Editorial: Wedding a majestic lesson for doubters

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MAYBE now people will get it ...

After Saturday's magnificent show - the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and a nation making a statement - possibly now the killjoy republicans and their fellow travellers will "get" it.

If they don't, neither I nor anyone else can help them.

Yes, the arguments are all there - unelected; mega-rich landowners; fuddy-duddies living in the past; a chequered history with more than its share of blood and debauchery through the ages; an affront to democracy.

The royal family defies logic in the modern era. But perhaps we all need something illogical.

We Brits love the royal family - it is the love which passes all understanding.

Why try to rationalise it? It works - and I don't mean the millions of pounds the tradition and pageantry bring in to Britain via tourists.

It is something solid and implacable in a rapidly changing era. It is something to depend on in a world of opportunist politicians desperately trying to broker power.

And know that the Household Cavalry, so ceremonial on horseback as they escorted the bride and groom but serious soldiers underneath the finery, give their first allegiance to the monarch above any transitory government.

And who else could so seamlessly wrap in the pomp and circumstance for which they are renowned with the arrival in their midst of an American divorcee of mixed race?

So a significant shift for race relations in the UK, a faultless step on the road to modernisation supported by that huge ballast of history, a new power couple set to shake up the world ... and a dress to argue over.

What more could you want?