Royal Is as Royal Does.

How the Windsors lost their magic.

Mr. Theodoracopulos is a contributing editor of National Review and all-around legend.

London

There was no pomp, little fanfare, absolutely no clatter of mounted escort, hardly any medieval privilege, and a poverty of glory.

Yes, sports fans, I am talking about Prince Edward's wedding in June to Sophie Rhys-Jones. They are now the Earl and Countess of Wessex, the ancient titles having been conferred on them by Queen Elizabeth II, the longsuffering mother of Britain's most famous dysfunctional family. (Three of her four children have been divorced, two of them as adulterers, one as a cuckold.)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the British royal family has suffered a sharp loss of public esteem over the past 15 years. Much blame lies with the younger members of the Windsor family, but the most malignant and mendacious press this side of Teheran has had something to do with it too. The well-publicized royal follies are too numerous to mention-Fergie's toe-sucking episode in St-Tropez, Prince Charles's taped admission that he would like to be a tampon. And through it all, the Queen remained stoical, refusing to play the victim a la Hillary. Thanks to her noblesse oblige, the public remains solidly behind the royals, with two thirds of the population on record as wishing to keep them.

Then, on May 1, 1997, Labour won an overwhelming victory at the polls, and the civil servants who advise the Queen decided that, from that moment on, she would be a modern monarch, a decision on par with that of Captain Smith to go full steam ahead on that frigid night in 1912 when he piloted the Titanic. So, always ready to serve loyal NR readers, and taking into consideration that I am a direct descendant of Pythia, the Delphic Oracle, I will predict that the modernizing of the monarchy will do for the Windsors approximately what Rasputin did for the Romanovs.

When Louis XVI called himself citoyen, that's when he lost his head. Not quite so extreme, today's royal advisors want the Queen to be royal, but not regal. They got off on the wrong foot by asking the two daughters of Prince Andrew and Fergie-Princesses Beatrice, 10, and Eugenie, 9-to renounce their titles when they turn 18. (Even a moron knows that losing a title at 9 is not as painful as losing it at 18, but leave it to bureaucrats to believe otherwise.) Better yet, they had the Queen sitting and sipping tea in a Glasgow council house with Mrs. Susan McCarron, a stroke victim, picked out of a spinmeister's hat to receive the royal visitor.

The real audience for the informal photo-op was the great British public-and it proved as genuine as one of those corporate pictures that show CEOs posing with their products (Perdue and his chickens, the toupee-wearing man and his electric razors). What these PR cretins do not understand (and obviously neither do the royals, with the exception of Prince Philip) is that the British like their monarchs to have the common touch, but not to be common, or even commonplace. They want the Queen in particular to remain majestic-but try telling that to Labour and Tony Blair, not as great a liar as Clinton, though learning fast.

Which brings me to the wedding of the Queen's youngest last month. Again, the Wessex union was a tame affair to say the least. It attracted only two monarchs-the bridegroom's mum, plus the Sultan of Brunei, a minor nob if there ever was one. (The sultan got into the wedding picture with both his wives!) Needless to say, the Earl and Countess made an enemy for life in Rupert Murdoch's Sun, England's biggest-selling and smuttiest tabloid. The paper first attacked the couple for accepting an out-of-date title. (What, I wonder, is considered an up-to-date one?) It then attempted to turn them into scapegoats by asking readers to vote on which was the more popular couple: "Posh and Becks" or Edward and Sophie. (Posh is part of the Spice Girls, a pop group; Beckham is a noted soccer player. The two got hitched the same week as the royals and received far more publicity.) An entire page was devoted to a sermon entitled "Snobbery has no place in the new-style Britain." Then the paper went ahead and published a picture of Sophie with her shirt yanked up, and apologized the next day, while running it again.

See what I mean by modernizing the monarchy? No sooner were the hacks given access than they treated the royals in a familiar and rude manner. The pop diva and the footballer kept them at a mile's length (as in Michael Jackson's nuptials), engendering a certain reverence. At the royal reception, the bride and groom had no set places and circulated among the plebes. At the pop one, the bride and groom sat above all others-on thrones.

Given the fact that British society has become so obsessed with those who entertain it, and has elevated their role above that of the monarchy, there is only one way for the latter to go: upwards and away from the crowd. And if anyone still doubts that familiarity breeds contempt, compare the down-at-the-heels Wessex wedding with the one I attended a week later, that of Princess Alexia of Greece, eldest child of ex-King Constantine, to Carlos Morales Quintana, a Spanish architect and a commoner. In attendance were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain; King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden; Queen Margrethe of Denmark and her consort; Queen Sonja of Norway-plus all the children of the above. Now that's what I call a royal wedding with a capital R. (Sitting near Prince Charles after the wedding, I asked him how it felt to be surrounded by friends and without a hack in sight; his wide smile said it all.) King Constantine had given a glittering ball two days before, one in which this correspondent did not distinguish himself by getting much too drunk, but better behaved friends tell me it was a night to remember.

Reigning royals flock to Greek royal weddings for two reasons: They wish to show solidarity with a family that has been outrageously treated by Greek leftist politicians; and they know they'll be able to let their hair down among people who understand. Most people erroneously believe that royals are born into a position of privilege and ease. In actual fact it is an extremely hard job, stressful, unrelenting, and one that does not permit the slightest deviation from duty. So when they get together, they are among those who appreciate the rigors of the job, and down comes the hair.

It is also an occasion on which royals inspect future sons- and daughters-in-law. The British papers were extremely respectful of the visiting royals-the reporters and paparazzi were kept behind police lines, where they should be. Predictably, they reported the various shindigs as glittering and majestic affairs, which they happened to be. Distance, after all, lends enchantment, something the clown in the White House should have known long before he told a teeny-bopper television audience what kind of underwear he wears. The Queen of England should take a lesson from her European royal cousins: They have retained the magic by keeping the riff-raff-above all, the media-out.