Much Ado Over Royal Wedding in Secular Republic of France

 

Despite the fact that the major royal events are rare — the wedding Friday between Prince William and Kate Middleton will be the first big British royal celebration since the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 — the ceremony and the surrounding hoopla this week serve to remind the French of their own tempestuous associations with royalty, which retains associations in this secular country.

Since the engagement was announced in November, media coverage has been building. Point de Vue, a popular weekly magazine, has been focusing on little else. It normally sells 200,000 copies a week but its chief editor, Colombe Pringle, expects the wedding special this week to sell 750,000. Other rivals like Paris Match have also been publishing commemorative editions. Le Figaro, one of the most popular dailies, offered a 79-page special entitled: “So British.”

On French television, three major channels — TF1, France 2 and M6 — will show the ceremony live.

Olivier Debeugny, 37, who lives in the Paris region and works in insurance, said that his mother and aunt would be glued to their set at home in Lille on Friday. “I have no idea why,” he said, “and I’m not sure that they could tell you why, either.”

As in many other countries, sales of royal memorabilia have been brisk in France. Ruth Thibaudière, assistant manager of the WH Smith store in central Paris, which sells British books, newspapers, food and other products, said recent sales had been three times higher than last year’s levels, mostly due to wedding-themed items like mugs, plates, key rings and bookmarks.

Many of her French clients, she said, have been “amazed at what it incurs, at how big it is.”

Even if they cannot always explain why, among many French, there remains a certain fascination with their cross-Channel neighbors.

“We’ve always had a very specific relationship with the British,” said Bruno Jeanbart, director of OpinionWay, a Paris-based research and polling firm. “In the 20th century, the enemy was Germany. Or was the real enemy the British? There’s always been a kind of competition between the two countries.”

While many Frenchmen enjoy chiding their cross-Channel cousins about their culinary shortcomings, poor weather and generally quirky ways, the fact that an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 French people live in London alone tells a different story (the number of British living in all of France is estimated at about 200,000). A poll in Le Figaro last weekend found 95 percent of the French expatriates were happy in the British capital.

But beyond the love-hate relationship with Britain, the French have conflicting feelings about monarchy, secularism and the intersection with politics.

“There’s always been a significant interest in royalty in France,” Mr. Jeanbart said.

Indeed, late last year, the discovery by scientists that an embalmed head apparently belonged to King Henri IV, the first of the Bourbon line, appeared to stir real public interest, with follow-up news articles and Internet buzz.

To some, the apparent interest stems from a nostalgia for lost traditions, perhaps even a sense of guilt that the French rejected royalty and chopped off Louis XVI’s head in 1793.

And there still is a fringe royalist movement in France, which is steeped in a yearning for a strong, conservative and pure France, rooted in the land and propped up by the pillars of the Catholic Church and the army.

Disparate groups keep alive the idea of restoring the monarchy, which was partially restored after the French Revolution and later abandoned. The last Bourbon monarch, Louis-Philippe I, who was referred to as the “citizen King,” abdicated in 1848. (He was the last king to rule France, although Emperor Napoleon III would serve as its last monarch.)

The current monarchists include the political party Alliance Royale and the right-wing pressure group Action Fran?aise, with its radical youth arm, the Camelots du Roi. Other groups include the Manants du Roi and Nouvelle Action Royaliste.

In the highly unlikely event of a restoration, the throne could pass to Jean d'Orléans, the duke of de Vend?me and son of the Count of Paris. He is the main descendant of the House of Orléans and was himself married in 2009 at Notre-Dame de Senlis Cathedral in a service attended by 900 people including politicians, business and social figures and representatives of European royal families. He runs a charitable foundation.

Another potential claimant would be the Spanish-born Prince Louis Alphonse of Bourbon, the duke of Anjou.

Apart from the French royal line, there is the House of Grimaldi, which serves as something of a surrogate royal family in France. In July, Monaco will celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert II to the South African former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, though the impending nuptials have been overshadowed by the grander preparations in London.

Even though France’s royalty may be long gone, its vestiges remain. In many ways, French society remains hierarchical, for example with senior positions in government and industry often earmarked for those who attended the most prestigious schools. And politics here has retained a monarchical style.

“We look for a true leader, someone who rules from the center. Before it was the king, then we had the emperor, now it’s the president,” Mr. Jeanbart said. “Since the 5th Republic, we’ve had a kind of elected king,” he added, referring to the constitutional changes introduced under Charles de Gaulle in 1958.

That sense of a regal presidency was personified by leaders like Fran?ois Mitterand and Jacques Chirac. But the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been criticized for jettisoning tradition and is seen more as a “king of bling,” with arriviste tastes and media ubiquity. Perhaps wounded by the barbs, Mr. Sarkozy has himself compared his predecessors to the “rois fainéants,” or “lazy kings,” who ruled France without energy in times past.

Still, there is another, competing narrative, one that suggests that the recent fascination of the French with monarchy is in fact a media creation.

Maurice Szafran, a writer and chief executive of the French publication Marianne, says the perception of a royal yearning might be more refrain than reality. “It could be that our press is more passionate about the story than the French people are,” he said on French radio last week. “In the coming weeks, we’ll find out.”