The Royal Wedding

I am not an avid Royal watcher or enthusiast, and in fact, I have been sick and tired of all the attention the latest royal wedding has garnered. Mercifully, it's over, at last, and Will and Kate have gone back to their lives, and the media has turned its attention to the more mundane things happening around us. Many of my friends might disagree with my take on this and question if I do have a romantic bone in my body at all or a penchant for fairy tale romances and the happily-ever-after. Sadly, the answer is a big NO. Perhaps I've grown older, and along with my age, so has my cynicism! Did I wake up at 3 AM to watch the Royal Wedding? No. Did I catch it at all? Yes, but only in bits and pieces, and that too because it was on all the channels on TV. I just couldn't get the hullabaloo over the bride's dress and how it was kept a secret till the very last minute, or the special cake that Will had requested, a particular favorite of his from his boyhood, or the titles that the Queen bestowed on them on their wedding day.

What makes the Royals so special? Do they deserve any of this over-exposure and fawning over by other "mere mortals"? It is my personal opinion that the monarchy is an outdated, antiquated, and irrelevant institution that should be abolished, in keeping with the growing trends of the modern world. They are royals just by virtue of an accident of birth, and the life of privilege they enjoy hasn't been earned by them in any way. While the rest of the populace strives hard to make a mark and fight through the ranks in life, the Queen has never lifted a finger in her life, and her family members have no redeeming aspects to their credit - intelligence, qualifications, accomplishments, or anything of that sort - to validate their claims to privilege. Their wealth is rightfully the taxpayers' and their status is so over-rated in a world that has seen so much of change down the centuries. There is no particular use in having a ceremonial head at the expense of the taxpayers, and in accordance with the times, the archaic institution of the monarchy that has no relevance whatsoever any longer needs to be done away with. Millions have been splurged on this recent wedding, but whose money was it, and at whose cost? Points to ponder!

Kate's engagement ring (originally Diana's) boasts an 18-carat sapphire mined from Sri Lanka, they say, one of Britain's colonies in the past. The sun never set in the British Empire of the olden days, and neither did their plundering of the wealth from all the colonies under their subjugation! A look at the legendary Royal Jewellery Collection in the famous Tower of London stands testimony to this fact, with many of the diamonds and gems having gone to England from India for the Queen, the Kohinoor Diamond to name the most famous of them all. The East India Company robbed my homeland and stripped it of its wealth, all for the Queen, and I see no reason to support the Royals in any way, well into the 21st century, and long after they had to leave my country of birth. When I became a Canadian citizen, I was asked to swear allegiance to the Queen, Canada also being one of her colonies, but I chose to swear allegiance to God instead. I don't hate the Royals, but just feel that they're like any one of us and don't deserve all this attention and hoopla.