carriage at Royal Ascot and at a Garden Party.

"We know they are going to Canada. I would send them off to as many Commonwealth countries as possible in the next couple of years."

Vickers's list of chores goes on and on. He would give them a few weeks off in the autumn though, with only one purpose - to start a family. Or as Vickers puts it: "What we most expect from William and Kate is another generation of the House of Windsor, so time away from the spotlight is good."

Countering Vickers' strict views in the Sunday Telegraph was the novelist Philippa Gregory, who sees Kate Middleton's future as "a great deal of smiling and waving, an unappetising number of dinners, some really great clothes, no worthwhile paid work, very easy travel arrangements all around the world, opening things but rarely seeing them... and a good deal of random and unnecessary criticism."

In short, "a dreadful job for a young woman to undertake: not even a job, neither profitable nor educational, with no time off."

So, where does an out-and-out anti-monarchist stand on this? Johann Hari, writing in the Independent, claims: "Republicans are the only people who would let William Windsor and Kate Middleton have the private, personal wedding they clearly crave, instead of turning them into stressed-out, emptied-out marionettes of monarchy that are about to jerk across the stage.

"We [the 20 per cent of the country he claims are republicans] object not to a wedding, but to the orgy of deference, snobbery, and worship for the hereditary principle that will take place before, during and after it."

Hari believes that the monarchist spin-machine, the tabloids and the tea-towel industry "have created a pair of fictitious characters for us to cheer, while the real people behind them are being tormented by their supposed admirers".

Says Hari: "The evidence is pretty clear that William and Kate will be smiling at us through gritted teeth. We now know from several impeccable sources that for a long time as a young man, William raged against the monarchy and wanted no part of it. He once screamed at photographers: 'Why won't you just let me be a normal person?' Alistair Campbell's diaries show that William is 'consumed by a total hatred of the media', who he believes – pretty accurately – ruined his mother's life and contributed to her death."

So, the question is, who would Queen Catherine rather send to the Tower - the republican Hari, who would have her lead a peaceful life away from the madding crowd, or that stickler for tradition Vickers, who would have Kate produce an heir in time for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next year– so, no pressure there – say as little as possible, and buckle down to the job of being a queen-in-waiting. ·