‘We’re all princesses now’: Sex, class, and neoliberal governmentality in the rise of middle-class monarchy

Abstract

This article examines the idea of ‘middle-class monarchy’ emerging in Europe from the internationally publicised marriages of Kate Middleton to Prince William in the United Kingdom and Charlene Wittstock to Prince Albert in Monaco. Through a careful analysis of sexuality, class and race in three major British newspapers, we demonstrate how media discourses surrounding the marriages deploy European monarchies as sites of neoliberal governmentality. Deployed as transmitters of instrumental happiness and conceptualised as an individual choice and project achievable through the control of the body and realisation of one’s desires, Kate embodies the white postfeminist vision of a highly educated, post-liberation woman able to combine the roles of consumer, homemaker and dutiful wife. This contrasts to the foreign Charlene, whose apparent domestication in an old-fashioned marriage of convenience was pitied widely. Finally, the article examines the Closer topless photo scandal as an incident that both challenged and re-sedimented the sexed, raced and classed neoliberal obligations of individual happiness and self-control.