British prince named George Alexander Louis

The British royal court has announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Prince William and his wife Catherine) have named their son, who was born two days ago, George Alexander Louis. He is a Royal Highness and a Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and will thus be styled as Prince George of Cambridge within Britain (the custom is that princes and princesses who are not the children of the sovereign are known by the territorial designation of their father's peerage).
If Britain remains a monarchy (and Prince Charles does indeed reign as Charles III) the child will one day become King George VII. The first British king of that name was the founder of the current royal house, Elector Georg of Hanover, who inherited the British throne in 1714 and reigned as King George I until his death in 1727. He was succeeded by his son, George II, who outlived his eldest son and was therefore succeeded in 1760 by his grandson, George III, who was again succeeded in 1820 by his eldest son, George IV. Thus the King of Britain was named George consecutively from 1714 to 1830. These four "Hanoverian" Georges had a rather bad press (for instance, George III is remembered primarily for going mad and losing America), although their reputations have been somewhat revised in recent decades.
The name appeared again when Edward VII died in 1910 and was succeeded by his second son, George V (who had not been born to be king). George V's death in 1936 was followed by the brief reign and scandalous abdication of his eldest son, Edward VIII, who upon his abdication was succeeded by his younger brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York. As a mark of continuity and carrying on the traditions of his father after the upheaval of the abdication, Prince Albert chose to be known as George VI, George being the last of his four names.
It might be argued that it was George V who ushered in the current style of monarchy, which has been continued by George VI and Elizabeth II. It is sometimes said that Elizabeth II's historical horizon extends no further than her father and grandfather, and some have jokingly referred to her as "George VII". There have on at least two occasions been rumours that Prince Charles, whose full name is Charles Philip Arthur George, may choose to reign as George VII rather than Charles III.
It might be noted that there has also been a previous "Prince George of Cambridge", namely the only son of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (himself the seventh son of George III). This Prince George, who was a first cousin of Queen Victoria, was born in 1819 and rose to become Commander in Chief of the armed forces. He succeeded his father as the second Duke of Cambridge in 1850, but as he made a morganatic marriage the Cambridge title died with him in 1904.
George is also the name of the patron saint of England, on whose feast day, 23 April, the Order of the Garter is normally awarded.
The name Alexander has been borne by three Scottish kings, and was also the name of the youngest son of the future King Edward VII, who died at birth in 1871. Then there is of course Queen Alexandra, the consort of Edward VII, and Princess Alexandra, a first cousin of the current Queen of Britain and one of Prince William's godparents. Alexander is also the name of the only son of the current Duke of Gloucester.
The name Louis is most closely associated with Louis, the first Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a maternal uncle of Prince Philip and "honorary grandfather" to Prince Charles. Lord Mountbatten, who is known for his military career and for being the last Viceroy of India, was assassinated in 1979, and three years later the name Louis was given to Prince William, whose full name is William Arthur Philip Louis.
There is nothing particularly surprising about the choice of names, perhaps except that there are only three names. All the four children of Queen Elizabeth have four names, as have Prince William and his brother and the children of Prince Edward. However, Queen Elizabeth herself has only three names, as does the children of Princess Anne and of Prince Andrew.

A British prince is born

An hour ago it was announced by the British royal court that the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son at St Mary's Hospital in London at 4.24 p.m. BST (17.24 CEST). The Prince, whose name has not yet been announced, is third in line to the British throne and it is the first time since 1901 that there are direct heirs to the British throne in three generations. The infant Prince is the first grandchild of the Prince of Wales and the third great-grandchild and first great-grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.

Duchess of Cambridge goes into labour

After much recent speculation the Duchess of Cambridge (Catherine of Britain) has gone into labour and been taken to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London. Following the recent changes to the succession laws the child will be heir to the throne (or, at the moment, the heir apparent to the heir apparent to the heir apparent) regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl. Thus it seems a future British monarch will be born today (as it is my birthday I naturally think it a good choice of date!)
The child will be a Royal Highness and a Prince(ss) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and styled Prince(ss) X of Cambridge within Britain). As for names, it would be expected that they would choose one with a British royal history, preferably one already borne by a British monarch (but if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have as little sense of history as their Swedish counterparts they may of course choose a foreign name without royal roots, but I somehow feel Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles will put a stop to any such ideas).
For a girl the most likely names are perhaps Elizabeth or Victoria, with Anne and Mary as other options. Personally I also think Charlotte would be a good choice, it being the name of the "lost" Queen of Britain, i.e. the only child of the future George IV, who died in childbirth in 1817, so that the crown eventually passed to her cousin Victoria, who was born in 1819. Charlotte would also commemorate two of the baby's grandparents, Prince Charles and Carole Middleton.
If it is a boy, there is a wider range of choices, as Britain has had more male than female monarchs. George, James, Alexander, Edward, Henry and Richard are some of the options.

A new king for Belgium today

Today is the National Day of Belgium, a day which will also see the country getting a new monarch, following King Albert II's announcement eighteen days ago of his abdication. The events related to the abdication of King Albert and the accession of Prince Philippe will be crammed into the usual schedule for the national day, making it a rather busy day.
The usual service of thanksgivings will take place at the Cathédral des Saints Michel et Gudule at 9 a.m. (rather than the usual hour of 10 a.m.), followed by the abdication ceremony at the Royal Palace at 10.30 a.m.
Belgium is the only European kingdom where the heir does not succeed automatically upon the death or abdication of the sovereign, which means that the country will find itself without a monarch until Prince Philippe swears the oath to the Constitution before the two chambers of Parliament in the Palace of the Nation at noon.
The royal family will thereafter greet the crowds from the palace balcony before King Philippe honours the unknown soldier at the Congress Column, reviews troops and takes the salute at the usual national day parade. The day will end with a firework display at 11 p.m.
Contrary to what Aftenposten has claimed repeatedly in recent days, the Norwegian royal family are not "dropping out" of the celebrations or "making other priorities". Nor are other royal families, as none of them have been invited. There is no tradition for foreign royals to attend the inauguration of Belgian monarchs, the exception being in 1934, when the father-in-law and brothers-in-law of King Léopold III accompanied him to his swearing-in after attending the funeral of King Albert I.
King Albert will, as is the tradition except in the Netherlands and Britain, retain the title of king and will not retire from public life. During the last days he has visited several Belgian cities with Queen Paola and yesterday gave his farewell address to the nation.

On this day: Crown Prince Haakon is forty

Today is the fortieth birthday of the Crown Prince, who was born at the National Hospital in Oslo at 2.12 p.m. on 20 July 1973. Music is one of his great interest, and in his younger days the Crown Prince was a frequent guest at music festivals - one such festival was also where he met Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby for the first time in the summer of 1996. His birthday celebrations thus take the form of a music festival held in the grounds of his home, Skaugum, in Asker outside Oslo, with the guests sleeping in tents.
Except for his nieces, aunt and uncles the entire royal family will attend. The foreign royals present are the King and Queen of the Netherlands, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark, Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands, the ex-Crown Prince of Greece and his wife, Prince Kyril of Bulgaria with his daughters Mafalda and Olympia and ex-wife Rosario, and Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Parma.
From 8.10 to 9.25 tonight NRK will broadcast an interview with the Crown Prince.

My latest article: Carl Johan’s important choices for Oslo

This week this year’s third issue of Byminner, the journal of Oslo Museum, was published and there I write about the role played by King Carl XIV Johan in the development of Christiania (as the city was named then) as capital in the years after independence in 1814, particularly by making five defining choices. The article contains some new insights into the reasons behind the King’s decisions, and, as it happens, also has some relevance to this summer’s debate about the expensive wardrobe of Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

King Albert II to abdicate on 21 July

In a televised speech at 6 p.m. today King Albert II of the Belgians, standing in front of a portrait of the country’s first king and the dynasty’s founder, Léopold I, announced that he will abdicate in favour of his eldest son, 53-year-old Prince Philippe, on 21 July, the national day.
King Albert observed that he had entered his eightieth year (on 6 June) and is now the eldest monarch in Belgian history, and that he no longer felt wholly able to fulfill his royal duties. He also expressed his full confidence in his son and daughter-in-law, Princess Mathilde.
King Albert succeeded to the throne on 9 August 1993 after the early death of his elder brother, King Baudouin. Prince Philippe had been groomed as his uncle’s successor and it was widely expected that the then Prince Albert would at some stage renounce his rights in favour of his son. However, when King Baudouin died at the age of 62, Prince Philippe was only 33 and his 59-year-old father assumed the kingship.
He came to the throne only weeks after Belgium, a country torn between the French-speaking minority and the Flemish-speaking majority, had become a federation. But the political division did not decrease and twice King Albert found himself unable for months to appoint a viable government; in 2007-2008 for three months, in 2010-2011 for a world-record eighteen months (541 days). The continued political strife is believed to have taken its toll on the King.
This will be the fourth time this year that a monarch abdicates. There is no tradition for voluntarily abdication in Belgium; indeed the concept of abdication is not mentioned in the Constitution. King Albert’s father, King Léopold III, was forced to abdicate in 1951 amid great controversy over his role in the Second World War, when he had refused to follow his government into exile and voluntarily handed himself over to become a German prisoner.
However, the fact that abdication has now become a tradition in both the Netherlands and Luxembourg may have influenced King Albert’s decision and perhaps made it easier. As King Albert is a devout Catholic, he may perhaps also have been influenced by the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI in February this year. Indeed the reasons given for his abdication resemble those given by the former Pope.
As far as I can see it has not yet been announced what title King Albert will have after his abdication. While the three Dutch queens who have abdicated have reverted to the title of princess, following Queen Wilhelmina’s argument that abdication is the same as constitutional death, King Albert’s father retained the title of king following his abdication. The Luxembourgian monarchs who have abdicated, including King Albert’s brother-in-law, Grand Duke Jean, have also retained their titles.
Belgium is the only kingdom in Europe where the accession of the heir does not follow automatically on the death of the monarch. On the demise of the monarch, the government will carry out the functions of the head of state until the heir takes the oath to the Constitution. In 1993 there was an interval of nine days between the death of King Baudouin on 31 July and the inauguration of King Albert on 9 August, but this time Prince Philippe will swear the oath on the same day as his father abdicates.

At the road’s end: Princess Fawzia of Egypt (1921-2013), former Queen of Iran

The former royal family of Egypt has announced the death of Princess Fawzia, the second daughter of the late King Fuad I and sometime Queen of Iran as the first wife of Shah Mohammed Reza. She was 91 and passed away in Alexandria yesterday.
Princess Fawzia was born in Alexandria on 5 November 1921 and was the first child born of the then Sultan Fuad’s second marriage to Nazli Sabri. The following year her father assumed the title of King.
On 16 March 1939 Princess Fawzia was married off to the Crown Prince of Iran, Mohammed Reza, an arranged marriage which soon proved unhappy. In October 1940 the Crown Princess gave birth to a daughter, Princess Shahnaz, and the following year she became Queen of Iran when her husband was brought to the throne through the forced abdication of his father, Reza.
According to Shah Mohammed Reza’s biographer Abbas Milani, Fawzia, whose wealthy Sunni family had ruled Egypt for a one and a half century, was believed to look down on the poor, Shiite parvenus that were the Pahlavis, a dynasty founded by her father-in-law.
Her difficult relationship with her mother-in-law and her husband’s infidelities eventually made her return to Egypt. Her absence from Iran was officially explained by her health being endangered by the Iranian climate.
This was also the reason given for the divorce, which was finalised in 1947. In his memoirs, the Shah would later claim her inability to bear a son as the reason for divorce, but this was obviously nonsense as Fawzia had both a son, Husain, and a daughter, Nadia, by her second husband, the officer and politician Ismail Chirine, whom she married in 1949.
In 1952 Fawzia’s brother, King Farouk I, was overthrown in the revolution which, within a year, also brought an end to the Muhammad Ali dynasty. However, Princess Fawzia remained in Egypt. Her second husband died in 1994 and their daughter in 2009.

Emir of Qatar to abdicate

Qatari television Al Jazeera reports that the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, will announce his abdication in a televised speech on Tuesday. The Emir, who is 61 years old and has suffered from health problems recently, will hand over power to his fourth son, Crown Prince Tamim, who is 33 years old.
Emir Hamad came to power through a palace revolution which overthrew his father, Emir Khalifa, on 27 June 1995. His reign has seen Qatar undergo a rapid development which has made the small country a key political and financial player in the region, whose 300,000 inhabitants enjoy the highest per capita income in the world.
The outgoing Emir has three wives and 24 children. Crown Prince Tamim is the fourth of his eleven sons, but the second son of his marriage to his second and most high-profile wife, Sheikha Mozah. Tamim replaced his elder (full) brother Jasim as heir apparent in 2003. The incoming Emir was educated in England and has two wives, three sons and three daughters.
Emir Hamad’s renouncing the crown will truly make 2013 a year of abdications, coming as it does after the abdication of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, which was announced on 28 January and carried out on 30 April, and the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI, which was announced on 11 February and came into effect on the 28th of that month.

My latest article: A royal couple for the future

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess will both celebrate their fortieth birthdays this summer, and in the July issue of Majesty (Vol. 34, No. 7) I mark the occasion with an article which looks at how they have carved out a royal role for themselves which is quite untraditional (as the Norwegian monarchy often is) and which seems well suited to bringing the monarchy safely into the future, but has also attracted some controversery when they have gotten too close to politics. The magazine goes on sale in Britain today and will soon be available in other major European cities as well.

Swedish royals on official visit to Northern Norway

Today and tomorrow King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden are paying an official visit to Norway, where they are hosted by the King and Queen in the northern cities of Harstad and Tromsø. The official visit ought to be seen in relation with the current government's focus on the Arctic region, which has meant that a number of prominent visitors have been taken to the region in recent years.
The Swedish royal couple arrived in Oslo from Germany (where they and Crown Princess Victoria had been attending the celebrations of the 70th birthday of King Carl Gustaf's cousin, Prince Andreas of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) on Sunday and have been staying privately with the King and Queen ahead of the official visit.

Queen opens gallery at Oscarshall Palace

Yesterday the Queen opened a new gallery, named “Gallery Queen Joséphine” in the former kitchen building at Oscarshall Palace in Oslo. The gallery will be the “home” of the scholarship the Queen set up two years ago and which every second year is awarded to a young graphic artist from one of the Nordic countries.
The works of the recipient will be exhibited at the gallery in those years the scholarship is awarded, while other exhibitions will be shown during the years between. The first exhibition, which opened yesterday, is “Tre reiser, tre landskap” (“Three Journeys, Three Landscapes”), which shows graphic prints by the Queen, Kjell Nupen and Ørnulf Opdahl, which were first exhibited in Helsingborg in 2011.
The gallery is named for Queen Josephine, the consort of King Oscar I, who built Oscarshall as their summer residence in 1847-1852. Of all her predecessors, Queen Josephine is the one the present Queen finds most interesting.

My latest article: The palaces and capitals of Carl XIV Johan

This year’s first issue of The Court Historian (Volume 18,1), an international academic journal published by the Society for Court Studies, is now out and the cover story is my article “Bernadotte Architecture: The Palaces and Capitals of King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and of Norway”. For several reasons King Carl Johan got to build relatively little in Sweden, but Norway provided him with the chance to build virtually an entire new capital and Carl Johan personally made several significant choices which put his indelible mark on the Norwegian capital. However, the Swedish aspect of the story of Carl Johan and architecture is far from uninteresting, and I believe it is the first time that his architectural heritage in both kingdoms is seen in relation to each other, thereby providing some new insights – for instance making the much-discussed choice of Hans D. F. Linstow as the architect of the Royal Palace in Christiania seem almost self-evident.
In Aftenposten today I also have a short comment about Oscarshall Palace, correcting the claim made in that newspaper two days ago that this palace was never meant to be inhabited. As I have shown earlier, Oscarshall was intended to be a royal residence and was used as such by King Oscar I.

Foundation stone laid for Berlin palace

Yesterday the President of Germany, Joachim Gauck, laid the foundation stone for the royal palace in Berlin, which is to be rebuilt. The palace, which was the official residence of the electors of Brandenburg, kings of Prussia and German emperors until 1918, was begun in 1443, but was heavily rebuilt in subsequent centuries. Like most of Berlin, it was damaged during World War II, and the German Democratic Republic eventually had it demolished in 1950 and replaced with the Palace of the Republic.
Following the reunification of Germany in 1990 several voices spoke out in favour of reconstructing the former royal palace, and after much debate the Palace of the Republic was demolished in 2006-2008. In 2007 Parliament decided that the royal palace should be rebuilt.
However, it is only the exterior, or rather three of the façades, which will be rebuilt, while the fourt façade and the interior will be in a modern architectural style. The palace, whose official name will be the Humboldt Forum, will exhibit non-European artefacts from the collections of the Berlin museums.
The reconstruction is scheduled to be completed by 2019 and to cost 590 million euro.

On this date: A century of female suffrage

Today Norway celebrates the centenary of the right to vote being given to all adult women by Parliament on 11 June 1913. Norway was the fourth country in the world to introduce general female suffrage, but as New Zealand and Australia were under British rule and Finland under Russian, Norway was the first independent country to give this right to women.
All men above the age of 25 had been given the right to vote in 1898, while about 40 % of women over the age of 25 were given the right to vote in municipal elections in 1901 and in 1907 a limited number of women were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections, meaning that a woman, Anna Rogstad, took a seat in Parliament for the first time in 1911.
Obviously the emancipation of women did not just come about, but met with fierce opposition from conservatives, and today (and throughout this year) many of those women and men who campaigned for women's right to vote are being honoured for their work.

Royal jewels: Princess Madeleine’s wedding jewellery

There had been some speculation ahead of Saturday’s wedding between Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill about what tiara the bride would wear, with speculation focusing on the cameo tiara which was worn by Crown Princess Victoria, Queen Silvia, Princess Désirée and Princess Birgitta for their weddings and has thereby come to being considered as some sort of tradition for weddings.
However, Princess Madeleine chose to break this “tradition” and rather wear the tiara most closely associated with her. This tiara may be considered a modern interpretation of the classic fringe tiaras, but very little is known about its origins or provenance. It was first seen on Queen Silvia in the late 1980s, but the royal court only describes it as “private” and has never given further information about it, so it is not known if it was purchased by King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia or if it was a gift or possibly an inheritance from someone.
Since her coming of age in 2000 Princess Madeleine has frequently worn the tiara, which may also be worn as a necklace, but Queen Silvia has also continued to wear it occasionally.
While the tiara appears to be of a rather young age, the earrings worn by Princess Madeleine for her weddings are very old. Apparently they belonged to Queen Lovisa Ulrika, the Prussian-born consort of King Adolf Fredrik, who died in 1782. They left Sweden when King Gustaf IV Adolf was deposed in 1809, and is known as “the Vasa earrings” as ex-Crown Prince Gustaf received the title Prince of Vasa from the Austrian emperor. His only child, Queen Carola of Saxony, apparently passed the earrings on to a great-granddaughter of Gustaf IV Adolf, Princess Victoria of Baden, who became Queen of Sweden through her marriage to King Gustaf V.
Princess Madeleine also wore a bracelet which seems to have belonged to Princess Lilian, her beloved great-aunt and substitute grandmother, who died in March this year. Crown Princess Victoria also chose to honour their great-aunt by wearing jewellery inherited from her, namely a delicate laurel wreath tiara which Queen Sophia presented to her granddaughter-in-law Margareta when she married the future Gustaf VI Adolf in 1905. She also wore a necklace, originally a stomacher, which is known to have belonged to Queen Josephina and which was frequently worn by Princess Lilian.

Order of the Polar Star for Christopher O’Neill

Surely it will not be necessary for me to write an account of the wedding of Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill tonight, but one aspect which might be worth commenting on is that the groom was made a Commander of the Order of the Polar Star (second class) by King Carl Gustaf on 6 June.
The Vasa Order and the Sword Order are now dormant, meaning that the Order of the Polar Star is now the second highest ranking Swedish order. Since the introduction of the new Constitution in 1975 the King has been forbidden to give orders to Swedish citizens, while orders may still be given to foreigners.
That meant that King Carl Gustaf in 1976 gave the Order of the Seraphim to his fiancée Silvia Sommerlath before the wedding, when she was still a German citizen, and likewise gave the Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star to Lilian Craig before she married Prince Bertil and thereby relinquished her British citizenship.
It was only in 1995 that an exception was made for members of the royal house, making it possible for the King to invest his three children with the Order of the Seraphim on their eighteenth birthdays in 1995, 1997 and 2000 and to give it to Princess Lilian on her eightieth birthday in 1995.
This exception also meant that it was only on his way out of the Cathedral after having married Crown Princess Victoria and thus become a prince and a member of the royal house that Prince Daniel was given the Order of the Seraphim.
As Christopher O’Neill did not become a member of the royal house and is a foreign citizen no such restrictions applied in his case. But the fact that he did not become a member of the royal house obviously also made it more natural to give him the Order of the Polar Star rather than the highest-ranking order.
This also has a precedence, as three of King Carl Gustaf’s brothers-in-law - John Ambler, Baron Niclas Silfverschiöld and Tord Magnuson - were made Commanders of the Vasa Order when they married princesses Margaretha, Désirée and Christina in, respectively, 1964, 1964 and 1974.
On the other hand, Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern was, apparently much to his own surprise, given the Order of the Seraphim by King Gustaf VI Adolf when he married Princess Birgitta in 1961. At the same time the Order of the Seraphim was also awarded to his elder brother, Friedrich Wilhelm, while their father, who had been given the Seraphim as early as 1936, received the collar of the order. The reason for this was obviously that Princess Birgitta, unlike her sisters, married a prince and thus herself remained a Royal Highness and a member of the royal house.

New books: Madeleine on the surface

“This is a book about the world’s most beautiful princess”, states the Swedish journalist Daniel Nyhlén, former royal correspondent of Aftonbladet and Svensk Damtidning, in the preface to his first book, Prinsessan Madeleine, which was published by Lind & Co last week, just in time for the wedding of Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill tomorrow.
And that is indeed what it is. But the author contradicts himself, for having written a paragraph of how beautiful, glamorous, hot and ravishing she is, he goes on to state that he has never cared much about the royals’ “glamorous and extravagant life style” and that there is something much more interesting about Princess Madeleine: the private person.
We are treated to 233 pages which mostly contain photos of Princess Madeleine since the age of nineteen, accompanied by brief texts about her graduation from high school, her friends, her partying, her family, her holidays, her dogs, her work, her public engagements, the Nobel banquets, her sister’s wedding, her beauty, celebrities she has met, her ex-boyfriends, her ex-fiancé, the media, her fiancé, New York and her engagement to the man she will marry tomorrow.
It can all be read in an afternoon, and occasionally it reads like a cheap novel – after Jonas Bergström proposed, “they kissed each other in the sunset over the beautiful-as-a-fairytale Bay of Naples”, we are assured, although neither of the two people present have ever said that they kissed or what time of the day it was. And the author repeatedly uses the word “literally” when he means practically, although I admit it would have been fun to see Princess Madeleine literally steal the show.
The photos are a mix of official portraits, photos from public engagements and paparazzi snapshots, some of them of very little interest. Focusing on Princess Madeleine’s looks, the author rarely gets beyond the surface, and therefore the book never really gets interesting. But Princess Madeleine is a very private person, and perhaps Nyhlén’s approach is at least better than that of Johan T. Lindwall of Expressen, who, in his so-called biographies of Princess Madeleine and Crown Princess Victoria, wants us to believe that he knows the members of the royal family so well that he can even tell us what they thought and did when alone in a room. And I am sure many “royalty fans” will buy this book, which is probably also the main reason why it has been written and published.

Princess Madeleine will wear Valentino for her wedding

The Swedish royal court has confirmed that Princess Madeleine’s wedding dress is created by Valentino. This comes as no surprise, as the bride is known to be a Valentino fan and as the designer and his partner are on the guest list for the wedding, which has not yet been officially released, but was published by the newspaper Aftonbladet on Tuesday.
Yesterday the Princess and her fiancé attended the celebrations of Sweden’s national day with the other members of the royal family, and tonight King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia will host a dinner at Grand Hôtel in Stockholm.

Princess Madeleine’s wedding on Norwegian TV

Norwegian state broadcaster NRK will of course broadcast the wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden and Christopher O’Neill tomorrow. The broadcast will begin at NRK1 at 3.30 p.m., that is half an hour before the service begin, and last until 7 p.m. NRK2 will continue until 8 p.m., while highlights will be shown at NRK1 between 9.40 p.m. and 10.40 p.m. The commentators will be the journalist Kjell Pihlstrøm and the historian and author Trond Norén Isaksen (yes, that is me).