My latest article: Empress Farah, art and power

The October issue of Majesty (Vol. 34, No. 10) went on sale on Thursday and this month I write about ex-Empress Farah of Iran, who will celebrate her 75th birthday on 14 October. The third wife of the last Shah, Farah was the only one to receive the title Empress, to be crowned and to be named regent in case the Crown Prince succeeded to the throne before reaching the age of twenty. She came to wield significant influence in the years before the Islamic revolution of 1979, to a certain extent became a liberalising force within the brutal regime and was a notable patron of the arts.

British royal christening on 23 October

The British royal court has announced that the christening of Prince George will take place in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace in London on Wednesday 23 October. The Prince will be baptised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. The christening will be a private event and will not be televised.
The choice of venue is somewhat surprising. After the chapel at Buckingham Palace was destroyed in World War II, the Palace’s Music Room seem to have been the preferred venue for the christenings of senior royals, i.e. Prince Charles in 1948, Princess Anne in 1950, Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince William in 1982. The last royal child to be baptisted in the Chapel Royal was Princess Beatrice in 1988. Prince Edward was christened in the private chapel of Windsor Castle in 1964, Prince Henry in St George’s Chapel at Windsor in 1984 and Princess Eugenie at St Mary Magdalene Church near Sandringham in 1990.
The Chapel Royal is fairly small and simple and lies within St James’s Palace. It was the venue for the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840 and for that of the future King George V and Queen Mary in 1893. In 1997 the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales rested there from its repatriation from Paris until the eve of her funeral.
The names of the sponsors (godparents) will be announced closer to the date. These are likely to be close family and friends and not foreign royals, given that Prince William hardly knows any of his foreign counterparts.

Luxembourg has a new princess

Luxembourg got a new princess yesterday (Tuesday 17 September) when Prince Félix, the second son of Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, wed his German girlfriend Claire Lademacher. The couple were married in a civil ceremony in Villa Rothschild Kempinski in the bride’s hometown Königstein im Taunus.
The groom had chosen the bride’s brother, Félix Lademacher, as his witness, while the bride’s witness was the groom’s sister, Princess Alexandra.
Only the nearest were present for today’s wedding, but several hundred guests have been invited to the religious blessing of the marriage, which will take place in the Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene in the small French town of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in the department of Var (some forty kilometres east of Aix-de-Provence) on Saturday.
Interestingly, there are already several links between the bride’s hometown Königstein im Taunus and the royal house into which she married, most notably the Luxembourg Palace in the town centre. According to the newspaper Wort (external link), this building from the late seventeenth century was acquired by Duke Adolph of Nassau, who had lost his duchy to Prussia in the war of 1866, when Nassau had been among the losers. Upon the death of King Willem III of the Netherlands/Grand Duke Guillaume III of Luxembourg in 1890, the union between those two countries was dissolved through the deceased’s daughter Wilhelmina inheriting the Dutch crown while his distant kinsman Adolph succeeded to the throne of Luxembourg. He continued to spend summers in Königstein, and the Luxembourg Palace became the dower house of his widow, Grand Duchess Adéläide-Marie, who died there in 1916. The palace, which had been thoroughly rebuilt and extended by the Belgian architect Gégéon Bordiau in 1873-1876, remained in the possession of the Luxembourgian grand ducal family until 1952. Since 1981 it is the main office of the district court.
Princess Claire of Luxembourg was born in Filderstadt in Germany on 21 March 1985 and was educated in Germany, the USA, Switzerland, France and Italy. She holds as master degree in bioethics (the same degree as Prince Félix is currently studying for) and has earlier worked for Condé Nast in New York and Munich, for IMG World in Berlin and for the UNESCO Chair of Bioethics and Human Rights, and is currently working on a PhD on the topic of organ donation ethics.

On this date: King Carl Gustaf and Prince Daniel celebrate fortieth anniversaries

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the accession to the Swedish throne of King Carl XVI Gustaf. The then 27-year-old Crown Prince became King the moment his grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf, died at Helsingborg Hospital at 8.35 p.m. on 15 September 1973. Incidentially, 15 September 1973 was also the day his future son-in-law, now Prince Daniel, was born. (In the September issue of Majesty I write about the accession and Carl XVI Gustaf’s difficult way to the throne).
King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia have earlier this year visited all 21 counties to mark the jubilee and this weekend the main festivities take place in Stockholm. Yesterday the government hosted a dinner at the Nordic Museum, while Parliament hosted a concert in Stockholm’s Concert House. Today there was a service of thanksgiving in the Palace Church, followed by a balcony appearance and a sort of street party with dancing in the Inner Courtyard at the Palace, hosted by the City of Stockholm.
All the members of the Swedish royal family took part in today’s events: King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia, Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel, Princess Estelle, Prince Carl Philip, Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill, Princess Birgitta of Hohenzollern, Princess Margaretha, Princess Désirée and Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld, Princess Christina and Tord Magnuson, Countess Marianne Bernadotte af Wisborg (widow of the late former Prince Sigvard), Countess Gunnila Bernadotte af Wisborg (widow of the late former Prince Carl Johan) and Princess Kristine Bernadotte (widow of the late former Prince Carl Jr).
They were joined by the heads of state from the other Nordic countries and their spouses: Queen Margrethe II and Prince Consort Henrik of Denmark, King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway, President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson of Iceland and Dorrit Moussaieff, and President Sauli Niinistö of Finland and Jenni Haukio.
Also several relatives of the King had been invited to the service in the Palace Church. Among those I believe I can recognise in photos are two of Princess Christina’s sons, Gustaf and Oscar Magnuson, with their wives Emma and Vicky, Countess Bettina Bernadotte af Wisborg (daughter of the late former Prince Lennart) with her husband Philipp Haug, Dagmar von Arbin (granddaughter of the late former Prince Oscar), her brother, Count Oscar Bernadotte af Wisborg, with his partner Margot Ekelund, their sister, Catharina Nilert, and their half-brother, Count Claes Bernadotte af Wisborg, with his wife Birgitta, and their two cousins, Counts Folke and Bertil Bernadotte af Wisborg with their wives Christine and Jill, as well as Madeleine Kogevinas, the daughter of the late former Prince Carl Jr.
The guests attending the jubilee have received a medal struck to commemorate the occasion. This is the third commemorative medal issued in the reign of Carl XVI Gustaf, following those struck for his fiftieth birthday in 1996 and the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel in 2010.

Title issues: Princess Madeleine’s children to be princ(ess)es

This week’s issue of Svensk Damtidning has a short interview with Axel Calissendorff, lawyer to the King of Sweden and legal adviser to the royal court, who states that Princess Madeleine’s children will bear the title Prince or Princess of Sweden and be styled Royal Highness.
It is up to the King to decide about titles for members of the royal family, but this is of particular interest since the child Princess Madeleine and her husband Christopher O’Neill are expecting in March will be the first to be born to a junior prince or princess (i.e. not direct heir) since the introduction of gender neutral succession in 1980. Until then the title of prince or princess was given to all children descending from King Carl XIV Johan in the male line and born of approved marriages. Since 1980 there has been no reason why the children of a princess with succession rights should be treated differently from the children of a prince with succession rights and it has consequently been some anticipation about how the children of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Madeleine would be styled.
Calissendorff does not say so, but I suppose that King Carl Gustaf’s decision means that the children of his younger children will also receive dukedoms, as has all princes with succession rights since 1772 and all princesses with succession rights since 1980.
Calissendorff also adds that the child must be raised in the Lutheran faith and be brought up in Sweden to retain his or her succession rights. Article 4 of the Act of Succession is somewhat ambigious about this, stating that princes and princesses of the royal house must be brought up in the Lutheran faith and within the realm, but then adding that those members of the royal family who do not profess that faith are excluded from the succession. However, the consequences of being brought up abroad are not explicitly stated, but it does in my opinion seem a reasonable interpretation that the same “penalty” applies in both cases.
As Princess Madeleine moved to the USA in 2010 this is obviously of great significance in this case, but neither Calissendorff nor the Act of Succession specifies any age by which the child must have settled in Sweden to be able to claim a place in the order of succession.

Norway veers to the right

Yesterday Norway went to the polls and the results of the general election show that the country took a huge step to the right. Having lost his majority, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, leader of the centre-left coalition which has governed for eight years, has informed the King that he will step down, paving the way for a new government, which will most likely be a coalition of the Conservative Party and the far right wing Progress Party, possibly also with one or both of the centre-right parties.
With 99.9 % of the votes counted the results are as follows:

The Labour Party, 30.8 % (-4.6), 55 seats (-9)
The Conservative Party, 26.9 % (+9.6), 48 seats (+18)
The Progress Party, 16.3 % (-6.7), 29 seats (-12)
The Christian People's Party, 5.6 % (no change), 10 seats (no change)
The Centre Party, 5.4 % (-0.8), 10 seats (-1)
The Liberal Party, 5.3 % (+1.4), 9 seats (+7)
The Socialist Left Party, 4.1 % (-2.1), 7 seats (-4)
The Green Party, 2.8 % (+2.5), 1 seat (+1)
The Red Party, 1.1 % (-0.2), no seats (no change).

This means that the governing coalition of Labour, the Socialist Left and the Centre Party have 72 seats out of 169, falling well short of the 85 needed for a majority, while the four parties to the right have 96. The Green Party, which enters Parliament for the first time, does not (yet) belong to either block.
As a consequence of this, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labour) announced last night that he will submit his resignation to the King after the new Parliament has been opened on 9 October and the fiscal budget presented five days later. The new Prime Minister will most likely be the leader of the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg. She has throughout the election campaign and beyond been rather unwilling to go into detail about what sort of coalition she envisages, only stating that she would prefer all four of the parties to the right to join the government, which seems unlikely as the centre-right Christian People's Party and the Liberal Party are very reluctant to sit in the same cabinet as the far-right Progress Party. Thus the most likely scenario seems to be a coalition of the Conservatives and the Progress Party, which will be dependent on either the Christian People's Party or the Liberal Party to reach a parliamentary majority. If so, Erna Solberg will be one of the first Conservative leaders in Europe to allow a right wing populist party into the government offices.
Given that she succeeds in forming a government, Erna Solberg will be the second female Prime Minister of Norway after Gro Harlem Brundtland (Labour), who was Prime Minister in 1981, 1986-1989 and 1990-1996.

Princess Christina’s eldest son marries

On Saturday Gustaf Magnuson, the eldest of the three sons of Princess Christina of Sweden and her husband Tord Magnuson, married Vicky Elisabeth Andrén in a ceremony in the chapel of Ulriksdal Palace in Solna, just outside Stockholm and close to Villa Beylon, where the groom grew up.
His brothers, Oscar and Victor Magnuson, were best men and among the other guests were of course the groom’s parents, Oscar’s wife Emma Magnuson, Victor’s girlfriend Frida Bergström, the groom’s uncle and aunt, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden, his cousin Crown Princess Victoria with her husband Prince Daniel, his cousin Prince Carl Philip with his girlfriend Sofia Hellqvist, his aunt Princess Désirée and the Queen of Norway, who is the groom’s godmother.
The bride wore a dress by Lars Wallin, which, with its high neck, full skirt and long sleeves was the very opposite of the sleeveless dress with a decolletage down to the navel, which Vicky Andrén wore to her first wedding.
Gustaf Magnuson works as a car salesman, while his wife is a former model with some success. On 31 July 2005, the then 22-year-old Vicky Andrén married the American nightclub owner Mark Baker, twenty years her senior. The couple separated in January 2007 and later divorced.

Princess Madeleine is pregnant

On Tuesday the Swedish royal court announced that Princess Madeleine and her husband, Christopher O’Neill, are expecting their first child. The child is due in early March 2014, exactly nine months after their wedding.
The court has not yet clarified the position of the child, who might be fifth in line to the Swedish throne. It will be up to King Carl Gustaf to decide if the children of Princess Madeleine will have royal titles, which perhaps seems unlikely given that Christopher O’Neill did not accept any title at the time of the marriage, leaving him free to pursue his business career.
It also remains to be seen which church (if any) the child will be baptised into. The Swedish monarch is required to belong to the Lutheran Church of Sweden, while Christopher O’Neill is a Catholic. A child who is raised as a Catholic can therefore not ascend the Swedish throne.
The Act of Succession also indicates that princes and princesses who are not brought up in Sweden forfeit their succession rights, but it is not clear it this should be taken literally, i.e. that it only affects those styled prince or princess, or if it also affects those who have succession rights, but do not carry royal titles. (Princess Madeleine moved to New York in 2010 and seems set on staying there for at least a few more years).

Princess Madeleine’s ex-fiancé has married

Last Saturday, 17 August, Princess Madeleine of Sweden’s former fiancé Jonas Bergström married Stephanie af Klercker in Stora Mellösa Church in the eponymous village southeast of Örebro. The wedding celebrations were held at nearby Hjälmarsnäs Farm, which belongs to the family of the bride’s mother, née von Horn.
Jonas Bergström, a lawyer by profession, became engaged to Princess Madeleine on 11 August 2009, but following much media speculation about the state of their relationship and a kiss and tell interview with a girl who claimed to have had a one night stand with Bergström the engagement was broken off on 24 April 2010.
Bergström announced his engagement to Stephanie af Klercker, who used to be a friend of the Princess’s (apparently this is no longer the case) at the end of October 2012, a few days after the announcement of Princess Madeleine’s engagement to Christopher “Chris” O’Neill, whom she married on 8 June this year.
Victor Magnuson, the youngest son of Princess Christina and thus a first cousin of Princess Madeleine, was among the guests at the Bergström/af Klercker wedding, accompanied by his partner Frida Bergström.

My latest article(s): Two accessions, 1973 and 2013

For once I did not write anything in the August issue of Majesty, but in the September issue (Vol. 34, No. 9), which goes on sale in Britain today, I return with two articles, both on accessions.
The first article deals with the abdication of King Albert II of the Belgians and the accession of his son Philippe on 21 July this year. Here I outline the reasons for the abdication and Philippe’s road to the throne, including the succession issue of 1993, and chart the challenges facing the new King of the Belgians.
On 15 September forty years have passed since the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and the accession of his 27-year-old grandson, Carl XVI Gustaf. Carl Gustaf’s troubled road to the throne at a time when strong republican currents threatened the existence of the monarchy and led to the introduction of a new constitution which deprived the King of his constitutional functions, is the topic of my second article in this issue, which also looks back at those dramatic days in the early autumn of 1973, when everything seemed to be happening at the same time.
This issue naturally also contains several articles by other authors, including a few related to the birth of Prince George of Britain and one on the last King of Portugal, Manoel II.
In the October issue, which will be out in a month, I will write about the role and influence of ex-Empress Farah of Iran, who will celebrate her 75th birthday on 14 October.

On this date: The Crown Princess is forty

Today is the fortieth birthday of the Crown Princess. She was born as Mette Marit Høiby (later changed to Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby) at St Joseph’s Hospital in Kristiansand on 19 August 1973. The official celebrations of the anniversary took part yesterday.
Ever since her 28th birthday in 2001, six days before she married the Crown Prince, the Crown Princess, who is rather religious, has celebrated her birthday with a church service for family and friends in the Palace Chapel. This year this was moved outdoors and took place in the Queen’s Park yesterday.
Like in previous years the former Bishop of Oslo, Gunnar Stålsett, who married the crown princely couple in 2001, officiated at the service. It is traditionally the Bishop of Oslo who serves as the royal family’s chaplain, but the Crown Princess, who belongs to the liberal part of the Church of Norway, obviously has much less in common with the current Bishop of Oslo, the staunchly conservative Ole Christian Kvarme, than with his liberal predecessor.

Dutch Prince Friso laid to rest

The younger brother of the King of the Netherlands, Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, who died on Monday at the age of 44 after having been in a coma for eighteen months following a skiing accident, was buried in a private ceremony today.
The funeral took place in the small Stulp Church in the village Lage Vuursche in the municipality of Baarn, near Utrecht, at 3 p.m. and was attended by some 100 mourners. The priest Carel ter Linden, who is close to the Dutch royal family, officiated, while King Willem-Alexander read from the bible and their younger brother, Prince Constantijn, gave an address. Following the service the two brothers and four friends carried the simple black coffin to its grave in the churchyard.
The mourners were led by Prince Friso’s wife, Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, their daughters, countesses Luana and Zaria of Orange-Nassau, and his mother, Princess (former Queen) Beatrix of the Netherlands. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima were joined by their three daughters, princesses Catharina-Amalia, Alexia and Ariane, while Prince Constantijn brought his wife, Princess Laurentien, and their children, Countess Eloise, Count Claus-Casimir and Countess Leonore of Orange-Nassau. The King of Norway, who was Prince Friso’s godfather, was the only foreign royal present. The King, who is known for his big heart, was seen comforting Princess Laurentien as they left the cemetery after the burial.
Among other relatives present were Prince Friso’s three maternal aunts, princesses Irene, Christina and Margriet and the latter’s husband, Pieter van Vollenhoven, and several of his cousins: Prince Maurits of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven and his wife Marilène, Prince Bernhard of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven and his wife Annette, Prince Pieter-Christiaan of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven and his wife Anita, Prince Floris of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven and his wife Aimée, Juliana Guillermo, Bernardo Guillermo, Nicolas Guillermo, Princess Margarita of Bourbon-Parma and her husband Tjalling ter Cate, Duke Carlos of Parma and his wife Annemarie, and Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Parma with his fiancée Viktória Cservenyák, who announced their engagement on the very day Prince Friso died.

First grandchild for Prince Michael of Britain

Prince Michael of Britain, a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, has become a grandfather for the first time. His son, Lord Frederick Windsor, and daughter-in-law, Sophie Winkleman (Lady Frederick Windsor), yesterday became the parents of a girl, who has received the names Maud Elizabeth Daphne Marina. Their daughter was born at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles, where Sophie Winkleman works as an actress.
The child will be fortieth in line to the British throne, although she is incorrectly listed as number 42 on the British royal website, which erroneously includes the sons of Lord Nicholas Windsor, Albert and Leopold Windsor (mistakenly referred to as Honourables, a style they do not hold), who were baptised as Catholics and are therefore not in line for the throne at the time of writing.
Maud Windsor will have no style or title other than Miss. In 1917, King George V restricted the title of Prince(ss) and the style of Royal Highness to children and male-line grandchildren of the monarch, as well as the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales (in 2012 Queen Elizabeth II changed the last part to include all children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales). However, so that children of a prince should not be born as plain Mr or Miss, it was decided that children of princes should be styled Lord/Lady Firstname Windsor, as are the children of dukes and marquesses. Grandchildren, on the other hand, receive no such titles (except for the eldest son of the eldest son of a prince who also has a peerage, who may use one of the subsidary titles as a courtesy title).

King to attend Prince Friso’s funeral

The royal court has confirmed that the King will attend the private funeral of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, which will be held in the Stulp Church in the village Lage Vuursche at 3 p.m. on Friday. The Prince, who died on Monday after having been in a coma for one and a half year after a skiing accident, was the King’s godson. The King and Queen were among the few foreign royals who attended the wedding of Prince Friso and Mabel Wisse Smit in the Old Church in Delft on 24 April 2004.

Book news: Some books due this autumn

With autumn approaching it seems this year’s book harvest will be a rather rich one. Among the most interesting titles expected in the coming months is Dynastiet Glücksburg - En danmarkshistorie (“The Glücksburg Dynasty: A History of Denmark”) by the historian Jes Fabricius Møller, a political history of the current Danish royal house which is due to be published by Gad at the end of September. The history of the Danish monarchy will also be covered in a new work on the tombs of Danish kings, Danske kongegrave, which is also due this autumn.
The King of Sweden is celebrating his fortieth anniversary on the throne in September, which is the occasion for the book Mina 40 år för Sverige (“My Forty Year for Sweden”), which consists of some 300 photos from the past four decades to which the King has added his comments.
Queen Silvia is probably not looking forward to the publication later this month of Erik Åsard’s book Drottningens hemlighet (“The Queen’s Secret”), which again addresses the issue of her father’s membership of the German Nazi party and his actions during the Second World War.
That war will also be at the centre of the sixth volume of Tor Bomann-Larsen’s biography of King Haakon VII of Norway, which will be published in mid-October and which will take the story from June to September 1940. The events of that crucial year will obviously also be addressed in Halvdan Koht - Veien mot framtiden (“Halvdan Koht: The Road to the Future”), the historian Åsmund Svendsen’s biography of the eminent historian Halvdan Koht, who served as foreign minister in Johan Nygaardsvold’s government and consequently had to accept some of the blame for Norway’s being poorly prepared for the German invasion on 9 April 1940.
The upcoming centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has already led to a number of books. One which seems particularly promising is The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War by the historian Margaret MacMillan, who is perhaps best known for her book on the Paris peace conference of 1919. That book will be out at the middle of October. The military historian Max Hastings will give his version of those events in Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, to be published in September.
The First World War was unleashed by the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg. Their story is told by Greg King and Sue Woolmans in The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder that Changed the World, which is due to be published in September.
The lead-up to the Second World War sets the stage for Peter Conradi’s Hot Dogs and Cocktails: When FDR Met King George VI at Hyde Park on Hudson, which relates the story of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain’s visit to the United States and its president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1939. Peter Conradi, a journalist at Sunday Times, is best known as the author of The King’s Speech, the book behind the Academy Award-winning film, but has also written The Great Survivors: How Monarchy Made it into the Twenty-First Century, an interesting book (so far published in English, French, Swedish and Dutch) on the European monarchies of today.
The long-awaited second volume of Philip G. Dwyer’s biography of Emperor Napoléon I of France, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, 1799-1815, will be published in early November.
This week will see the publication of a new biography of Mary Queen of Scots, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, by Linda Porter, who has earlier written acclaimed biographies of Queen Mary I of England and Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six queens.
Also out this week is Axel & Margaretha: A Royal Couple, written by the Danish journalist Randi Buchwaldt and published by Rosvall Royal Books. This richly illustrated book tells the story of Prince Axel and Princess Margaretha of Denmark, who played more significant parts in the lives of the Scandinavian royal families than their fairly remote genealogical positions would suggest.
The life of Queen Christina after her abdication in 1654 is the topic of Drottning utan land - Kristina i Rom by the historian Erik Petersson, which will be published in September. The book, which is the 28-year-old author’s fourth, is the sequel to his earlier book on Queen Christina’s reign, Maktspelerskan (2011).
November will see the publication of a biography of Princess Louise of Britain, Duchess of Argyll, the somewhat unconventional daughter of Queen Victoria of Britain. The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria’s Rebellious Daughter is written by Lucinda Hawksley.

Private funeral for Prince Friso on Friday

The funeral of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, the younger brother of the King of the Netherlands who died yesterday at the age of 44, will take place privately in the Stulp Church in the small village Lage Vuursche in the municipality of Baarn on the coming Friday. Carel A. ter Linden, a priest who is close to the royal family, will officiate.
Following the funeral service in the church, the Prince will be buried in the local cemetery, rather than in the New Church in Delft, where members of the royal family have traditionally been laid to rest in the vault. The village is close to Drakesteyn Palace, where the Prince lived during his early childhood and to which his mother, the former Queen Beatrix, is due to return to in the near future.
Although the Prince was no longer a member of the royal house the government has decided that flags shall be flown at half mast on public buildings throughout the realm on the day of the funeral.
A public memorial service will be held at a later date.

At the road’s end: Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau (1968-2013), by birth Prince of the Netherlands

The Dutch court has just announced the death of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, King Willem-Alexander’s younger brother, at the age of 44. The Prince had been in a coma since he suffered severe brain damage after being buried by an avalanche while skiing off piste in Lech, Austria in February 2012.
Prince Johan Friso Bernhard Christiaan David of the Netherlands, as he then was, was born in Utrecht on 25 September 1968. He was the second of the three sons born to the then Princess Beatrix and Prince Claus within two and a half years. His mother ascended the throne in 1980, but abdicated on 30 April this year.
Prince Johan Friso studied mechanical engineering at Berkeley and in Utrecht, and obtained a MSc in economics from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He thereafter embarked on a career in business, working for in Amsterdam and London. He did not carry out official engagements on behalf of the royal family.
On 30 June 2003 Prince Johan Friso announced his engagement to Mabel Wisse Smit. They married in Delft on 24 April 2004, which cost the groom the title of Prince of the Netherlands and his rights of succession to the throne as it had emerged that Mabel Wisse Smit had lied to the government about her relationship with a drugs baron. The government therefore decided not to seek Parliament’s approval for the marriage, which was necessary for the groom to maintain his position. However, Queen Beatrix allowed him to retain the subsidary, dynastic title of Prince of Orange-Nassau and he was still ranked as the second son of the monarch. At the same time he dropped the name Johan, choosing to be known as Prince Friso.
Prince Friso and Princess Mabel had two daughters, countesses Luana and Zaria of Orange-Nassau, born in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The family lived in London, and it was to the Wellington Hospital in that city that Prince Friso was flown after his accident. In November of that year it was announced that he was showing signs of minimal awareness and in July this year he was moved to his mother’s home, the Huis ten Bosch Palace in The Hague, as he was no longer needed hospital care. It was there that he passed away this morning.

Majority of Danes want Queen Margrethe to abdicate

With four monarchs stepping down (so far), this has been a year of abdications and an opinion poll conducted by YouGov and published in Søndagsavisen yesterday shows that 51 % of the Danes think that Queen Margrethe should also renounce the crown. Only 30 % think that the Queen should remain on the throne until she dies.
However, it is extremely unlikely that the majority will have their way in this question, as Queen Margrethe has repeatedly made it clear that abdication is out of the question for her. For instance, she stated in the 2009 book Dronningens teater: “Maybe some people think that I may just choose to leave my position as Queen, but it is not that simple. And particularly not seen in relation to how I became Queen after the Constitution and the Act of Succession had been changed so that it was I who should succeed my father. If I then chose to step aside it would really be deserting my place. It would really be a great betrayal”.
The same opinion poll shows that 77 % think Crown Prince Frederik is ready to become king, while 11 % disagree.

On this date: Princess Christina turns seventy

Today is the seventieth birthday of the unsung heroine of the Swedish royal family, Princess Christina. She is the youngest of the four elder sisters of King Carl XVI Gustaf, who were once collectively known as the “Haga princesses” after the palace outside Stockholm where they lived until 1950.
The princesses grew up amid (for that time) intense media attention and were surrounded by strong feelings of sympathy after the tragic death of their father, Prince Gustaf Adolf, in a plane accident in 1947. Today they live private lives, and Princess Christina is the only of the sisters who continues to carry out public engagements. They are not listed in the calendar on the official royal website, but there are quite a lot of them and the Princess often steps in when extra help is needed, for instance during Crown Princess Victoria’s maternity leave.
Princess Christina is considered the most intellectual and most intelligent of the five siblings (she was the only of the princesses to graduate from senior high school), and many believe that she might have made an excellent monarch. However, women had no succession rights before 1980 and as the fourth daughter Princess Christina’s place in the order of succession would anyway have been remote.
After her three elder sisters married in 1961 and 1964 and her step-grandmother, Queen Louise, died in 1965, Princess Christina took on an increasing amount of public engagements. The early death of her mother, Princess Sibylla, in 1972 made Christina the first lady of the kingdom. She retained that role until her brother married Silvia Sommerlath in 1976 and is believed to have been a great support to Carl XVI Gustaf when he came to the throne as an inexperienced 27-year-old upon the death of their grandfather in 1973.
Princess Christina herself married the businessman Tord Magnuson in 1974. Both the old King and the new had consented to the marriage, but Christina nevertheless gave up the style Royal Highness and has since then been known as Princess Christina, Mrs Magnuson.
The couple had three sons – Gustaf, Oscar and Victor – and have within the past months become the grandparents of Edmund and Albert. For many years the Magnuson family lived in Villa Beylon near Ulriksdal Palace in Solna, just outside Stockholm, but a few years ago the Princess and her husband moved to an apartment in a building just opposite the Royal Palace.
Princess Christina was for many years the President of the Swedish Red Cross, a post closely associated with the royal family since it was held by her great-great-uncle (and godfather), Prince Carl, for more than forty years. She has also been particularly involved with cultural issues and is often seen at the opening nights at the ballet, opera or theatre or attending exhibition openings. She receives no money from the civil list, nor did she accept payment for her work at the Red Cross. As she is also one of those people who do not sing their own praise, much of her work has gone unrecognised.
The past few years have been difficult for Princess Christina, who has fought a successful battle against breast cancer and endured her jewellery being stolen by her husband’s young “friend” and partly sold for crack, partly thrown into the sea. But Princess Christina, who is now well again, has done what she was brought up to: raised her head and carried on.

King Baudouin commemorated twenty years on

Yesterday a memorial service was held in the Cathedral of Saints Michel and Gudule in Brussels to mark the twentieth anniversary of the sudden death of the much-loved King Baudouin. His widow, Queen Fabiola, was joined by King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, King Albert and Queen Paola, Princess Astrid and Prince Lorenz, and Prince Laurent and Princess Claire.
King Baudouin died suddenly from a heart attack while staying at his holiday home, Villa Astrida, in Montril, Spain, in the evening of 31 July. He was only 62, but had been in delicate health for some years.
Belgium being the only kingdom in Europe where the heir does not succeed automatically on the death of the monarch, it was only on 2 August that the Belgians got to know that the late King’s brother, Albert, would be their new head of state.
Many outsiders had believed that Prince Albert would renounce his rights to the throne in favour of his son, Philippe, who was being groomed as future monarch by King Baudouin. But Prince Albert himself was unwilling to renounce his rights, and when King Baudouin underwent heart surgery in 1992 an understanding had been reached that Albert would indeed succeed him if the King did not survive.
Prince Philippe was not yet considered ready for the throne, and on the night King Baudouin died the senior members of the cabinet met with the late King’s chief of staff and agreed to encourage Albert to accept the crown. King Albert II was sworn in on 9 August 1993, two days after his brother’s funeral. He abdicated on 21 July this year.