Edward and Sophie, Earl and Countess of Wessex

▪ 2000

      On June 19, 1999, Prince Edward, the youngest child of the U.K.'s Queen Elizabeth II, married Sophie Rhys-Jones, a public relations consultant. The couple insisted it was an informal, family occasion—and so it was, within the constraints imposed by a wedding attended by Britain's royal family on the grounds of Windsor Castle and watched on television by an estimated 200 million viewers around the world. On the wedding day, the queen bestowed on Edward the title earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn (the senior title represented a geographic reference that could be found only in history books, for Wessex had ceased to be a formal region of England many centuries earlier). The wedding provided a rare moment of joy for the royal family, which had endured much disappointment in preceding years, including the failed first marriages of each of Edward's three older siblings and the death in 1997 of Prince Charles's former wife, Diana, princess of Wales.

      Edward Anthony Richard Louis, seventh in line to the U.K. throne, was born at Buckingham Palace in London, on March 10, 1964. He attended Gordonstoun School, a spartan boarding school in Scotland, and studied history at Jesus College, Cambridge. After Cambridge, Edward joined the Royal Marines but resigned his commission in 1987 in the middle of commando training. He worked briefly for musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber before setting up his own theatrical production company. This collapsed in 1991 with debts of £600,000 (almost $1 million). In 1993 he set up Ardent Productions, Ltd., which survived, mainly through making programs about the royal family's past history, though seldom making profits. Despite these ups and downs, Edward won respect for his attempts to be the first child of a monarch to seek a career in the private sector.

      Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones was born in Oxford on Jan. 20, 1965. Her father ran an import-export business that sold automobile tires to Hungary; her mother was a part-time secretary. Educated at West Kent College, a private girls' day school, and a local secretarial college, she worked briefly in a bar, followed by spells as a press officer for Capital Radio (a London-based popular music station) and as a holiday representative at a winter sports resort in Switzerland. There she became romantically involved with an Australian ski instructor and followed him to Australia. When that relationship ended, she returned to London, working for the public relations company Maclaurin Communication and Media. In 1996, with business partner Murray Harkin, she set up a public relations company, R-J H. On her engagement to Prince Edward, she made it clear that she intended to continue with her career when she was married. The new countess, who changed her professional name to Sophie Wessex, was considered more down-to-earth and self-confident than Diana had been and more settled and career-minded than Prince Andrew's former wife, Sarah, duchess of York, and was welcomed into the royal family as someone who might stay the course and help it restore its tarnished reputation.

Peter Kellner

* * *