Frankly, I pity anyone who marries into the royal family. It's a minefield.
Edited to add: Not maligning Will and Harry, who seem like good guys. It's the general royal family culture I'm referring to.
Completely agree, Kate Middleton seems like a nice girl and all, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to become a part of that craziness. I hope she doesn't end up regretting it. 
I like to think of it as a testament to how much she loves Will.
I hope so, but she did know he was a prince when she started dating him!
Its interesting, there must be lots of people who feel the opposite way because when it was announced that Prince William would be going to St Andrews for uni their applications went up by about 500% or some similarly insane figure, nearly all females! I even had a friend who applied there specifically with the goal of meeting Prince William and convincing him to marry her!
Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) turned down the Duke of York (George VI) twice because she didn't want to deal with all the royal hassle. At the time they were married, nobody really believed that the Duke would succeed George V.
She always did seem to be quite sensible to me. She did love him deeply, though, so I guess she weighed the options and decided he was worth it.
"I turned down your first two marriage proposals, not because I didn't love you, but because I couldn't bear the thought of a Royal life. . . Then I thought to myself, 'but he stammers so beautifully'. . . "
Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth did that scene so wonderfully. . . 
Frankly, I pity anyone who marries into the royal family. It's a minefield.
Edited to add: Not maligning Will and Harry, who seem like good guys. It's the general royal family culture I'm referring to.
Completely agree, Kate Middleton seems like a nice girl and all, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to become a part of that craziness. I hope she doesn't end up regretting it.
I like to think of it as a testament to how much she loves Will.
I hope so, but she did know he was a prince when she started dating him!
Its interesting, there must be lots of people who feel the opposite way because when it was announced that Prince William would be going to St Andrews for uni their applications went up by about 500% or some similarly insane figure, nearly all females! I even had a friend who applied there specifically with the goal of meeting Prince William and convincing him to marry her!
Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) turned down the Duke of York (George VI) twice because she didn't want to deal with all the royal hassle. At the time they were married, nobody really believed that the Duke would succeed George V.
She always did seem to be quite sensible to me. She did love him deeply, though, so I guess she weighed the options and decided he was worth it.
"I turned down your first two marriage proposals, not because I didn't love you, but because I couldn't bear the thought of a Royal life. . . Then I thought to myself, 'but he stammers so beautifully'. . . "
Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth did that scene so wonderfully. . .
They did, didn't they? But I do think it was quite real - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons never expected to have more than a minor public role.
I'll admit that I do have a bit of a bone to pick re all the late-Diana accolades - that she was the first royal mother to give her children a taste of the "real" people i.e. there was an assertion that she was the first to ever take royal children on the subway. Not true at all - Elizabeth and Margaret's nanny did that back in the 1930s. Hardly earth-shaking, I know, but still. And while the girls were tutored at home (not unusual for upper-class girls at the time) there were still mainstream-opportunities such as the palace Girl Guide unit, and Princess Elizabeth's compulsory military service near the end of WWII. I do admire that William and Harry have a good deal of the "common touch" but I sure don't think that their father had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Elizabeth II/Philip's decision to send their young children to boarding schools got some raised-eyebrow reactions at the time (1950-60s) when the public still was used to royal children being tutored at home. But it was really the most "normal" situation for the children at the time, as opposed to being on nonstop security-patrol at day schools. And look at Princess Anne. For a long time she was considered the most unpopular Royal - probably because she didn't give a fig about what journalists/photographers wanted to see. Even when she wasn't being a champion equestrienne, she was mucking about doing work for charities such as the Save The Children Fund, rather than appearing in formal gowns at charity balls.
