Rise of the glamocracy

The world may be dazzled by Prince Harry marrying a divorced, mixed-race American TV star. But his grand friends and royal cousins will hardly bat an eyelid. Because they’ve been marrying celebs (and Americans) for the past decade or so. In a subtle, gradual change in the British upper classes, the aristocracy has given way to the glamocracy.

Gone is the blue-blood obsession; gone the marrying off of smart cousin to smart cousin which has continued since Agincourt; gone the Mrs Bennets frantically flicking through Burke’s Peerage, desperate to marry off their boot-faced daughter to the local squire. These days, young royalty and aristocracy are increasingly mixing with, and marry-ing, international money, beauty and fame.

Harry’s wingman Guy Pelly married Lizzy Wilson, an American Holiday Inn heiress; Ben Elliot; Camilla Parker Bowles’s entrepreneur nephew, married Mary-Clare Winwood, daughter of rock star Stevie. Zara Phillips married England rugby player Mike Tindall. Harry’s second cousin once removed, Lord Freddie Windsor, married Sophie Winkleman, a TV star and sister of Claudia, the queen of Saturday night TV. Peter Phillips married Autumn Kelly, a Canadian; his father, Mark Phillips, married an American equestrian, Sandy Pflueger.

The pattern trickles down through the aristocracy. Viscountess Weymouth, the future Marchioness of Bath, is a mixed-race model. The Countess of Devon is an American ex-Baywatch actress; Viscountess Hinchingbrooke, the future Countess of Sandwich, is the American star of Ladies of London, an American reality show. Kate Moss is going out with a German aristocrat, Count Nikolai von Bismarck. Lady Mary Charteris, daughter of the Earl of Wemyss, is married to rock star Robbie Furze, and joined his band The Big Pink as a singer.