The Royal Wedding and the opposition to monarchy

           Posted by: Yohana Ornelas

       The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was the reproduction of a fairy tale, a beautiful plebeian that married with a Prince and found her happy ending. More than one million of people watched the wedding, websites made a live transmission and made of the wedding the principal theme of news around the world. But not everyone in England was happy about the huge ceremony. Many republican groups realized protests in April 29^th of 2011, date of the wedding.

The anti- monarchy group “Republic” made a party at the center of London called “Not the royal wedding”. During the party were sold “republican” mugs with the inscription “I’m not a royal wedding mug”. “We wish William and Kate all personal happiness, but we are here to affirm that there are 12 million Republicans who are not happy with the prospect that turn King William," said Sophia Deboick, 29, a volunteer of the Republic. The protests and the party continued all day long and 43 people were arrested close to the local of the ceremony.

According to Republic spokesman Graham Smith, they were “celebrating the democracy and the power of people instead of birth privileges. We need to publish that not everyone in the country is interested in the royal wedding”. " The protestors argue that the Royal Family is a “useless” institution that lives as parasite of people. In fact, the Royal family is nowadays a symbol more than a part of the power.

In the day after the wedding, the group received the Second Alliance Convention, of European republican movements with militants from all European countries that have a monarchy system or a royal family. They discussed, among other issues, the anger that was provoked by the presence of leaders of Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Kuwait, among others. "It seems the 'who's who' of tyrants and their henchmen," complains Graham Smith, director of the Republic.

It is not the first time that the monarchy faces opposition.  The Petition of Rights, established by King Charles I in 1638, reduced the political power of the Royal Family close to the symbolic function that it have today, and gave to the Parliament. But it doesn’t seems to be close the time that the Republican’s desires will be realized.  Above the fact that the royal wedding did not really excited more than a third of Britons, researches showed that 67% of the population believe that the British monarchy is still appropriate in the 21^st century, and that 63% think that their country is better off with a royal family than without it.