My latest article: The troubled history of kings consort

Earlier this month, Prince Henrik of Denmark caused quite an uproar when he announced that he no longer wants to be buried together with his wife of fifty years, Queen Margrethe II. In a series of interviews he also launched a personal attack on his wife, who he claimed makes a fool of him, and stated that he would be willing to reconsider the decision about his burial place if she would agree to make him King Consort.
It was explained that the Prince’s decision was made because of his dissatisfaction with his title and function, something a spokeswoman said had become more and more important for him in recent years. It is far from the first time Prince Henrik raises the issue of his title and the fact that he believes that as the wife of a king is queen, a queen’s husband ought to be king (i.e. king consort and not, as some ill-informed people have claimed, take over as monarch).
Many seem to think that this is an idea Prince Henrik has grasped out of thin air, but in a long article in today’s issue of the broadsheet Politiken (external link) I recount the history of kings consort, which began in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century and soon spread to Naples, Spain, Navarre, Portugal, Poland, England, Scotland and Cyprus. In fact, the husbands of queens regnant were actually usually (although not always) styled kings and many of them took part in the governance of the realm. The so far last king consort in Europe died as recently as 1902, and it is only during the last century and a half that it has become more common for male consorts not to be called kings. Thus, although Prince Henrik may have history and principles on his side, it seems highly unlikely that he will ever achieve his dream of becoming King Consort of Denmark.

Book news: The soft power of royal heirs

In August last year I participated in a conference on the soft power of royal heirs at the University of St Andrews, and now Palgrave Macmillan has gathered the lectures given at this conference in a book titled Royal Heirs and the Uses of Soft Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Frank Lorenz Müller and Heidi Mehrkens and published earlier this month. I write about how the Bernadottes during the Swedish-Norwegian union of crowns tried to create a Norwegian identity for the heirs, particularly by the power of presence, education and the office of Viceroy, while Maria-Christina Marchi deals with Italy, Kristina Widestedt with Sweden, Erik Goldstein with the United States, Milinda Banerjee with the Bengal, Janet Ridley, Imke Polland and Edward Owens, with Britain, Alma Hannig with Austria-Hungary, Richard Meyer Forsting with Spain, Miriam Schneider with Greece, Jeroen Koch with the Netherlands and Frederik Frank Sterkenburgh with Prussia, and Frank Lorenz Müller, Monika Wienfort and Heidi Mehrkens provide more general overviews of the topic.

My latest article: Retired monarchs and King Carl Gustaf at 70

The April issue of Majesty (Vol. 37, No. 4), which is now out, is an unusually large issue of 84 pages, much of it marking the upcoming 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain on 21 April. My contributions are an article looking at how her four European counterparts who have chosen to take things easier in old age, i.e. Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Albert of the Belgians and King Juan Carlos of Spain, are faring in their retirement, and a profile of this month's other birthday boy, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who will turn seventy on 30 April.
While Queen Elizabeth's official birthday celebrations have been postponed until June, King Carl Gustaf will mark his milestone with a series of events at the end of this month, starting with a performance at the Royal Dramatic Theatre on the 25th and a concert by the army's orchestra in the Palace Church the next day. On the 28th and 29th, the King will receive congratulatory deputations and on the 29th King Carl Gustaf will also present scholarships at the Royal Opera and attend a concert at the Nordic Museum.
On his actual birthday, Saturday 30 April, there will be a service of thanksgiving in the Palace Church before the customary military event at the Palace's Outer Courtyard, which is held every year. Thereafter, the King will be serenaded by a multitude of singers on the northern side of the Palace and thereafter travel by carriage to a lunch in the City Hall before receiving well-wishers from Parliament, the government and the county governors at the Palace. In the evening there will be a banquet in the Palace's Hall of State. (Fans of the Swedish court's penchant for "glitter" may perhaps be disappointed to hear that the dresscode for the latter is black tie).

Queen Sofía nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

It was reported this week that Queen Sofía of Spain, the mother of King Felipe VI, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Queen, whose husband King Juan Carlos I abdicated last year, has been nominated by representatives of an undisclosed American university for her commitment to research into Alzheimer's disease and for her work on behalf of the disabled and other marginalised groups.
The nomination was revealed by the head of Spain's Centre of Investigation into Neurological Diseases (CIEN) on World Alzheimer's Day on Monday. However, it was not clear whether the nomination has just been made or if Queen Sofía was nominated for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize before the deadline for nominations expired on 31 January.
The recipient or recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on 9 October, but there are hundreds of nominees and I would say it is highly unlikely that Queen Sofía would be seriously considered. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has in recent years expanded the peace concept somewhat, which has resulted in the Peace Prize being awarded for for instance environmental work or the promotion of girls' rights to go to school, but supporting medical research seems to be too far-fetched to be covered by any definition of peace (it seems to be a general misunderstanding that all sorts of good deeds can be rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize).
The European royal who is known to have come closest to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is Prince Carl of Sweden, who was President of the Swedish Red Cross for forty years and was on a number of occasions seriously considered based on his humanitarian work.

Book news: The male consorts of female monarchs

While much has been written about female monarchs, there has until now been no study of the roles and challenges of the men who were in the unusual position of consorts to female rulers. Therefore I am glad to be one of the contributors to the new book The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History, edited by Charles Beem and Miles Taylor, which has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan of New York.
My contribution is a chapter on Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark and his struggle for recognition of the role he has tried to carve out through his more than four decades as the first ever male consort of a Danish monarch. But this is only the last chapter of a book that covers a number of male consorts in Navarre, Spain, England/Britain, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Portugal, Brazil, India, the Netherlands and Denmark from the end of the thirteenth century till today.
The table of contents:

Introduction: The Man Behind the Queen; Charles Beem and Miles Taylor
1. The King Consorts of Navarre, 1284-1512; Elena Crislyn Woodacre
2. Ferdinand the Catholic: King and Consort; David Abufalia
3. "He to be Entitled Kinge": King Philip and the Anglo-Spanish Court; Sarah Duncan
4. Why Prince George of Denmark Did Not Become a King of England; Charles Beem
5. From Ruler in the Shadows to Shadow King: Frederick I of Sweden; Fabian Persson
6. Count Ernst Johann Bühren and the Russian Court of Anna Ioannova; Michael Bitter
7. Francis Stephen: Duke, Regent and Emperor; Derek Beales
8. Prince Albert; The Creative Consort; Karina Urbach
9. Commemorating the Consort in Colonial Bombay; Simin Patel
10. Ferdinand II of Portugal: A Conciliator King in a Turmoil Kingdom; Daniel Alves
11. Gaston d'Orléans, Comte d'Eu: Prince Consort to Princess Isabel of Brazil; Roderick Barman
12. The Rise and Fall of Siddiq Hasan, Male Consort of Shah Jahan of Bhopal; Caroline Keen
13. Royalty, Rank, and Masculinity: Three Dutch Princes Consort in the Twentieth Century; Maria Grever and Jeroen Van Zanten
14. Prince Philip: Sportsman and Youth Leader; Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska
15. The Prince Who Would Be King: Henrik of Denmark's Struggle for Recognition; Trond Norén Isaksen

My latest article: Felipe VI

The August issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 35, No. 8) went on sale in Britain on Thursday, and this month I write about the inauguration of King Felipe VI and the up-hill struggle that faces him as he tries to rebuild trust in the monarchy after King Juan Carlos's spectacular fall from grace.
In the same issue there are also articles on Queen Anne of Britain, the last Stuart monarch, who died 300 years ago on 1 August, and the accession of the House of Hanover, as well as an article on Prince Aleksandar of Serbia/Yugoslavia, who is about to turn ninety.
In the next issue I will sum up several years of research into the sometimes dramatic history of the Norwegian emerald parure and also write about Reims, the history of French coronations and the destruction of the coronation church in September 1914.

My latest article(s): King Juan Carlos and Princess Leonore

I have written two articles in the July issue of Majesty, which went on sale in Britain today and will soon also be on sale in other major European cities and parts of North America.
The first deals with the rise and fall of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, charting how he led his country from dictatorship to democracy and explaining how he, ironically, eventually had to sacrifice himself in order to improve the monarchy's chances of survival. As the issue went to the printers just before the abdication came into force a second article dealing with the accession of King Felipe VI and the challenges facing him will appear in the August issue.
In the same issue I also report on the birth and christening of Princess Leonore of Sweden, including the unusual circumstances of a Swedish Princess being born abroad and her four namesakes among Swedish queens.
Today is, by the way, the fortieth birthday of Princess Leonore's father, Christopher O'Neill. The anniversary is celebrated privately in London.

King Juan Carlos has abdicated

In a simple ceremony of less than twenty minutes, held in the Hall of Columns at the Royal Palace at Madrid at 6 p.m. today, King Juan Carlos signed into law the so-called organic law authorising his abdication. The bill was passed by the Congress of Deputies last Wednesday and by the Senate yesterday. It will come into effect when published in the official gazette, which will happen at midnight.
After the law had been read aloud, King Juan Carlos walked, with some difficulty because of his many recent operations on his hip and back, over to an ornate table of inlaid marble where he signed the act, which was thereafter countersigned by the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy of the Conservative Party.
Returning to his seat, King Juan Carlos gave Prince Felipe one of his characteristic big hugs and thereafter guided his son to the slightly elevated chair he had himself occupied until then. The 150 guests gave the outgoing King a standing ovation, which lasted for several minutes until he could no longer remain on his feet.
While King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía were seated with Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia in the centre of the room, Princess Leonor and Princess Sofía sat with their aunt, Princess Elena. Princess Cristina remains persona non grata and did not attend. Also present were King Juan Carlos's two sisters, Princess Pilar, Duchess of Badajóz and Princess Margarita, Duchess of Soria, the latter accompanied by her husband, Carlos Zurita, the King's aunt-by-marriage, 96-year-old Princess Alicia, and his cousin Prince Carlos, Duke of Calabria with his wife Ana.
Ex-King Simeon II of the Bulgarians and ex-King Konstantinos II of the Hellenes, accompanied by ex-Queen Anne-Marie, were present in their capacity as Knights of the Golden Fleece. The Greek ex-King is of course also Queen Sofía's brother, while ex-King Simeon is a childhood friend of King Juan Carlos.

Spanish Senate approves King Juan Carlos's abdication

By 233 votes against five, and twenty abstentions, the Spanish Senate on Tuesday passed the bill authorising King Juan Carlos's abdication. The King will sign it into law in a ceremony at the Royal Palace at 6 p.m. today, in the presence of some 150 guests, and it will take effect once it is published in the official legal gazette. As there is no longer a print version of this gazette, but only an online version, it is not quite clear when this will actually happen, but one Spanish newspaper reports that it will happen at midnight.
Prince Felipe, who will then succeed to the throne as King Felipe VI, will be invested with the sash of Captain General of the armed forces by his father at the Zarzuela Palace at 9.30 a.m. on Thursday and will thereafter travel to Parliament, where King Felipe will be sworn in in the chamber of the Congress of Deputies. His wife and two daughters will be present, as will Queen Sofía and the Princesses Elena, Pilar and Margarita, but not King Juan Carlos, who stays away to avoid drawing attention away from the new monarch.
After the swearing-in the new King will take the salute at a military parade in front of Parliament before he and Queen Letizia drive through Madrid to the Royal Palace, where King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía will join them on the balcony to greet the crowds. Around 1 p.m. the new King and Queen will host a reception for some 2,000 guests at the Palace.

Title issues: King Juan Carlos to keep royal title

On Friday the Spanish government approved an amendment to the decree of 6 November 1987 on royal titles, so that King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía will retain the titles of King and Queen after his abdication. They will also retain the style of Majesty, but, interestingly, will rank after the descendants of the new King and Queen. This is, according to the government, done partly as a mark of respect for King Juan Carlos's and Queen Sofía's services to Spain, but also in keeping with historical precedents and customs in other monarchies.
Indeed I believe both King Carlos IV and Queen Isabel II retained their royal titles after their abdications. This is also how things have been done in Belgium and Luxembourg. Currently King Albert II of the Belgians, who abdicated in 2013, and Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, who abdicated in 2000, retain their titles, as did their parents, King Léopold III, who abdicated in 1951, and Grand Duchess Charlotte, who abdicated in 1964.
Britain and the Netherlands have chosen another solution. When King Edward VIII renounced the British crown in 1936 it was decided that his ceasing to be king meant that he reverted to being a prince, and he was granted the dukedom of Windsor in addition. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who abdicated in 1948, argued that her abdication was constitutionally equal to her death and reverted to being Princess Wilhelmina. This precedent was followed by her daughter, Queen Juliana, when she abdicated in 1980, and again by her granddaughter, Queen Beatrix, who renounced the Dutch crown last year.

Spanish Congress passes abdication bill

After what seems to have turned into a rather heated, three-hour debate today, the Spanish Congress of Deputies has passed the bill of King Juan Carlos's abdication by 299 votes against 19 (and 23 abstentions). The bill will be debated in the Senate on 17 June and is expected to be signed into law the following day by King Juan Carlos, who thereby ceases being the King of Spain.

Felipe VI to succeed Juan Carlos I on 18 June

Spanish media report that the abdication of King Juan Carlos I will take effect on 18 June. Although the King signed his abdication on Monday, a bill must be passed by both houses of the Cortes (Parliament) for it to come into force. When the bill has been approved by both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, it will be sanctioned by King Juan Carlos at the Royal Palace in Madrid on 18 June.
Prince Felipe will succeed to the throne as soon as the abdication act is published, and the following day he will be sworn in during a joint session of the Cortes, as his father was on 22 November 1975.
In 1975 the swearing in was followed by a mass in the Church of San Jeronimo five days later, but as a result of the secularisation of Spain this has now been dispensed with.
The 1975 enthronement mass was attended by several foreign heads of state and royals, which was important for King Juan Carlos, who came to the throne as the appointed successor of the Fascist dicator Francisco Franco, but intended to dismantle the dictatorship. This time no foreign heads of state or royals will be invited, which the royal household explains with lack of time and space in the Cortes.
It is as yet unknown what other members of the Spanish royal family, if any, will be present for the swearing in, but I would expect that at least the new Queen will join her husband and that their two daughters will also be present.
Curiously the media refer to the inauguration as a coronation and claim that Prince Felipe will be crowned. This is obviously wrong, as the swearing in is an entirely secular ceremony and no monarch has been crowned in Spain since the unification of the country in the fifteenth century.

King Juan Carlos abdicates

During a meeting with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at the Palace of La Zarzuela this morning King Juan Carlos I abdicated the crown of Spain in favour of his son, Prince Felipe. However, the abdication does not come into effect immediately, but will have to be approved by both houses of parliament. This will, it seems, take at least a couple of weeks.
In a televised speech to his people, the King gave no exact reason for his decision, but stated that his 76th birthday last January made him feel that "the time had come to prepare the handover to make way for someone who is in the best possible conditions to maintain that stability", a stability he believes is "a defining feature of our monarchy" and which he thinks his son "embodies".
The actual reasons are probably a combination of the King's health problems and how the standing of the Spanish monarchy has been severly undermined by a series of scandals during the past two or three years. The most serious has been the court case which has seen Princess Cristina's husband, Iñaki Urdangarín, accused of corruption and embezzlement, a case the rest of the royal family have also been dragged into.
For the King the problems started in April 2012 when he fell and broke his hip while hunting elephants in Botswana with another woman than the Queen. This, which happened shortly after the King had spoken of how Spain's severe economic problems, which have caused an unemployment rate of 25 % (and 50 % for those under the age of 25), kept him awake at night, opened the floodgates for criticism of the monarchy and the King.
As the King's approval ratings and support for the monarchy plummeted Prince Felipe managed to keep out of the storm and it seems things had eventually reached the point where King Juan Carlos had become a problem for the monarchy and the chances for its survival would improve by his stepping aside.
King Juan Carlos can thus be said to have sacrificed himself for the future of the monarchy, but it is an ironic - and tragic - end to the reign of the monarch who steered Spain from dictatorship to democracy following the death of the Facist dicator Francisco Franco, who had hoped Juan Carlos would continue the Francoist regime. It is to be hoped that history will remember King Juan Carlos I for the great contributions he made to his country and to democracy rather than for the disgraceful end to his nearly forty-year reign.

Two popes canonised

Three monarchs were present at an open air mass in St Peter's Square in the Vatican City this morning as the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II were canonised by the current Pope.
John Paul II, who reigned from 1978 till his death in 2005, was beatified in 2011 and his canonisation is the fastest since saints ceased being declared by local acclamation and became the exclusive prerogative of the reigning pontiff nearly a thousand years ago. John XXIII, whose pontificate lasted from 1958 to his death in 1963, was beatified in 2000.
The Catholic Church normally requires two so-called "miracles" for someone to be declared saints, but Pope Francis chose to waive this rule in the case of John XXIII, as he has done in other recent cases. It is assumed that Pope Francis may feel some sort of identification with the folksy, easy-going, much-loved John XXIII.
It is the first time that two popes have been canonised at the same time and it has been suggested that Pope Francis chose to canonise the progressive John XXIII together with the conservative John Paul II, whose canonisation he "inherited" from his predecessor, in order to appeal to progressives as well as conservatives, although this has been denied by the Vatican, which insists that they do no make such political considerations.
The canonisation mass drew huge crowds to the Vatican, and among the guests were members of several Catholic royal families. The King and Queen of Spain, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and the Sovereign Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein headed the guest list, while the King of the Belgians was represented by his parents, King Albert and Queen Paola. It was interesting to note that Queen Paola, like Queen Sofía and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, exercised the privilège du blanc, which gives the wives of Catholic monarchs the right to wear white rather than black in the presence of the Pope. However, Queen Paola wore black for a private audience with Pope Francis yesterday (while her daughter, Princess Astrid, wore a white jacket over a black dress). Princess Marie of Liechtenstein wore black, indicating that the privilege has still not been extended to the consort of the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein.
The only Protestant royal house represented was the British (although Britain is officially a Protestant country there are now almost more Catholics than Anglicans in Britain), which sent the Duke of Gloucester, a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, and his wife.
The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg were accompanied by their daughter-in-law, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stéphanie, and two of their sons, Louis and Sébastien. Prince Nikolaus of Liechtenstein, who is his country's ambassador to the Holy See, attended with his Luxembourgian wife Margaretha (their was the last marriage between two reigning European royal houses), their son Josef-Emanuel, and one of their daughters (Maria-Anunciata, I believe).
Also in attendance were Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland and his predecessor but one Aleksander Kwasniewski, and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

At the road’s end: Adolfo Suárez (1932-2014), Spain’s first democratically elected PM

“My grief is great. My gratitude is ever-lasting”, said King Juan Carlos I of Spain in a televised speech last night after the death at the age of 81 of Adolfo Suárez, the country’s first democractically elected Prime Minister, who partnered the King in the transition of Spain into a democracy following the end of the Franco dicatorship.
Born on 25 September 1932, Adolfo Suárez González studied law and came to hold several high posts in the Francoist government and the Francoist party, the National Movement. He came to know Prince Juan Carlos while he worked in the state broadcasting company TVE, whose general director he became in 1969, the same year as the Prince was appointed Franco’s successor.
Following Franco’s death and Juan Carlos’s accession to the throne in November 1975, the King made the bold move of appointing Suárez Prime Minister in July 1976. The appointment of a moderate member of the Francoist party caused anger both to the left and the right of the political spectre, but Suárez managed to find a way that made room for reforms without provoking a military reaction from Francoist hardliners.
A democratic general election in June 1977 was won by his centrist alliance, the Union of the Democratic Centre. The transition continued with the introduction of a democractic Constitution, passed by both houses of parliament in October 1978 and in a referendum the following December.
Suárez won another general election in March 1979, but in the ordinary circumstances that now reigned Suárez distanced himself from everyday politics and rarely appeared in Parliament.
He was, however, present in Parliament on 23 February 1981, a month after his resignation as Prime Minister, when the chamber was stormed by armed soldiers in a military coup that failed, and drew admiration as one of only three MPs who refused to obey the putschists’ order to lie down on the floor and remained in his seat.
The year after his resignation, Suárez formed a new parti, the Democractic and Social Centre, but won only two seats in Parliament in the next election. He retired from politics in 1991. During the past decade he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was, according to his son, unable to remember that he had been Prime Minister.
King Juan Carlos showered honours over the man who led Spain’s transition to a democracy. He received the Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos III in 1978 and was created Duke of Suárez and a Grandee of Spain upon his resignation in 1981. In 2007 he was made a Knight of the ancient Order of the Golden Fleece and was posthumously awareded the Grand Cross Collar of the Order of Carlos III when King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofía and Princess Elena paid their respects at his lying-in-state in the Parliament building in Madrid earlier today.

Le privilège du blanc

Pope Francis’s inauguration mass in Rome today was a good opportunity to observe one of the intricacies of papal etiquette, namely what is known as le privilège du blanc (the privilege of white).
Women are generally expected to wear black in the presence of the Pope, although not all follow this guideline (for instance, Queen Margrethe wore grey last time she visited the Vatican). But since an unknown date there has been an exception made for the wives of Catholic kings, who have been allowed to wear white in the Pope’s presence.
In former days, this included the Empress of Austria-Hungary as well as the queens of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bavaria, Belgium and Poland (but apparently not the Queen of Saxony, probably because the country did not share the royal family’s Catholic faith), but after the disapperance of most European monarchies the privilege of white today extends only to the Queens of Belgium and Spain, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and female captains regent (i.e. heads of state) of San Marino.
Other female members of royal families (except Italian princesses, I believe) and Catholic wives of Protestant monarchs (such as Máxima of the Netherlands will be when her husband ascends the Dutch throne on 30 April) do not have the privilege, which also does not extend to the wives of sovereign princes. Or at least it did not do so until recently.
While her mother-in-law, Princess Grace, always wore black when meeting popes, Princess Charlène of Monaco wore white when she and Sovereign Prince Albert II were received in an audience by Pope Benedict XVI on 12 January this year. The Vatican Press Office subsequently stated that “in accordance with prescribed ceremonial of the Vatican for Catholic sovereigns, the princess was allowed to dress in white”.
However, Princess Charlène wore black at the inauguration today, and the Princess of Liechtenstein was not present, so it seems unclear whether the privilege has really been extended to the wives of Catholic sovereign princes. The Queen of Spain was also absent, but the Queen of the Belgians and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg both wore white.
However, it might also be noted that there have been occasions when ladies enjoying the le privilège du blanc have chosen not to make use of it, the most recent example I can think of being the late Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg, who wore black the last time she and Grand Duke Jean were received by Pope John Paul II before the Grand Duke’s abdication in 2000.

European heirs gather in the Netherlands

This weekend most of the heirs to the European thrones are gathered in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, and a group photo may be viewed on the Swedish royal court’s Facebook page. These meetings have become a fixture during the past decade or so, but this is, as far as I know, the first time a photo has been released. There are also similar meetings between the royal courts at different levels (the lords chamberlain, the information departments, the palace librarians, etc.), which rotate between the countries. In all cases the purpose is to give those involved an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences.
This year’s meeting takes place in the Dutch town Apeldoorn and is hosted by Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima, who will leave the group when they ascend the Dutch throne next month. The others present are Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia of Spain, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde of Belgium and Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume and Hereditary Grand Duchess Stéphanie of Luxembourg. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark is attending a sports engagement in Sweden in a private capacity, while the heirs to Britain and Liechtenstein (and the heiress presumptive to Monaco) do not normally attend.
The absence of the British heir and his wife will probably lead to the usual comments about the British royal family snubbing or disliking their European counterparts, but Prince Charles clearly gets along well with his colleagues and his absence is a logical consequence of how the British monarchy since the Second World War has focused its attention on the Commonwealth rather than on Europe. If this will change in the next reign remains to be seen.

New books: Europe’s female monarchs

When Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, it was the first time since Ekaterina II of Russia died and Maria I of Portugal went insane in the 1790s that a European government was led by a woman, states the American historian William Monter in his new book The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800, published by Yale University Press.
Some might perhaps object that there had been several female monarchs in between, but, Monter argues, the advent of constitutional monarchy in the early nineteenth century meant that these queens regnant were not executive heads of state. The women who reigned over European kingdoms during the preceding five centuries were, on the other hand, also heads of government.
There were thirty of them, ranging from the sixteen-year-old Jeanne II, who became Queen of Navarre in 1328, to the forty-two-year-old Maria I of Portugal, whose effective reign came to an end with her mental breakdown in 1792 and the regency of her son from 1799. Except from France, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States, female monarchs were found all over Europe, covering the map from Oslo in the north to Palermo in the south, and from Lisbon in the west to Nicosia in the east.
There had, as her numeral alone suggest, been female monarchs even before Jeanne II, and Monter gives an overview of female rule both before 1300 and outside Europe before embarking on his main subject. In Europe, female monarchs before 1300 were mostly found in Latin countries during the twelfth century, and must then be considered anomalies. After 1300, they became a more regular, although still rare occurrence, and, Monter points out, “centered in Christian Europe”, while vanishing from most Asian monarchies. The author identifies two ways through which most female monarchs acceded to their thrones: inheritance from fathers and usurpation by regents.
Monter shows how his list of thirty female monarchs through five centuries might meaningfully be split into two halves to find that most of the fifteen rulers during the first 250 years “were younger women who generally ruled in close association with and often politically subordinated to their husbands”. After 1550, on the other hand, the majority of the female monarchs “governed her kingdom autonomously for at least part of her reign”, while husbands as co-rulers became rarer and were eventually reduced to subordinated positions – if the female monarchs were married at all.
Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castile are without doubt the most famous – and arguably the most successful – couple to have served as joint monarchs, but the author highlights the pioneering role of the now mostly forgotten Kingdom of Navarre, which saw unusually many female monarchs, for the concept of joint rule between a queen regnant and her husband (Danish readers might well note that the part of France from which hails the family of Henrik the Prince Consort, who has often voiced the idea that he ought to be King Consort, was subject to the monarchs of Navarre).
When Jeanne II became Queen of Navarre in 1328, she and her husband insisted on a joint coronation, despite official Navarrese opposition, and the reins of power were thereafter left in the hands of the King Consort, Philippe of Evreux. This, which Monter calls “the Navarrese solution to female inheritance”, became the norm throughout Europe for most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – although there were of course exceptions. But, the author points out, this solution failed everywhere but in Navarre, and in Navarre itself it eventually unravelled following the death in 1441 of Queen Blanche, whose widower clung on to the throne until his death 38 years later, preventing their son from ascending the throne.
Female regents are not included in this book; although rulers, they held power only temporarily and were not monarchs in their own rights. Nevertheless Monter chooses to take a closer look at some female regents which he considers of great importance for the development whereby it was gradually accepted that women ruled on their own even while married. This, Monter considers, was “greatly assisted by various printed, painted, sculpted, and engraved endorsements of women’s capacities for ruling, [...] the most audacious of these [...] sponsored or commissioned not by female monarchs (whose sovereignty was permanent and divinely ordained) but by eight female regents, each of whom governed a major state for at least five years between 1507 and 1633”.
1550 marks the turning point in Monter’s book. The six queens regnant between 1550 and 1700 were married for a total of only 20 % of their reigns (nineteen of eighty-eight years), and two of them (Elizabeth I of England and Christina of Sweden) never married at all. In England, the husband of Mary I, Philip II of Spain, was accorded the title of King, but a prenuptial agreement left him no independent powers, an act which Monter considers “a watershed in the history of marriages of royal heiresses”.
While the first husband of Mary Queen of Scots was given the crown matrimonial, her second husband received the title of king, but without the right to act on his own, and her third husband did not receive the royal title. At the same time, the Navarrese pattern “broke down in Navarre itself”, where Jeanne III d’Albret, despite strong opposition from the estates, insisted on a joint role with her husband and got her way. But the Queen’s conversion to the Reformed church caused the marriage to break down, and Queen Jeanne and King Antoine found themselves on opposing sides in the religious wars (in which the King was killed).
There were two notable exceptions to the general trend at this time. The joint rule of William III and Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland was in reality William III’s sole rule, and when the Swedish estates refused to agree to a joint rule, Queen Ulrika Eleonora abdicated in favour of her husband, who became King Fredrik I. But, as the author points out, “England after 1688 looks less like the dawn of modern liberalism than the last gasp of the Middle Ages”. And when William III died and Queen Anne came to the throne, her husband received neither title nor powers.
Like Queen Anne, Western Europe’s two other female monarchs of the eighteenth century – Maria Theresia of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia and Maria I of Portugal – “exercised power while finding various ways to keep their husbands in politically useful but subordinate roles”. And none of the four Russian empresses of the eighteenth century was married at any stage of her reign. So within five centuries, Europe moved from a situation where female monarchs were generally dependent on their husbands to a situation where male consorts, if they existed at all, were generally sidelined and the female monarch exercised her powers on her own. Thus it seems quite ironic that, after the 1790s, 180 years would pass before a woman again became the actual rather than merely symbolic head of a European government.
Monter finds that women did not generally rule very differently from men; “for all the talk about female inferiority and frailty, having a woman as divine-right sovereign made very little practical difference in the way governments actually operated”. However, the reigns of female monarchs were much likelier than those of male monarchs to be prematurely or dramatically terminated. The statistics also show that only 40 % of female monarchs, as opposed to 70 % of male monarchs, were succeeded by their direct descendants.
Monter’s analytical powers seem to be at their sharpest in the earlier parts of the book; towards the end it tends to read too much like a collection of short biographies of female monarchs. The book also suffers from its lack of a final and concluding chapter where the author might have summed up his findings; instead he treats the readers to an epilogue about how female monarchs have been represented in twentieth century films, pointing out that while “[s]uccessful women rulers from Hatsheput to Thatcher have been rulers first and women second [...], popular representations of them have always reversed these aspects because romance sells infinitely better than political power in female hands”.
There are some factual mistakes to be found and, when attempting to cover such a vast field, the author cannot possibly have as sure a grasp on all countries and persons involved. There are, obviously, also some language barriers to struggle with. A Norwegian historian like myself might notice that this colours some of what he writes about the Scandinavian female monarchs. And when covering such a vast topic in little more than 200 pages, there will necessarily be some summarising and generalising which causes some nuances to be lost – for instance one might argue that there were certain variances in Navarre which are lost and that the author’s view of “the Navarrese solution” is somewhat too static.
But although one may occasionally disagree with some of the author’s view, the main impression is that this is a significant contribution to the historiography of European monarchies as well as of female rule. There have in recent years been several studies devoted to female monarchs – among them Charles Beem’s The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (2006) and Karin Tegenborg Falkdalen’s Kungen är en kvinna – Retorik och praktik kring kvinnliga monarker under tidigmodern tid (2003), both of them excellent – but William Monter’s book is the first study to cover all Europe and such a large time span. This enables him to see individual queens regnant in an international context and to describe general trends which have until now not been clearly identified. That alone makes this book a study of great value which might well inspire many future works on the challenges which arose when women were kings.

Prince Carl Philip renounces Galliera inheritance

Svenska Dagbladet reports that Prince Carl Philip of Sweden has agreed to let the Galliera inheritance, which consists of an exquisite art collection and a financial fund, pass to his sister Crown Princess Victoria, although the Prince would be the legal inheritor according to the terms laid down by Emperor Napoléon I of the French.
The art collection contains some sixty Italian works and are among the jewels of the Swedish royal collection. Piero di Cosimo’s “Madonna with Child” is widely considered the greatest masterpiece of the collection, while the financial fund was worth millions already at the time of the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf in 1973.
The reason why Prince Carl Philip rather than his elder sister has, until now, been heir to the Galliera inheritance, is that this is an entail governed by male primogeniture.
The Duchy of Galliera, which lies in the province of Bologna, was bestowed by Napoléon I, Emperor of the French and King of Italy, upon the eldest child of his adopted son, Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy, on 14 May 1913. The child, named Joséphine after her paternal grandmother the Empress, also held the title Princess of Bologna, which had been given her shortly after her birth in 1807. After the fall of Napoléon, his adoptive granddaughter retained possession of her duchy, but never visited it. In 1823 she married Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and of Norway, but as the income from the Duchy was considered too low and it lay unpractically far away from Sweden, she eventually decided to sell it. Finding a buyer took a decade, but in 1837 the Duchy was sold to Marquis Raffaele de Ferrari, who was created Duke of Galliera by Pope Gregory XVI the following year.
Works of art and furniture from the Ducal Palace in Galliera were transferred to Sweden, and in her will, drawn up on 6 June 1876, the day before her death, Dowager Queen Josephina confirmed that the collection and the money from the sale should be inherited undivided by the eldest son of each generation.
As her two eldest sons had already died, this meant that the inheritance passed to her third son, King Oscar II, from him to King Gustaf V and then to King Gustaf VI Adolf. As his eldest son had predeceased him, the Galliera inheritance passed to his grandson Carl XVI Gustaf in 1973. However, when the Act of Succession was amended in 1980, King Carl Gustaf’s eldest child, Victoria, replaced her younger brother Carl Philip as heir to the throne, which, until now, has meant that the Galliera inheritance would have split from the main royal line.
(It could be added that the title Duke of Galliera still exists. The widow of Raffaele de Ferrari, whose name lives on in the Musée Galliera, her Parisian mansion which is now a museum of fashion, bequeathed the Italian properties to Prince Antoine, Duke of Montpensier, son of King Louis-Philippe I of the French and a Prince (Infante) of Spain by his marriage to the sister of Queen Isabel II of Spain. Following the death of the Dowager Duchess in 1888, Antoine was also created Duke of Galliera by King Umberto I of Italy. The current and fifth Duke of Galliera is his great-great-grandson Don Alfonso de Orleans-Borbón y Ferrara-Pignatelli).

On this date: A centenary and a golden wedding

Today is the centenary of the death of King Frederik VIII of Denmark on 14 May 1912, an unfortunate monarch who is mostly remembered for little but the manner of his death. The King was staying overnight in Hamburg on his way back to Denmark from a private journey abroad, when he collapsed and died during an incognito evening stroll through Hamburg’s red light district, sparking many rumours about the circumstances of his death and final hours.
His death was only the last of the misfortunes which had come to put their mark on the life and legacy of Frederik VIII. His father, the arch-conservative antidemocrat Christian IX, lived to ripe old age and staunchly refused his liberal son, known as “the eternal crown prince”, any say in the affairs of state.
Following the bitter political struggles of Christian IX’s reign, the introduction of parliamentarianism was supposed to be the great reform of Frederik VIII’s reign. That this change of political system eventually occurred in 1901, before Frederik’s accession, meant that he was deprived of what seemed certain to be his great political legacy.
Among the unfortunate episodes of Frederik VIII’s brief reign were also the grand reception accorded to what turned out to be a faux “conqueror of the North Pole” and the so-called Alberti scandal, when a leading cabinet minister turned himself in to the police, having embezzled enormous sums from the state coffers.
Upon his death after only six years on the throne, Frederik VIII was succeeded by his eldest son, who was proclaimed King Christian X from the balcony of his mansion at Amalienborg the following day (the third Christiansborg Palace being, at that time, still unfinished after the fire of 1884 which left the second Christiansborg in ruins).
King Frederik VIII died on the same day as the great Swedish author August Strindberg, whose centenary is commemorated in many ways throughout this year.

Today is also the golden wedding anniversary of the King and Queen of Spain. However, the royal court made it clear well in advance that there would be no celebrations of the anniversary (because Queen Sofía has a memory like an elephant, Politiken joked…). Princess Sofia of Greece, the eldest child of King Pavlós I and Queen Frederika of the Hellenes, married Prince Juan Carlos of Spain in Athens on 14 May 1962. At the time the Spanish royal family was dispossessed, while the Greek royal family was still on the throne; a situation which before long would be turned around.