American guy marries princess

On Saturday, Christopher Thomas, 30, an accountant from Missouri married a princess of the Tooro Kingdom in Uganda.

Princess Ruth Komuntale, 23, is the sister of King Oyo Nyimba, and a graduate of the American College in Washington. She's also a knockout from the pictures.

Thomas works for the Discovery Channel in Silver Springs, Maryland. He reportedly gave a bride price of among other gifts, 12 pots of traditional banana wine, 12 crates of beer, and 12 crates of soda.

Finally an American guy gets to marry a princess!

America has supplied queens, princesses, and consorts for lesser titles for a while now, it's about time.

Everybody remembers Princess Grace of Monaco of course. An Irish beauty and a class act.

Few remember Hope Cooke, former Gyalmo (Queen consort) of the 12th Chogyal (King) of Sikkim from 1963 to 1975. Unlike Grace, she was dropped from the social register after her marriage. The royal couple separated after her husband was deposed in 1975. She returned to New York with her two children and these days works as an urban historian, guiding walking tours for the Museum of the City of New York. She also lectures on New York history, and teaches history at Birch Wathen Lenox School in Manhattan.

Lisa Najeeb Halaby, a Swedish/Syrian-American girl, became Queen Noor Al-Hussein ("Light of Hussein") of Jordan from 1978 to 1999 upon her marriage to King Hussein of Jordan. As Dowager Queen she is active in a number of humanitarian causes, said to include in a very quiet way cooperation with the present Queen Rania in trying to get harsher sentences for men convicted of "honor killings."

("Honor killings" is the tradition that the duty of the father or brothers of a woman who is raped, commits adultery, or perhaps just seen in the company of a man not a male relative, is to murder - her.)

In Newport, Rhode Island, they still tell how in 1885, 18-year-old Consuelo Vanderbilt was locked in her room and made to marry Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, quite against her will. The impoverished Duke got $2.5 million (in today's money about $67 million) in railroad stock as a marriage settlement. The marriage was eventually annulled, but Consuelo remained close to her nephew, Winston Churchill.

And in Newport and certain circles in Texas there is an American-born woman who married a titled Englishman and though still an American citizen insists on being addressed as "Lady R."

The only other case of an American guy who got the princess I can think of was actor Bob Cummings in the 1943 romantic comedy "Princess O'Rourke."

Olivia De Havilland played a princess in exile who goes out incognito and meets an American flyboy who is about to report for duty in the USAAF. They fall for each other, and her guardians evidently approve. Except, they want pilot Eddie O'Rourke (Cummings) to give up his American citizenship, which he flat refuses to do.

All ends happily when the princess throws it all over for love and they elope together. (In retrospect, given the fate of a lot of European royalty after the war, not a bad choice.)

So best wishes to the royal couple, and thanks Thomas. You do American guys proud.