tenngirl said:A couple of messages up, someone was talking about Felipe marrying a noble woman that he did not care for and how awful that would be. I have to admit that I started thinking about that and this is my conclusion. Felipe has a pretty easy life. Yes, he has to make boring visits all over and bear with the attention. But he is paid good money, he is able to go anywhere he wants in the world, he does not have to get up and go to a boring job EVERY DAY, he does not have to work out with the wife who will stay home with the sick baby. He has a very easy life.
The grass is always greener on the other side. Some might say that Felipe (and the jobs of the other monarchs and princes or princesses) is exciting because they get to travel lots of places and the days are never routine. But how do you know that someone like Felipe doesn't like routine and wouldn't like going into an office everyday?
Life is also not as easy as it looks. For the Spanish royal family especially safety is a constant concern with the death threats by the ETA. Not to mention that no matter what you do or how much you do, people are never happy with you or the job you're doing. On top of that the media scrutiny over your life can be very invasive. For the princesses it means that people are constantly looking at your belly to see if you are expecting or everyone is criticizing your hair, your makeup, your clothes, how you smile or if you smile. And if you have a bad day everyone knows about it because there is some paparazzi who will take the picture and sell the picture to a German tabloid.
How many of us normal people face this on a daily basis? Today I woke up, wore whatever I wanted to work, nobody looked at my belly to see if I was pregnant and if I was would it be a boy or a girl, nobody took my picture while I walked to work, nobody wrote on a forum that my hair wasn't very nice today, and nobody wanted to kill me because they wanted a republic. I got to have lunch when I wanted at a restaurant I chose when I felt that I had done enough work for the morning and needed a break. Do you think that if Felipe or Letizia decided that they had had enough of a someone's speech they could just get up and go have a coffee break?
tenngirl said:It seems then that marrying a noble or royal woman is a simple trade-off. He has all these benefits, can't he sacrifice something?
Didn't Charles sacrifice Camilla and his true happiness to marry a virginal aristocrat? While it may have seemed like a simple trade off look at the severe and long lasting repercussions from it: the lives of Charles, Diana, Camilla, Andrew and their four children were affected, two marriages were ruined, the British monarchy was in disarray for years because of the scandal, Diana became a hunted woman because she was the woeful victim of Camilla the pitbull and died at the hands of the paparazzi because they thought she was enaged to and/or expecting Dodi al Fayed's baby. A simple sacrifice that was worth it in the end?
And why should Felipe sacrifice his personal happiness, not to mention make someone else (his noble wife) unhappy because he doesn't really love her but married her for the sake of the monarchy?
And is the monarchy in such a terrible state because of Letizia? Because she isn't noble? And would people prefer a noble but less dedicated wife or a wife who isn't noble but dedicated and committed to her job like Letizia?
tenngirl said:Before you shoot me for wanting him to be miserable, that is not my intention. However, if monarchy is going to mean anything in the years ahead, it is going to have to keep its uniqueness. Marrying women that are not noble, etc. is not the way to do it.
There are ways to maintain the monarchy's uniqueness without insisting that royals marry each other.
tenngirl said:Just my two cents. Now I will duck all the pies being thrown my way!
Why the need to duck pies? If you have an opinon then have the guts to stand by it but also have the guts to hear out the opinons of others to counter those opinons.