Why Wills and Kate Fascinate Us

Even to those of us with no plans to sit through the royal wedding, Prince William and Kate Middleton are intriguing. “My friend is not a royal watcher or a tabloid reader. Neither am I,” writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post. Yet both were familiar with Kate’s sister Pippa and Prince William’s academic background. Why are we fascinated? It comes down to fate. Wills “is one of the few remaining people on Earth to have been born into real political authority,” and now he and Kate are stuck with it.

They’re celebrities, but we don’t discuss them as we would Tony Blair or Madonna: “They have never promised anything to anybody ... and so there is no reason to find them disappointing.” Yet even if William “wants to live a completely different life, he can’t,” Applebaum notes. “None of us knows exactly how our lives will turn out, but William has a better idea than most—and now Kate does, too.” But despite all this, “it seems they’ve decided to enjoy themselves anyway. For that alone, I might raise a glass to the happy couple.” (More Prince William stories.)