Paul Thomas: Monarchy's future rests on opportune marriage

So what did you do during the Great Royal Wedding of 2011?

Did you settle down with a Thermos of English breakfast tea (Twinings, of course, tea merchants by appointment) and a supply of super-absorbent tissues to watch the modern fairytale unfold?

Presumably many people did, since, as we've been told ad nauseam, everybody loves a wedding. Actually, going by the statistics, quite a few people don't mind a divorce, but more of that later.

We were advised to lie back and enjoy it since there would be no escape from this schizophrenic extravaganza, simultaneously grand yet vulgar, timeless but oh so contemporary in its affirmation of celebrity culture.

In fact there were a few options available to sourpusses and those who don't regard marriage as a spectator sport.

You could have gone out on the town. You could have watched the Breakers trying to become the first New Zealand-based franchise to win a major Australian competition, or the Blues and the Highlanders competing for the Gordon Hunter trophy and the privilege of being hailed as the real deal for at least a week.

The Rialto channel screened the classic film Sunset Boulevard, which features this immortal exchange between a down-on-his-luck screenwriter (William Holden) and a fading star played by Gloria Swanson: Screenwriter: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."

Star: "I am big. It's the movies that got small."

And over on channel 74 (BBC Knowledge) was a programme which, I'd respectfully submit, represented a more worthwhile investment of one's time than watching the wedding: How Not to Die.

Obviously the wedding is a timely boost for the House of Windsor following the recent brand damage inflicted by the increasingly ghastly Prince Andrew and his ex-wife. But while William and Kate undoubtedly give the royal family a fresh and presentable face, it remains to be seen whether the old institution has reinvented itself or merely been tarted up.

An otherwise sycophantic Daily Telegraph profile of the bride revealed that "what everyone knows but no one is saying is that this is one royal marriage that surely has to work". Apparently experienced royal watchers fear that, if this one goes south, it would be "such a disaster it could herald the end of the monarchy itself".

If the institution that dates back over a thousand years - and the constitutional arrangements that flow from it - now rest on a single relationship, it's obviously in a far less robust state than recent propaganda would have us believe.

The dismal fact is that over 40 per cent of British marriages fail. Three of the Queen's four children have been through a divorce, with poor old Fergie now such a pariah she wasn't invited to the wedding.

Much has been made of a recent poll which shows support for Australia becoming a republic has fallen to its lowest level for over a decade. However the poll also shows that the departure of Queen Elizabeth, now 85, and the accession of Prince Charles would trigger an immediate and significant surge in support for the republican cause.

This creates a dilemma for monarchists who are well aware that William is far more popular, certainly in this part of the world, than his father. It also suggests that the public now focuses on the individual rather than the institution.

Hereditary monarchy may be an increasingly hard sell, but monarchy by acclaim is a contradiction in terms. We already have a perfectly good system under which the public gets to choose. It's called democracy.

The monarchy was always going to be a difficult balancing act once it had been stripped of its mystique by the mass media. In the Netherlands and Sweden the response was to embrace this reality and evolve into something altogether less formal - the royal family next door.

It seems Britain wants it both ways: a monarchy that manages to be grand and relevant at the same time. Thus, even as Kate Middleton's middle-class ordinariness is cited as evidence of the monarchy keeping up with the times, she's being re-packaged as anything but ordinary.

Up until the engagement she was an attractive young woman with a good head on her shoulders. Now she's a glamorous creature, a style icon, appropriately regal. According to the Telegraph, William and Britain are lucky to have her.

Britain was lucky to have Shakespeare, Newton, Captain Cook and Churchill. Pretty, well brought up young women with a degree aren't quite so thin on the ground.

Don't they remember what happened to the last Princess who was given this treatment? With friends like these, the royals needn't worry about their enemies.