Divorce has become, for better or worse, a fact of life in both America and the United Kingdom. The same could have been said decades ago, but not for the British royal family.
The monarchy has sought to keep its distance from the messiness of marital splits for generations. So the announcement last week that Prince Harry is engaged to Meghan Markle, a divorcée, was something of a revelation. He's going to marry a woman whose romantic history would have been an insurmountable obstacle a generation earlier.
Why, exactly, have the royals been so reluctant to come to terms with divorce?
