This Spring’s Big Royal Family Reunion Has Been Called Off

As the British royal family adjust their plans in the face of the coronavirus crisis, abandoning a “keep calm and carry on” approach in favor of the hunkering down happening around the world, one more major royal event has been put on hold. The Daily Mail reports that the wedding of Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, scheduled for May 29 at St. James’s Palace in London with a reception at Buckingham Palace, has been scrapped in favor of a small ceremony with “a small group of family and friends.”

It was already a complicated wedding to arrange, to put it mildly. Ever since Beatrice’s father Prince Andrew gave his disastrous TV interview in November about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, which led to him stepping back from public life, it’s been difficult to see how the family would both celebrate Beatrice and avoid shining an unwelcome spotlight on her father. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s subsequent decision to step back themselves in January, while unrelated, made Beatrice’s wedding seem even more like an awkward, and very public, family reunion. According to reports in February Beatrice and her fiancé twice delayed announcing their wedding plans given the ongoing family crises, and the May 29 ceremony was seen as “the big event that brings the family back together again. Aides know this will be a tough job, but it’s all they can do not just to save the wedding, but potentially the monarchy’s reputation.”

Now, like everyone else, the royal family is stuck at home and figuring out what to do next—though, on the bright side, nobody is talking about their internal family politics any more. Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday that numerous upcoming royal events, including several palace garden parties and a Maundy Sunday church service, would be canceled; other major events on the royal calendar, including June’s Trooping the Colour, are under review. At the rate cancellations are happening around the world, it will likely be months before the royals are seen together again in public—meaning that whatever drama continues to happen among them, it will be behind closed doors.

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