Queen and Prince Philip's 1947 wedding discussed by experts
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Some royal marriages are as much about recruitment as they are romance, claims body language expert Judi James. She spoke exclusively to Express.co.uk about the Royal Family’s compatibility or lack thereof.
Judi began: “Royal marriages tend to blend some staunch ‘appropriate for the job/role’ qualities with some glaringly incompatible-looking traits.
“They are probably the only relationships that are supposed to be based on job recruitment and romance and it’s relatively easy to see why historic royal pairings were primarily about power, wealth and even a uniting of dynasties, with love and passion lost somewhere in the small print.”
Arguably the most significant royal marriage of our time is the 73-year marriage between Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
Before his passing in April 2021, the pair were a formidable duo throughout the Queen’s reign.
But while they would have been “perfectly, almost ideally compatible”, in the real world, the pressures and power dynamics within the Royal Family would have added “immeasurable challenges”.
Judi explained: “Pairing a proud, headstrong alpha male with a female global leader whose higher rank would have been underlined every time they stepped out of their palace together should have been a disaster waiting to happen.
“The couple came from an era where men were the bread-winners and women rarely had a job. If they did work they were expected to take support roles.”
It was an extremely atypical power dynamic, which had not been in place in the British Royal Family since Prince Albert became Queen Victoria’s Consort in 1857.
Nevertheless, “the couple found a formula that appears to have worked for decades”.
On their golden wedding anniversary in 1997, the Queen summed up their marriage: “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.”
As for their son Prince Charles and his marriage to Princess Diana, Judi believes that this “should have worked on paper”, due to the dynamic of a “young, girlish woman marrying a far more worldly and experienced man”.
However, the ‘third person’ in the marriage was who Charles was destined to end up with.
“Charles was clearly in need of the kind of unconditional flattery, support and cooing love that a mother would give or, of course, his very devoted Camilla.”
One marriage that has stood the test of time to Judi’s surprise is that of Zara and Mike Tindall.
She explained: “Zara’s marriage to rugby star Mike should have been a borderline disaster, clashing the very spontaneous and fun-loving Mike with a family based on tradition and discretion but in fact, it was a stroke of utter genius.
“Zara’s non-royal status took the heat off Mike in terms of knuckling into the suffocating side of royal life, while royal males like William and Harry clearly welcomed him as a total hero.”
However, the body language expert questioned the similarities between Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, who got married in 2020.
The “super-smart, super-suave” and “sophisticated” Property Developer Edoardo “looks like the hero of a Cartland novel and dresses like a model from Style magazine”, Judi claimed.
His wife, the expert suggested, is “adorably unsophisticated”, more “Bridget Jones than Bridgerton” when it comes to fashion.
But the relationship is more substance than style: “This relationship clearly works though, suggesting that superficial incompatibilities can mask more complementary traits that swirl below the surface.”
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