Princess Eugenie’s Wedding Will Have An Unexpected American Twist With ‘The Great Gatsby’
Like most weddings, and almost every royal wedding, Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank’s ceremony will have a few readings chosen by the bride and the groom. Charles Brooksbank, a cousin of the groom, will do a reading, and then Princess Eugenie’s sister, Princess Beatrice, will be her maid of honor and also do a personal reading selected from a favorite novel.
People Magazine says that the first reading by the groom’s cousin will be an expected choice, taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. But the reading by Princess Beatrice will be from a novel by an American writer, which is a curious choice for a British royal wedding. The York princess will read a selection from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a quintessential American novelist.
The other curious aspect is the tone of The Great Gatsby, as it is hardly a typical choice for a romantic occasion. There is no happily ever after in The Great Gatsby and at the end of the novel, the titular character is dead.
“The fact that the princess bride chose an iconic American author for her traditional British royal wedding isn’t the only surprise, considering that The Great Gatsby is a dark novel that is less of a love story and more of a reflection of the disillusionment of the American Dream.”
It's an unusual choice for a marriage ceremony. https://t.co/TLQjkBfqA4
— TOWN&COUNTRY (@TandCmag) October 11, 2018
Princess Eugenie has spoken of Jack Brooksbank’s ability to make everyone he meets feel important, and she chose a selection where Jay Gatsby is described that reminded her of her husband-to-be.
“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
Town & Country added that not only is The Great Gatsby not a particularly romantic novel, and the reading is not in the voice of Daisy Buchanan, who is Gatsby’s love interest, but in the words of Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin.
A program with the order of service is available on the website for the royal family.
