A plane crashed in Cuba and more than 100 people were killed.

Another high school shooting in Texas has left eight students and two teachers dead and another 10 injured.

A new outbreak of the ebola virus has been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But let’s not sweat the small stuff. These trifling stories were pushed off the front pages and the tops of last weekend’s news bulletins to make way for far more important news. Two rich people have got married.

Of course the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle matters to a great many people, for some reason.

Personally I don’t take a huge interest in Prince Harry. I didn’t vote for him. But I’ll admit I did watch Saturday’s wedding for a bit. I wasn’t doing anything else. I had no paint I wanted to watch dry.

So I settled down to see how my money was being spent. Even a republican cynic like me found it quite charming, enjoyable viewing. It was a beautiful day in Windsor, just as it was in Carlisle. The grounds, the chapel, the outfits and the music combined to make it an audio-visual treat.

The whole event seemed to go off without mishap. Neither Harry nor Meghan laughed out loud during the vows when they said: “For richer, for poorer.”

Just as William became the Duke of Cambridge on his marriage, so Harry has also been renamed after a pub, the Duke of Sussex.

The only real unpleasantness was among the fawning crowds and their squeals of delight when they got to see the back of Prince Edward's head.

But what I was wondering, when they got to the words “forsaking all others”, was whether anyone was looking towards Prince Charles, with Camilla by his side. He didn’t forsake all others when he married Diana.

It says something about the royals’ resilience that they’re popular again. Anyone following the news in the 1990s will remember “Squidgygate”, “Camillagate” and the “War of the Waleses”, which only ended with Diana’s death.

This is the big problem that the royal family faces. A large part of their popularity is bound up with the Queen herself. But she’s 92 and isn’t going to be queen forever.

Charles remains a far less popular figure, especially among those with long memories. Walking Meghan down the aisle won’t be enough to restore his popularity or undo the damage done by Tom Bower's recent highly critical biography.

Many royalists worry that his outspokenness will make him a divisive king. Polls show many want the monarchy to skip a generation and go straight to William.

William and Kate, and Harry and Meghan, are vitally important to the monarchy’s future because they are as popular as their grandmother.

The trouble is that they don’t want her crown. In an interview last year Harry said: “Is there anyone of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so.”

Do we want to force it on them? And if the hereditary principle creates a monarch who isn’t popular or who doesn’t want the job, why have a hereditary head of state at all?