Is the "the" really lower case?
Just as you would write "I went to the United States" not "I went to The United States".
(Of course, lower case here means that you should use lower or upper case according to its position in the sentence; it doesn't mean forcibly overridden to lower case like e.e.cummings.)
> The Chicago Manual of Style, which prescribes favoring non-standard capitalization of names in accordance with the bearer's strongly stated preference, notes "E. E. Cummings can be safely capitalized; it was one of his publishers, not he himself, who lowercased his name."