Why the World is Giddy About Prince Harry’s Wedding

The upcoming marriage of Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle is an event that has captured the world's attention.

While some may argue that it pales in comparison to the 2011 nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, there are several reasons why people are more invested in Harry's marriage.

Firstly, while William is a likely future king, Harry is fifth in line to the British throne.

Additionally, Harry's ceremony won't take place at the internationally iconic Westminster Abbey, but at the cosy Windsor Castle, which is about 45 minutes outside London.

Furthermore, William was 28 when he got married, while Harry is 33 and his fiancée is 36 and divorced.

Despite these differences, people all over the world are positively giddy about the next royal wedding.

The happy news was plastered across front pages around the globe, with media outlets in Britain, Australia, Holland, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Canada and New York all giving the couple glowing coverage.

According to Bernard Donoghue, director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions in the UK, the interest in Harry's wedding could even eclipse that of Will and Kate's big day, which lured 600,000 tourists to London and attracted an estimated global television audience of 2 billion.

He expects even more people to visit Britain on Harry and Meghan's wedding day, due to a number of factors – the combination of Prince Harry's global fame, Meghan Markle's global fame as an actress, her being American and Britain being much more affordable than it was two years ago really makes for a potent mix, he said.

However, there is another, more visceral reason that the public is naturally more invested in Harry's marriage.

As Alison Pearson wrote in the UK's Daily Telegraph, Princess Diana once said, Harry's the one I worry about.

After Diana died in a shocking car crash in 1997 and the world watched her two boys grow up without a mother, many of us felt the same.

Ingrained in their minds is the devastating image of a 12-year-old Harry and a 15-year-old William walking behind their mother's horse-drawn funeral carriage alongside their father, Prince Charles, grandfather, Prince Philip, and Diana's brother, Charles Spencer.

The boys' heads were downcast, their cherubic faces shocked and lifeless, clearly in disbelief.

Losing a mother at a young age is difficult.

Losing a mother at a young age as a member of a famously frosty royal family, in full view of the entire planet, is mountainous.

As they grew up, William seemed to flourish.

We watched him find success at Eton College and the University of St. Andrews, where he met his future wife and pursued a military career as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

But poor Harry struggled.

He gained a reputation as the bad boy of Buckingham Palace and became infamous for excessive drinking and getting into brawls with the paparazzi.

In 2005, Harry attended a costume party at the Pangea nightclub in London with a swastika slapped on his arm, a move that drew sharp condemnation from the press.

Then, in 2012, embarrassing n^de photos were snapped of the prince during a game of strip poker in Las Vegas.

His life began to settle down somewhat after he joined the Army Air Corps, serving in Afghanistan and eventually rising to the rank of captain.

He even went on to devote his life intensely to charities, like the Invictus Games, an annual sporting event for wounded and sick members of the armed services.

Still, he quietly suffered from depression.

In a revealing interview this year with The Telegraph, Harry admitted that his mom's death had continued to affect him years later.

”I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he said.

So the sweet news of an engagement, and the image of a beaming Harry seated next to a soon-to-be bride comes as a fulfilling relief to his many admirers, who care for him like a family member.

As Harry cuddled with Meghan during a post-engagement TV interview, he giggled, played around and was openly affectionate.

It brought us back to his carefree childhood when he and William acted silly with their loving mum and the weight of the world wasn't on his shoulders, before one of the 20th century's defining calamities would change his life forever.