Appropriating the Royals

NO MATTER how silly you may think all the hoopla surrounding the “Royal Wedding” is, chances are you will be seated before your TV set today, following the events leading up to the union of Prince William of Wales and “Miss” Kate Middleton, a commoner.

For many of my generation, the wedding coverage will doubtless bring back memories of another wedding, that of William’s parents Prince Charles and Lady Diana, the “People’s Princess” who more than any other member of the English royal family brought them up to speed with the Age of Information. No matter if the fairy tale ended tragically with Charles and Diana’s divorce and her subsequent death, these were not enough to quell the public’s appetite for and fascination with the lives of the Royals.

William people will always remember for his cool demeanor marching behind his mother’s coffin on the way to her funeral rites. Although much of his childhood and youth were spent away from the public eye, the result of an agreement between the royal family and the rambunctious British media, once he graduated from university, he became fodder for international media attention.

As William said in a post-engagement interview, the reason he and Kate took so long to decide on getting married was that he wanted to make sure that his bride-to-be knew what she was getting into and had the stamina to withstand the very public scrutiny and loss of privacy.

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WE CAN well understand why Britons would be all agog over the nuptials of Wills and Kate. But why would Filipinos, many miles away from the United Kingdom and living vastly different lives, pay so much attention to the wedding when we ourselves don’t have any royalty?

Maybe it’s all that wackiness surrounding the ceremony, including memorabilia that range from William and Kate teabags, to their likenesses in coffee, meat loaf, pizza and an entire menagerie of Royals as knitted puppets.

Then again, maybe it’s precisely because we have no Royals that we’re so eager to appropriate another nation’s. We’re fascinated by this fairy tale come to life, a Prince falling for a schoolmate, finding love amid the blinding flashes of the paparazzi. Despite the cultural gulf and the possibility they don’t even know we exist, we are praying for a happy ending, even if marriage would make for a rather humdrum ending to a great love story.

The alternative would be rather disheartening. For as a snarky commentator asked, of the thousands of customers of Royal Wedding souvenirs: “Would you buy a souvenir plate of their divorce?”

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I HAVE only one story worth telling about Pope John Paul II, to be known henceforth as “Blessed,” following his beatification on Sunday.

During the Pope’s first visit here in 1981, I was still employed with the Archdiocese of Manila and was assigned to cover his cross-country trip to (as far as I can remember) Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod and Davao. Photographer Noli Yamsuan and I were the only Filipino journalists on the papal plane, but so hectic and frenzied was the coverage that all I can remember of the trip is a blur of images, although I do remember the press pack being driven through a detention center for political prisoners in Cebu on the way to the Papal Mass in Lahug.

At that time I was also a few months pregnant, a little over a year after the birth of my son, and still trying to reconcile myself with the reality. I welcomed the assignment as a distraction, pondering how I found myself in such a situation. If I had been given a chance to talk with the Pope, I might very well have asked him what I was to make of a “bargain” I had made with God soon after my first-born’s arrival. I asked God to understand that I was going on the pill only to make sure that I would not get pregnant before my son turned one year old. But once he celebrated his first birthday, I prayed, I promised I would go off the oral contraceptive. So it was almost like a cosmic joke that a few months after the birthday party, I found myself pregnant again.

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IT WAS during the Mass for the beatification of St. Lorenzo Ruiz, held in Luneta, that I found a semblance of comfort and acceptance of my fate.

My husband and I were lucky enough to score tickets to seats at the Mass, albeit many meters away from the altar. I found myself moved almost to tears as the choirs burst out in song and the huge crowd erupted into cheers when the Pope made his appearance. Then and there, I decided that if I gave birth to another boy, I would name him “Lorenzo” (we already had a default name for a girl).

The decision settled my unhappy heart and I found myself welcoming my child, apologizing that I had been such a reluctant mother. I felt the burden of regret lifting, and anticipation growing.

Ultimately, though, I would lose that child a few weeks later (another pregnancy came to a premature end in 1983), and I remember feeling so confused, not knowing if I had any “right” even to grieve.

The coming beatification of Pope John Paul II brings back the memory of the moment, fraught with much personal meaning. A few days ago, I expressed disappointment that the powerful charisma of Pope John Paul II was tending to obscure the importance of another great Pope and my personal candidate for sainthood: John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council and ushered the Church into the Modern Age. “But my generation only knows Pope John Paul II!” exclaimed my daughter, and I had to acknowledge that indeed JPII was a fit Pope for the times, combining charm, vigor and stamina to bring the message of the Church, and his person, to all corners of the Earth.