Abstract

This article examines the little-known 1934 royal wedding of Prince George – duke of Kent and youngest surviving son of George V – to the famously glamorous Princess Marina of Greece to argue that the British media projected this event on a scale, and in ways, never seen before. More than on any previous occasion it was a royal event driven by publicity, intimacy, and a coterie of courtiers, clerics, and newsmen who were committed to elevating a ‘family monarchy’ as the emotional centre-point of national life. I suggest that this celebration of royal domesticity engendered popular support for the House of Windsor in a period characterized by political turbulence at home and abroad. In this vein, I argue that social elites orchestrated royal family events as mass mediated nation-building exercises designed to create loyal subjects to the crown, and that new technologies transformed how media audiences and royalty interacted with one another.