As the countdown to the Royal Wedding draws to an end, the picturesque English town of Windsor undergoes a drastic transformation. Amid a proliferation of souvenir trinkets with ancient crests and royal faces, armed police are massing, helicopters circle ominously, and the homeless are being removed. As we write, thousands of people across the world are grabbing union jack flags — some of them customized for the royal couple — and boarding trains and planes bound for Windsor.

The impending royal wedding is an illustration of something that has been happening for a couple of decades now. Britain’s history or “heritage” has been repackaged and marketed as a kind of brand to be consumed at home and abroad. From the quintessential — yet very much obsolete — red phone booths, to the tourist-friendly marriage of princes, we find ourselves caught up in the cultlike adoration of these quaint landmarks of British national identity.

With its empire in ashes, its industrial landscape gutted, and its place in the world thrown into uncertainty by Brexit, Britain is in the midst of a slow-burning existential crisis. Its millions of citizens have been conjured from the earth by distant and long expired historical forces and now wander around urban landscapes that no longer make sense. It is unclear where Britain will go from here. Having long lost its status as the workshop of the world, all that remains is for Britain to capitalize on its history: to become a history factory.

Since the 1980s, “heritage” in Britain has grown into a sector of the economy — something like mining or fishing, except that it currently employs more than both these industries combined. It is calculated that history- (or “heritage-”) related tourism has contributed almost £9 billion to the UK economy and supports nearly four hundred thousand jobs. This is nothing new; history has always worked in service of the present. Everywhere, the mythologies of nations or communities form the raw material of ideology. But in Britain, history has recently been given a more specific, macroeconomic role to play — we are witnessing a transformation in what history is for.

Rising from the ruins of the English Civil War, enriched by slavery, patrolled by drones, and micro-managed by North London PR firms, the monarchy survives in Britain. Indeed, the forthcoming royal wedding has given the institution new life. Likable, American, mixed-race, and divorced, Meghan Markle brings a vague ambience of alterity to the table. As if the official ruling family of the commonwealth itself could somehow be decolonized, or as if a system of sovereignty based on blood alone could made multicultural. Nevertheless, Britain has put its ancien regime to work.

One of the most common arguments made in defense of the monarchy is that it is good value for money. The cost-benefit analysis of lingering feudalism is surprisingly exact. The queen’s treasurer has calculated that it costs just sixty-five pence (roughly one dollar) per British citizen to sustain the royal family. Meanwhile, the argument goes, the concentration of vast amounts of state wealth and power in the hands of one family is good for tourism. Unelected rule is, at least, mercifully cost-effective. Like a red phone booth, useless but with a fresh lick of paint, the royal family keeps putting on a show for those beguiled enough by charismatic forms of premodern power to travel to Britain to see it — bringing £550 million a year with them.

Perhaps because of Markle’s citizenship, this wedding seems to have struck a powerful chord in the United States. In Washington DC, a pop-up bar themed after Windsor Castle is serving “God Save the Queen” martinis with edible crowns. In New York, the Downton Abbey Exhibition, a Manhattan-based museum with memorabilia from the show, is hosting a 200-dollar-per-head viewing party complete with a full “upstairs, downstairs” butler service. One jeweler’s website crashed under the weight of Americans trying to order a replica of the couple’s engagement ring. All across one of the largest and oldest republics in the world, there are millions willing to suspend their disbelief.

The trans-Atlantic nature of the royal match threatens to provide the family with a captive audience of hundreds of millions of Americans who will bankroll and eagerly consume their antics. (America has, after all, an impressive track record of propping up unelected governments overseas.) The British history factory has offered an alluring new image of its monarchy as something progressive and inclusive. Prince Harry, who dressed up in Nazi uniform for a “Colonial and Native” themed costume party, and who was recorded racially abusing fellow soldiers during his stay in the army, has been resurrected as a symbol of a more sensitive, less patriarchal royal family.

As for us, British anti-royalists, we can’t help but feel annoyed. This is, after all, our tragedy. Our unelected ruling family, with its racist jokes, massive state subsidies, and copious soft power, is not a just a trendy fad.