Since its release Saturday, the guest list -- who's on it, and who's not -- for Friday's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton has stirred a huge outcry in the British press and among human-rights activists for including unsavory dictators and excluding two former prime ministers who are members of a political party not particularly popular with Buckingham Palace: Labor.
"It looks odd that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown aren't on the list," said Tim Walker, a columnist for the Telegraph who covers the royal family, noting that former prime ministers John Major and Margaret Thatcher, both Conservative party members, were invited (Mr. Major is coming; Mrs. Thatcher pleaded poor health). The palace says they were invited because both have been awarded the Knight of the Garter, but Mr. Walker wasn't buying it.
"This looks like a snub, and it looks political, and the royal family shouldn't ever, of course, be political," he said yesterday.
"One sees in the guest list the hand of Prince Charles. We will probably never know if this is something he wanted, but I recall his press spokesman saying how impressed he was with David Cameron shortly after he was elected leader of the Conservative Party."
Mr. Cameron and his wife, Samantha, of course, are invited.
Palace officials have scrambled to do damage control, noting that the invitations had been vetted by the British government's Foreign Office.
One dictator has backed out -- Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa of Bahrain -- who violently suppressed democracy protests this year in that tiny Persian Gulf state. He apologized to Prince Charles for his absence, explaining that he didn't want his country's unrest to "tarnish the celebration."
Nonetheless, protesters are vowing to show up outside Westminster Abbey and various five-star hotels in the next few days where some of the foreign leaders are staying. Among these are Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Kingdom, and the king of Swaziland -- all of whom have been accused of human-rights abuses in their own countries.
Libya's ambassador to Britain had been invited, but his invitation was rescinded after fighting broke out.
"Whatever happened to William's supposedly strong social conscience?" asked Graham Smith, who leads Republic, an anti-monarchist group. "He must take personal responsibility for this and rescind the invitations immediately."
Foreign and political figures aren't the only ones on the list under scrutiny.
Some see the hand of Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, in the omission of some of Princess Diana's old friends -- Rosa Monckton and Lady Annabel Goldsmith, for example.
"There's been a very big Camilla influence here," Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, told CBS.
"There's a lot of Parker Bowles [family] going and some of Diana's old, old friends are a little bit miffed that they're not going."
"But," Ms. Seward added, "I think it's really more the people that have probably been rude to Camilla that aren't invited."
Out of 1,900 guests, about a thousand of them will sit in the coveted section of Westminister Abbey in front of the Quire, a partition in the building that restricts the view of the altar to anyone behind it. The rest will have to be content with watching the ceremony on jumbo television screens placed around the abbey.
There's no bride's side or groom's side -- Princess Diana's family, the Spencers, will sit next to the Middletons in a section in the front of the Abbey known as the "South Lantern," and across the aisle will be the royal family in the "North Lantern." They will be the closest to the sanctuary, where the couple will take their vows.
The best seats in the house are reserved for members of the royal family, who will sit with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, while foreign royalty -- both sitting monarchs and those who wish they were sitting monarchs -- will be right behind them, front and center. They range from the king and queen of Norway to King Constantine, the former sovereign of Greece, and to the sultan of Brunei. Bulgaria's Simeon Saxe-Coburg and his wife, Margarita, are among other "pretenders" to thrones that no longer exist who have been invited, about 40 in all.
There is plenty of star power too: soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, Sir Elton John, and Guy Ritchie, Madonna's former husband and director of Sherlock Holmes. Photographer Mario Testino, who took the couple's official engagement pictures is on the list, as is Joss Stone, a singer who performed at the tribute concert marking the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.
And between the royal couple, nine of their ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, many of them with hyphenated last names -- as is common among England's upper middle class -- are included, from Davina Duckworth-Chad, a former "holiday companion" to the prince, according to the media, and a woman who goes by the formidable name of Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Cal- thorp, an actress and socialite who reportedly is the only one of Prince William's exes who ever made Ms. Middleton jealous.
Royal biographer Christopher Warwick told Canadian television that it appears to be "an all-encompassing guest list." Because Prince William isn't first in line for the throne -- his father is -- this is not a state occasion; hence President Obama wasn't invited.
There are some question marks being raised about Prince Charles' invitees: They include the head of public relations for German car maker Audi, which provides cars for the royal family.
And the Daily Mail claims that Texas financier Joe Allbritton is being invited to the wedding in exchange for loaning Prince Charles his private jet to fly to the United States for a state trip between May 3 and 5.
And then there's this interesting insight from the Telegraph: "Another familiar face will be Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, the television presenter and socialite, who has had her nose corrected for the occasion. The proboscis, which was rebuilt in 2006 after years of cocaine abuse, had collapsed. Happily, she is now a reformed character."
Not clear if they're referring to Ms. Palmer-Tomkinson, or her nose.
Still, this is a wedding, after all.
"At the end of the day, planning any wedding guest list is a quirky, frantic, and unfair process, as much as you want to be fair, it sometimes isn't," The Telegraph's Mr. Walker said.
"As anyone who has drawn up such a list knows only too well, you are always going to offend someone, and anything that is done by a committee tends to be a bit muddled and illogical."
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