Spain has been as obsessed as we would have been - and as Denmark, Holland and Norway recently were. The security is suffocating; the speculation about the bride's dress endless; the interest overwhelming. Yesterday Crown Prince Felipe, scion of the Bourbons and heir to the Spanish throne, drove through the grid-locked streets of Madrid with his new ex-TV presenter wife in an open-topped but bullet proofed Rolls Royce. Glamorous young royals from Europe's 10 monarchies added to the fiesta. Royalty, banned by Franco for 40 years, could hardly be more secure.  If the guests felt they were on a royal wedding treadmill, they were careful not to show it; European monarchy has never had such sustained good PR, and European royals who once expected to go the way of the Russian Romanovs are blinking at their revival - and capitalising on every opportunity to drive home their new popularity.  Ten days ago Denmark's Crown Prince Frederick tied the knot with a Tasmanian lawyer, Mary Donaldson, whom the Danish media have turned into a Danish Princess Diana. Her dress, a dazzling combination of modernity and the medieval (according to Hello! magazine), made great pictures - but then so did the galaxy of gowns, diamonds and rubies at the wedding and parties beforehand. In a celebrity crazed culture, nobody does it better than European royalty  Europe's young royals are emerging as media superstars. Holland's Prince William-Alexander's marriage to Maxima Zorreguita a couple of year's back was another national extravaganza where Europe's monarchies again gathered to luxuriate in their newfound popularity. Sweden, Belgium, Norway and Greece all boast charismatic young princes and princesses as well.  Nor is the House of Windsor indifferent to what is happening. All Europe's royal families, for example, were represented at the Queen's Jubilee, and no European royal marriage is complete without a British representative; if the Queen enjoys an approval rating of 70 per cent, that is nothing beside her European cousins (she is directly related to most of them) whose approval ratings stand between 80 and 90 per cent. The Queen understands better than her fiercely euro-sceptic consort - and Britain's euro-sceptic press - that Princes William and Harry will do well to associate themselves with rising pro-royalty sentiment in Europe. European republicanism is waning, an eccentric creed out of tune with the popular mood.  At one level, European royalty is doing no more than surfing the cult of celebrity; Posh and Becks may get a lot of coverage in Madrid, but Felipe and Letizia are the real thing - and a lot less transient. They are a soap that will run and run, and worth a great deal of media investment. But there is a curious paradox about royalty in an era of democracy; it and its legitimacy only exist because the public allow them to - and if the public is ready to allow monarchy a revered place in the scheme of things, then democratic culture becomes a means of legitimising this least democratic institution of them all.  Nobody is more acutely aware of this paradox than European royalty; it seemed obvious after the war that the cull of monarchs that had happened under fascism and communism would continue. Democracies wouldn't murder their monarchial heads of state, but the consensus was that they would certainly do away with these representatives of aristocratic privilege who had won their status through birth rather than achievement or electoral mandate.  The only escape from extinction was for royalty to transform itself into an impartial representative of all the nation - an aim the Queen embraced in her famous speech in South Africa in 1947. There was still the problem that this representation would be performed by somebody born to it rather than elected, but what monarchy could offer was lifelong continuity and a personal embodiment of the national public interest.  The Queen has managed to pull off the feat she set herself nearly 60 years ago; but so in their different ways have the other European monarchies. Belgium's King Albert and Holland's Queen Beatrix have a direct constitutional role brokering governing coalitions; Sweden's King Carl Gustav and Denmark's Queen Margrethe have both spoken out against anti-immigrant nationalism, Carl Gustav insisting that monarchy can be 'an impartial and unifying symbol'; and Spain's King Juan Carlos famously undercut Spain's post-Franco military revolt and guaranteed parliamentary democracy. Europe's monarchs have made the transition from quintessential expressions of privilege to expressions of the public interest.  But that alone would not have been enough to secure their new favour. Two other deep currents are helping monarchy. The first is European integration. The further development of the European Union (even in Britain where polls report public recognition that we will one day be members of the euro) is understood to be a necessity, but is not greatly loved.  European processes may be rational and even democratic, but Queen Beatrix represents the House of Orange that founded the Dutch Republic and King Juan Carlos the Bourbons who have been Spain's monarchs for nearly as long. They are embedded in national cultures in a way that Brussels institutions can never be. As currencies are lost, national parliaments weakened and armies cut back, monarchs remain symbols of national unity. The young European royals wisely do not complain about the European constitution; it is their ally rather than a threat.  And there is a more ominous trend. We are so accustomed to the presumption that democracy works that we have become blinded to the re-emergence of pre-democratic values along with pre-democratic distribution of wealth. The European royals disporting themselves in Madrid this weekend may adopt a public posture of promoting the public interest, but they are the inheritors of staggering private wealth and privilege solely by virtue of their birth - and to which European society no longer objects.  Indeed European royalty helps legitimise the new inequality by being so ready to marry ordinary professionals - Letizia Ortiz was a TV presenter, Mary Donaldson a lawyer and Maxima Zorreguieta an economist - and lift them into the celebrity network. Weddings of Crown Princes to commoners have become a bit like Oscar celebrations, spectacles which are for the people's benefit, but which by the bye legitimise fabulous inequality of both wealth and opportunity.  But here is the rub. Whatever your reactions, this is an uniquely European phenomenon understandable only in European terms. European royalty stands and falls together. It was at risk collectively in the first half of the last century; it is on the rise collectively in the first half of this. It is inescapably part of the European landscape. Conservatives like to portray Britain as closer to the US than Europe, part of a dynamic 'Anglo-sphere'. They misdescribe reality. Britain and its monarchy are as European as a jewelled crown, an open-topped Rolls-Royce and popular joy at a royal marriage.