The Daily Star's initial verdict on Charles and Camilla was too downbeat. 'Boring Old Gits to Wed' does not do justice to a legal maelstrom featuring a register office boycott by the Queen, who has allegedly also shelved plans for a banquet. Instead, the sporran polishers of the royal household will be rustling up bite-sized pork pies and warm Lambrusco. Some monarchists blame this 'shambles' on Tony Blair. In their view, his poor advice on wedding protocol betokens a contempt for royalty almost tantamount to back-door abolition. The Queen might certainly have expected a Prime Minister entitled to declare wars in her name to check, in return, whether a licence for Windsor Castle would entitle any old Kev and Bev to plight their troth beneath the Holbeins en route to Legoland.  Otherwise, the executive cannot be accused of negligence. Far from it. On whether the wedding will be lawful, the government has shown the same attention to detail that it applied to the war on Iraq. Both verdicts followed the celebrity chef school of jurisprudence, under which a brace of versions that someone prepared earlier is reheated with new finishing touches.  On the war, two old UN security council resolutions - 678 and 687- were conflated with a new one - 1,441 - to make the legal case. For the wedding, the Marriage Acts of 1836 and 1949, both appearing to preclude royal civil weddings, were laced with the Human Rights Act 1998, which affirms that adults may marry as they wish.  The difference is that Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has publicly given his view that the marriage would be legal after others, including a former Tory   attorney general, said it might not. By contrast, the government still refuses to publish the current attorney's full advice on Iraq, despite mounting pressure.  But the point, beyond that discrepancy, is not whether the attack was legal (which it was not) or whether the marriage is lawful (a more mixed verdict). The issue is that the legal status of a bloody war has, over the past week, had less media coverage than the legitimacy of a marriage between middle-aged co-habitees.  This imbalance does not support the idea of an irrelevant or dying monarchy. Some royalists think Charles can never now be king; republicans say a clan so reviled by its fans must be tumbrel-fodder. But the Windsors are admirably performing one function of heads of state: that of defining who we are.  It is not a good picture, of Britain or of a family that makes  Shameless  look patrician. Charles's household, bedevilled by royal butler trials, employment tribunals and rape allegations, is presided over by a future king allegedly accused by his ex-wife of wanting to bump her off.  But the bystanders don't sound too pleasant, either. Father Paul Williamson of Feltham, Middlesex, who thinks it 'heresy and apostasy' to ordain women priests, intends to be at the ceremony and object out loud if his formal bids to halt proceedings are ignored. Other hecklers may turn up, egged on by frothing constitutionalists and commentators enjoying some down-and-dirty royal baiting. The Queen, in a reasonable decision, won't be there.  That is not to justify her handling of this mess. A monarch happy to sign a football and visit a drive-thru McDonald's should have welcomed the mix-up under which licensing Windsor Castle would have opened it to other people's weddings. Why not? The Windsors, who fleece visitors for inspecting treasures that belong to the nation, should not suddenly behave as if the paying public are scummy peasants likely to carve their initials in the perpendicular Gothic   or stick their gum on the van Dycks. In opting instead for a register office open to any befrocked pseudo-terrorist who wants to kiss Prince William, the royals might as well have issued gilt-edged invitations exactly to hoi polloi they wanted to exclude. They have also, inadvertently, created the sort of royal family Britain purports to want.  A bickering chavocracy that marries in register offices should suit advocates of a bicycling monarchy. But suddenly, a finger buffet, with all that subtext of pastel Crimplene and gift-wrapped toasters, strikes the media as too naff for words. Why no glass coaches and spit-roast Highgrove stag? Where is the self-respect of a country that may not be able to run a food standards agency but which defers to no one on choreographing a fairytale royal wedding? At the heart of the Windsors' survival is a snobbery that permeates society.  The current fuss has also conferred on them a new and powerful role. The real function of this monarchy is to be the lightning conductor for national loathing. Britain, in common with much of Europe, combusts too much hatred seeking a permissible outlet. In an age of fear, citizens are formally encouraged by government to accept people who represent otherness, such as immigrants and asylum seekers.  But those messages come laced with insidious hints of warning. From the terrorist suspect who cannot be charged to the exploited foreign worker and the disturbed child hauled before the courts, the country   is full of targets for a poisonous, if furtive, dislike. So how cathartic to have the royals, a conduit for collective cruelty and the only legitimate locus for upfront detestation. Obviously, this bloodsport is media-driven. Many Britons have no view on Charles's petulance or Camilla's cellulite and wish the royal story would go away, or at least switch from the personal to the institutional.  For the Windsors' sake, and ours, the government should act fast. As Lord Lester and others recommend, it should pass a brief bill formally sanctioning the legality of the marriage and so heading off inevitable challenges. Then Tony Blair should point out to Charles that the wedding got its initial figleaf of legality only because of a human rights act the prince once denounced as 'a threat to sane, civilised and ordered existence'. That legislation rules that royals must be treated like any ordinary citizen. In recognition, the prince should, like any ordinary citizen, pay his taxes, live within his means and be banned from sponging shamelessly off the state.  Short term, this democracy is stuck with the Windsors. The hereditary principle may be indefensible but, even at the current low point, only 23 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll want the monarchy to die with the Queen. Until there is enough public enthusiasm for an elected head of state, reform and some kindness are better than a baying mob, in which sneering republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with hardcore evangelicals and Diana loyalists who think Camilla a Medusa in hunting pink.  Spite risks damaging Britain far more than our venal royals, who are never much dented by periodic fits of dislike. On the contrary, unpopularity may work to the advantage of an institution still capable of inspiring national unity, albeit of the ugliest kind. When, eventually, the monarchy perishes, its death certificate will cite as cause not public rage but the indifference of a grown-up country.