Source: wgno.com - Monday, November 27, 2017 Watch Video The news that Britain’s Prince Harry has proposed to his girlfriend Meghan Markle may not have come as a shock. But that fact that the fifth in line to the British throne and grandson of Queen Elizabeth II is marrying an outspoken American actress has served as a timely reminder of how far the most famous family in the world has come in five decades. The freedom for high-profile members of the Royal Family to marry who they want — rather than who they should — has been a gradual process. We only need look back two generations to the current monarch, Elizabeth II, and we see a young princess who married a Danish prince of German and Greek descent — the romance at the center of Netflix’s drama “The Crown.” In the immediate aftermath of World War II, it was controversial that a 21-year princess was marrying a man with family who had fought alongside the Germans. But the idea that she would marry a non-royal might have arguably been a more alien concept. Thirty-four years later, when Elizabeth and Philip’s eldest son Charles announced his engagement to Diana, things had moved on ever so slightly. Despite coming from an aristocratic background and a world where she regularly rubbed shoulders with royals, Diana had a distance from royalty that made her a fairytale bride in the eyes of the nation. Leap forward to 2010, and Prince William — the man who will one day be king — announces his engagement to a woman he lived with All Related | More on Britain