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<\/p>\nIn short,\u00a0it was not your average royal wedding. Among the throngs who filled the streets of Windsor on Saturday were black women who had flown in from Houston and Atlanta, moved, sometimes to tears, to see a woman of color so publicly adored.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the children of slaves is marrying a royal whose forerunners sanctioned slavery; the lion is lying down with the lamb,\u201d said Denise Crawford, a court stenographer from Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to be here to observe the changing of the guard and the changing of the British Empire,\u201d she said. \u201cToday is a day that history will never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The most startling moments came with the sermon by the Most Rev. Michael Curry, the Chicago-born bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry, in the great tradition of black preachers, delivered\u00a0a loose, improvisational sermon\u00a0that began as a meandering discourse but built to a passionate, shouting climax, name-checking Martin Luther King Jr. and slave spirituals along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m talking about some power, real power,\u201d he boomed. \u201cPower to change the world. If you don\u2019t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America\u2019s Antebellum South who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform.\u201d<\/p>\n
At one point, seemingly sensing the passage of time, he said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to sit down; we gotta get y\u2019all married.\u201d<\/p>\n
He punctured the hallowed, starchy decorum of the day, visibly shocking some members of the royal family. Some suppressed giggles. Zara Tindall, a granddaughter of the queen, looked as if she might fall off her chair.<\/p>\n
The episode delighted viewers on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cA black reverend preaching to British royalty about the resilience of faith during slavery is 10000000% not what I thought I was waking up for, the royal wedding is good,\u201d Elamin Abdelmahmoud, social media editor at Buzzfeed,\u00a0wrote\u00a0on Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
When the couple stepped out of the church and into the sunshine, a jolt went through the crowd, which cheered their first kiss as husband and wife.<\/p>\n
For Britons, there was a sense of an old heartbreak being mended. Many people here feel a special affection for Harry, who was only 12 when\u00a0his mother, Princess Diana, died\u00a0in a car crash. On the day of the funeral, Harry was made to walk behind her coffin, and much of the country watched as his face crumpled.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was such a young boy,\u201d said Christine Janetta, 57, one of the charity workers invited to greet the couple from the lawn on the grounds of Windsor Castle. \u201cWe\u2019ve all been very protective of Harry, because we saw that little boy with his broken heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Janetta said she was devoted to Princess Diana, and that she thought it would have given her a sense of deep relief to see her sons happily settled. \u201cHe\u2019s just his mum,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is a carbon copy of his mum. Just look at the smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry\u2019s popularity helped give him the power to stretch the bounds of convention by marrying Ms. Markle, an American of mixed race. The decision may have a lasting effect on British society, which has been swept by a wave of anti-immigrant feeling. But it has not made things easier for the couple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As the wedding approached,\u00a0British newspapers swung the klieg lights of their attention to Ms. Markle\u2019s estranged half siblings, who said scathing things about a bride whom few Britons knew. More damaging were insistent approaches to her father, Thomas Markle, a retired\u00a0Hollywood lighting director\u00a0who declared bankruptcy years ago and now lives alone in Mexico.<\/p>\n
A week before the ceremony, The Daily Mail reported that Mr. Markle had colluded with a photographer to stage seemingly candid pictures. With that,\u00a0Mr. Markle dropped out of the wedding\u00a0in disgrace, leaving Ms. Markle with only one blood relative, her mother, to attend the ceremony at her side.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, royal fans embraced the couple unreservedly. People had camped out all night, huddling in blankets and clutching hot-water bottles, in hopes of making eye contact when the couple left the chapel. Along the main street of Windsor, people leaned precariously from windows.<\/p>\n
Many of those lining the streets said they liked the change the couple represents.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very good for the monarchy that Meghan Markle is a divorc\u00e9e,\u201d said Christel Funten, a nanny, had traveled from Paris to attend the celebration. \u201cIt breaks a taboo. It\u2019s magnificent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlotte Osborn, a Londoner, said the wedding showed how far the country had come since 1936, when King Edward VIII chose to abdicate the throne so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American.<\/p>\n
Continue reading the main storY<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a modern version of Wallis Simpson, where it all ends sensibly, rather than in disaster,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Any royal wedding is theater, and this one did not disappoint. The dim vaulted opening of St. George\u2019s Chapel, whose construction was finished in the reign of King Henry VIII, was so densely crowded with meadow flowers that it felt as if you were stepping into a wonderland. A palace spokesman described the floral style as \u201ccascading hedgerow,\u201d and it filled the chapel with the smell of growing things.<\/p>\n
Harry arrived at the chapel on foot, walking beside his brother, Prince William, in the doeskin frock coat of the Blues and Royals, the regiment he joined after graduating from military school. Harry took his place in the chapel and shifted in his seat nervously, trying to catch Ms. Ragland\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later, Ms. Markle stepped from a Rolls-Royce Phantom 4, in the company of two small pageboys in military dress. Her dress, with a flowing train 16 feet long, was dazzling pure white, wide-necked and minimal, leaving her collarbones bare, \u00e0 la Audrey Hepburn.<\/p>\n
The dress, which had been the subject of agitated speculation for weeks leading up to the wedding,\u00a0was designed by Clare Waight Keller, the first female artistic director at the French fashion house Givenchy.<\/p>\n
Continue reading the main story<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Seven tiny bridesmaids and pageboys trailed behind her, holding the edges of her 16-foot veil. As she approached the altar, she gave a quiet \u201cHi\u201d to Harry. He flushed and, when she stood opposite him, added, \u201cYou look amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harry has decided to wear a wedding ring \u2014 a break from tradition not just for the royal family but for British aristocrats in general. Asked whether they would support the couple in their marriage, the guests said, \u201cWe will.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a bride, Ms. Markle stood apart from Diana, a 20-year-old who nearly disappeared inside pouffes of meringue, and from Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, a school friend who had known William for 10 years at the time of their marriage, and\u00a0was well known to the British public.<\/p>\n
Mesha Griffin, an African-American schoolteacher from Washington, had flown to Britain alone, just to be present on the day of Ms. Markle\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is owning her heritage,\u201d Ms. Griffin said of the bride. \u201cShe is going to impact history in a way we saw with Princess Diana, not in a disrespectful way. She will respectfully change history.\u201d\/NYTimes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the knight\u2019s stalls supporting Ms. Markle, beneath rows of medieval swords and helmets, sat\u00a0a constellation of American celebrities, among them Oprah Winfrey who, with a great gift for openness and emotional candor, has become an icon for black women. There were the Hollywood and humanitarian megacelebrities George and Amal Clooney, and the tennis star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":652892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[10414,10415,10416,10417],"class_list":["post-652890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk","tag-as","tag-diana","tag-markie","tag-prince"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}