The Wedding on Saturday

The media will go crazy over the weekend, what with the great royal wedding all set to dazzle the world on 19th May. Surely, we Indians too will abandon all other things and sit down to watch this biggest, staged brand marketing of royalty.

Isn’t that what it is – the royalty is just a brand which needs to be kept alive as it rakes in a lot of moolah. In today’s time, what is really the relevance of monarchy in a country like the UK? It’s a legacy of the past but largely thanks to the beautifully scripted and directed Netflix series, ‘The Crown’ the British royalty is back in the reckoning, with its popularity soaring sky high.

Today, the UK does need to keep the royalty brand alive as simply put – the British monarchy boosts the economy. Some 5 million people from all over the world landed in London last year to see the insides of Buckingham Palace. Royal tourism alone rakes in some $747 million per year. And in this royalty wedding, some $162 million is estimated to come only from buying wedding memorabilia, hold street parties and barbecues.  

And not too many are now questioning the need to keep the royalty alive or their burden on the tax payers. Bloomberg has stated that Queen Elizabeth, 92, receives income through a real estate corporation called The Crown Estate – she receives  an annual allowance of 15% of the profits. That was 42.8 million pounds in the latest available accounts. The Queen herself is said to have a net worth of $420 million. The Royal Household estimates that the family costs each person in the U.K. 65 pence a year in taxes. Now that’s not too much to keep this heritage alive.