Royal Visitors - A-Z Blog Challenge

So our royal visitors - Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and little Prince George - have been and visited - and a very lovely family they seem to be. It's good that they come to show the royal flag given Australia is a constitutional monarchy with the Queen at its head and while this is the case they should come here. Whether we should remain a constitutional monarchy is another question altogether which I won't talk about here.

What I want to talk about is the way the royal visitors were talked about in the press and other media. While I understand the fascination with the Duchess of Cambridge - she's a very beautiful young woman with a lovely manner, Prince William and their son - and who doesn't love a baby - it all seems so superficial.

The first article I read was in the newspaper. About the length of half a newspaper column it began with a detailed description of what the Duchess was wearing - five paragraphs in all down to what designer she had chosen - and with a gratuitous reference to Diana, Princess of Wales, having chosen to patronise the same designer - including her shoes, hat and jewellery and noting the skirt of her coat blew up exposing her legs. Wow! Who'd have thought a duchess could have a wardrobe malfunction, however trivial. Then we had a description of little George - not entirely accurate to judge by the photo but who cares about a few minor details. By now we have only one more paragraph to go. This briefly addresses the welcome ceremony by unnamed dignitaries and the next stop on their itinerary.

And that's it. Apart from his name in the first paragraph and again in the last Prince William doesn't rate a mention. I find this bizarre. This is the son of the Prince of Wales, he's representing the Queen and almost all a newspaper can report on is the clothes his wife is wearing. If this is what people want to read it's a sad indictment on us but I really don't believe it is all we want. I honestly believe - maybe that should be hope - that most of us are not that shallow. I certainly am not.

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