A New Generation of ROYALS: This month's wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle highlights just how much the British royal family has evolved.

• Author: Ross, Brooke
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

On May 19, people in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and beyond will stop what they're doing to celebrate a wedding--a royal wedding.

Prince Harry, fifth * in line for the British throne, will marry Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle, outside the U.K.'s capital city of London.

Like past royal weddings, this one will be an extravagant daylong affair, with several hundred guests. And millions more people around the world will watch it on TV. The wedding is expected to generate nearly $700 million in tourism revenue for the country.

But in many ways, this royal wedding will be unlike any other in British history. Markle, an actress from California, will be the first American accepted into the British royal family--and the first person of African descent. (Markle's mother is black, and her father is white.)

What's more, Markle is divorced. In the past, British royals were strictly prohibited from marrying divorces. The fact that Prince Harry's family has given this wedding its blessing is one of several recent signs that the British monarchy is striving to be more open-minded and relevant in the 21st century.

"Though it has historically been quite a conservative institution, the monarchy is modernizing," says Arianne Chernock, a professor of British history at Boston University. "The support that Harry and Meghan's relationship has received shows that [the royal family] has become much more tolerant. That's a benefit not just to Britain but to the world as well." Prince Harry, born in 1984, is the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997. Charles is the firstborn and heir of Queen Elizabeth II, Harry's grandmother.

Elizabeth, 92, is Britain's longest-reigning monarch, having ascended the throne in 1952. She was never meant to be queen, but her destiny--and British history--was altered forever when her uncle, King Edward VIII, fell in love with a twice-divorced American in the 1930s.

The Church of England at the time forbade marriage in church with any divorce who had a living spouse--even for the king, who was the official head of the church. Refusing to give up love for his royal duties, Edward abdicated (surrendered his claim to the throne) in 1936. The decision catapulted his younger brother--and later, his niece Elizabeth--to the throne.

Despite Queen Elizabeth's global influence--she serves as head of state for the U.K. and 15 other countries in the British Commonwealth--she's largely a symbolic...