For reasons unanswered the British document the lives of their royal family through commemorative plates. What they do with these plates is a mystery— I’ve seen them in antique shops and grocery stores, yet I don’t recall ever spotting a single commemorative plate in someone’s home. I think perhaps Britons buy them, then stash them in their basements as a kindly gesture to future archaeologists, who learn about cultures through broken bits of pottery. Scientists in the year 2641 will think that the apogee of western civilization was the Diamond Wedding Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. (The plate is magnificent.)

The huge upswing in commemorative plates, featuring a grinning Prince William and comely Kate nee Middleton, were only some of the signals leading up to the Royal Wedding. The other is the great proliferation of Union Jacks fluttering around Edinburgh. As a rule the British view “enthusiasm” with mild contempt, so the American practice of hoisting giant flags over everything from the backs of lawn mowers to used car dealerships has no parallel on this side of the Atlantic. (In Scotland even less so.) But in the build up to the Royal Wedding tiny flags have sprouted and dot the streets of Edinburgh.

Friday in Festival Square a big screen television was repatriated for the purposes of letting everyone congregate to watch the Royal Wedding in London. I’m pleased I went there— watching the stage coaches and throngs of cheering Brits on Utube lacks the shared experience of a live crowd. When the Archbishop of Canterbury prompted Prince William to say, “For richer or poorer,” you could hear the hushed whisper of a dozen people suppressing snickers. When Kate nee Middleton entered her car, the camera angle happened to zero in perfectly on her bust, prompting the entire crowd around me to go, “ooooOOOOOOoooh!”

What splendor! What grandness! (The wedding in general, not the bust.) You can watch the to-do online, of course, if you haven’t already seen it. Redcoats on horseback, top hats, archbishops, admirals and commodores donning traditional Gilbert & Sullivan uniforms, and wedding guests with weird mustaches and frisbee-sized medallions.

The culminating moment of Britishness occurred at the end of the ceremony when Prince William and Princess Katherine signed the registrar. Does British bureaucracy know no ends? “Now the royal couple shall fill out form 32-A, and after a seven week interregnum civil servants will collate this holy document and send it to the Lord God Almighty via post, who has three weeks to sign it and send it back.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, looked particularly majestic. For some years now I’ve been tinkering with what I call “regal masculinity,” which is an alternate, non-lumberjack version of being an alpha male centered around excellent posture and the quiet self-assurance of knowing you are of higher calibre than most men around you. Philip is the paragon of regal masculinity.

He’s also by far the funniest royal: Imagine a cartoon 1920’s British aristocrat. Now imagine that man is still alive today and refuses to learn political correctness on the grounds that he’s sleeping with the Queen. That’s Prince Philip. Here are some of my favorite quips from the duke:

“So you managed not to get eaten, then?”

To a student back from Papa New Guinea, 1998

“If a cricketer, for example, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

Dunblane, Scotland 1996, in reference to a gun massacre

“Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

Cayman Islands, 1994

“Do you still throw spears at each other?”

To Australian Aborigines, 2002

“If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called ‘economy class,’ which sounds ghastly.”

Royal Jubilee Tour, 2002

Very salt-of-the-earth people.

That last one is in contrast to the progressive nature of the new royal couple. Princess Katherine was born a commoner, after all. The press made a big issue of Kate nee Middleton’s humble origins; her parents weren’t titled nobility, not even knights! The implication seems to be that anyone, regular joes like you or me, could grow up to marry into the royal family. All we need is multimillionaire parents, the body of a fashion model, and matriculation at a seven hundred year-old upper crust British university. It could happen to anyone!

That’s me making fun of the press, not the royal couple. I’ve never met either of them and for all I know they could be lovely, gracious people. Or perhaps not, who knows? All I know is that, state pomp and grandeur aside, it was their wedding day, and we would do well to remember that somewhere in all that fanfare was a nugget of real human sentiment between two people in love. I hope they enjoyed the wedding, and wish them the best.

Though not everyone does. The looming spectre of the Royal Wedding brought out all the perennial British issues of republicanism and class warfare. At twelve thirty on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile a protest march convened in opposition to the monarchy, culminating in the cheery phrase “One Solution! Execution!”

I saw a variety of banners, from Scottish Republicans to the Scottish Socialist Party. At one point I saw a flag with the anarchy logo on it. (May I just say how unbearably stupid I think alleged anarchists are? You meet these imbeciles once a year or so—they’re usually sophomores in college, or at least arrested at that level of maturity. They will tell you that they’re all about ending the government and destroying institutions and power to the people and such. When you ask, “So then you want the private sector to run everything? From schools to the army?” They will say, no, they strongly favor public health care and free college education. Oh, then that makes you a socialist, you moron, not an anarchist. Put down your flag and go read some Milton Friedman.)

The two main British republican arguments go like this: 1. Why send the hard-earned tax money of working Brits to what many perceive as the embodiment of the idle rich? 2. Why should a democracy like Britain support a powerless, antiquated relic from the Middle Ages?

I’ve been sifting through articles on a cost-benefit analysis of the monarchy, and have yet to find anything definitive. Some taxes go to the royal family but then they also generate a good deal of revenue through tourism. The Royal Wedding produced a vast swell of money via travel to London and is the mainstay of the commemorative plates industry, but the nation-wide holiday also cost the British economy a day of productivity, and the event was funded by taxpayers. If I were British I would probably investigate this matter more thoroughly but it seems to me that for the average Briton the financial costs and benefits of the Royal Family mostly balance out.

That leaves the issue of lingering medieval institutions. Is the Queen the embodiment of the nation or embarrassing historical detritus? Is the monarchy a hallowed British institution or the culmination of rigid class hierarchy?

As an American I can offer this insight: you can have either the Queen or Paris Hilton. It’s either Monarchy or the Cult of Celebrity. Take your pick.

A few years ago a friend told me, “Paris Hilton is crazy and slutty but she’s still basically American royalty so you kinda have to love her.” I don’t share this sentiment (at all) but it does illustrate the American tendency to try and create our own versions of monarchs. Such-and-such is the “King of Pop,” etc.

When Hillary Clinton left the Senate to become Secretary of State, the governor of New York genuinely considered Caroline Kennedy as her replacement, who had literally no qualification for the post beyond her maiden name. (One state senator angrily derided criticism of Caroline Kennedy by saying “America doesn’t have a monarchy, but if it did, it would be the Kennedy family.”)

We booted out the royal family two centuries ago, yet college girls all across my nation secretly whimpered when Prince William got engaged because it meant their deep hopes of someday, somehow becoming princesses were that much reduced. Americans are just as obsessed with the royal family as anyone else. Everybody woke up at 3:00 am to watch the previous Royal Wedding, and we all stayed up, glued to our chairs, as the grim night of Diana’s accident unfolded. One of my aunts has told me on occasion that she would not rise for the Queen if she entered the room (as she is not a subject) yet she owns several books on the royal family and can tell you their lineage back to the Plantagenets.

For some stupid reason it’s human nature to hold up people we consider our social betters, then desperately hope for their approval. Everybody builds status pyramids– you Brits at least have an institutionalized version where your useless people dress properly and don’t purposefully have sex in public to gain followers on twitter. The Queen has the added benefit of serving as the primary link between a number of sovereign countries, ranging from Barbados to New Zealand to Canada.

Should America get her own monarchy? No, of course not. We were founded as republicans and it’s in our blood. But for those of you who kept a monarch, I’m not so sure the adoration and cloying status anxiety which commoners possess for the royal family would disappear. I rather think it would pivot wildly between new poles of celebrity, like that Amy Winehouse character, or Beckum the footballer.