Swedes want King to abdicate

The Swedish broadsheet Dagens Nyheter (external link) today publishes an opinion poll from Ipsos that shows that only 39 % of the 1,162 interviewees want King Carl Gustaf to remain on the throne, while 48 % want to see his stepping aside for Crown Princess Victoria. 14 % are uncertain.
This is a significant change from 2010, when only 17 % wanted to see the King go and 64 % were in favour of his remaining on the throne.
These days 64 % want Sweden to remain a monarchy (down from eighty percent i 2005), while 27 % want a republic (up from 16 % in 2005).

My latest article: Queen Louise of Sweden

Queen Silvia of Sweden, who will celebrate her seventieth birthday on Monday, has by now been Queen of Sweden for nearly forty years, but her predecessor remains fairly unknown to many. This was her husband’s step-grandmother, Queen Louise (1889-1965), an unassuming, yet very regal lady who was the first really visible Queen of Sweden for nearly a century and proved to be an ideal Queen for the democratic Sweden of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite this and her popularity in her lifetime, Queen Louise is sadly not very well remembered today. In the January 2014 issue of Majesty (Vol. 35, No. 1), which goes on sale in Britain today and soon in other major European cities (and some North American, I believe), I tell her story.

Seraphim honours for Mandela in Stockholm

While Nelson Mandela was laid to rest in Qunu in South Africa yesterday, I happened to be in Stockholm, where I got the chance to observe the ceremonial which accompanies the death of a Knight of the Royal Seraphim Order, Sweden’s highest order, which nowadays is only awarded to royals and heads of state.
While a knight of the order is alive, his or her armorial shield is kept at the Royal Palace, where a selection is displayed in the Seraphim Hall next to the Hall of State. After the death of a knight, the shield is hung in the former royal burial church at Riddarholmen.
At 11.15 a.m. yesterday, Nelson Mandela’s shield was carried from the Royal Palace to the Riddarholmen Church, accompanied by a guard of honour made up of four grenadiers, while the soldiers guarding the Royal Palace paraded in the Outer Courtyard.
In the Riddarholmen Church, the shield was displayed on an easel at the entrance to the chancel, next to a table with a photo of Mandela, two white candles and a bouquet of flowers, guarded by two grenadiers. The bells of the church tolled from noon to 1 p.m.
The so-called Seraphim tolling is done on the day of the funeral of a knight of the order, as long as the Swedish court is aware of the knight’s passing and the date of his or her funeral (it has happened that the tolling has not taken place because the court has not received news of the death of a knight).
As the bells fell silent at the end of the Seraphim tolling, the easel with Mandela’s shield was carried to the northern side nave of the church and placed in front of the wall where it will be hung with the shields of other late knights.
Nelson Mandela received the Seraphim Order when he, as president, hosted King Carl Gustaf’s and Queen Silvia’s state visit to South Africa in 1997. Crown Princess Victoria represented the Swedish royal family (and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt the government) at the memorial service held in Johannesburg on 10 December, while no Swedish representative was present at the actual funeral yesterday.

My latest article: Frederik II, renaissance king

King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway has often been overshadowed by Christian IV, his son who has been much loved by posterity. Yet Frederik II, who reigned from 1559 to 1577, was himself one of the most interesting Dano-Norwegian monarchs and indeed the realm’s first renaissance king.
He was a significant patron of the arts and sciences, and his reign saw the birth of true royal splendour at court and the advent of gifted professional artists. Such was the fame of his lasting monument, Kronborg Castle in Elsinore (Helsingør), that Shakespeare chose it as the setting for Hamlet.
Nevertheless, the Norwegian city of Fredrikstad is today one of the few places where Frederik II is honoured, as it was he who founded the town in 1567, and in Fredrikstad Museum’s yearbook, Mindre Alv XV, which goes on sale today, I tell the story of the city’s founder’s life and reign.
Since I completed this article this spring Frederik II has for the first time become the subject of a biography, written by the historian Poul Grinder-Hansen, which is also well worth reading.

Crown Princess undergoes surgery - and Crown Prince promoted

On Friday the Crown Princess underwent surgery at the National Hospital in Oslo to remove a herniated disc from her neck. The Crown Princess has been on sick leave for a while, but as the pain increased it was decided to go through with this surgery. Her neck problems reportedly date from a fall during a visit to the Ukraine five years ago. The Crown Princess will remain in hospital for a few days and it is not known when she will be able to resume her royal duties.
Meanwhile the Crown Prince was promoted to the highest rank in the armed forces in the State Council held on Friday, thus becoming an admiral of the navy and a general of the army and the air force. The King, the Crown Prince and the Defence Chief are the only generals who are accorded four stars.

On this date: 150 years of the Glücksburgs

Today the House of Glücksburg has been on the Danish throne for 150 years. The former Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg ascended the Danish throne as King Christian IX upon the sudden death of King Frederik VII, which, ironically, happened at Glücksburg Castle on 15 November 1863.
The death of King Frederik VII marked the extinction of the House of Oldenburg, which had ascended the Danish throne with King Christian I in 1448. Two centuries later, in 1660, the Danish crown become hereditary in that dynasty. From the accession of King Frederik I in 1523 to the death of King Frederik VI in 1839 the Oldenburgs boasted an unbroken line of eleven generations where son succeeded father, an unusual long line of direct dynastic descent which could only be rivalled by the Capets of France and the Stuarts of Scotland. Upon the death of Frederik VI in 1839 the crown passed to his half-cousin (at least officially), Christian VIII, whose son, Frederik VII, had no legitimate children.
Prince Christian of Glücksburg belonged to a junior line of the Oldenburgs, descending from one of the 23 children of Duke Hans the Younger, a younger son of King Christian III, but had only a very remote rights of succession to the throne. However, by the semi-Salic law of that time, his wife, née Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel, was in line to the throne after her mother, a sister of Christian VIII, and elder brother, who both renounced their rights in favour of Louise, who transferred them to her husband, who was the Russian candidate to the Danish throne and won the approval of the other great powers at a conference in London in 1852.
There will be no special celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the royal house, but today has been chosen as the date for the unveiling of a new group portrait of Queen Margrethe II and Prince Consort Henrik with their sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren by Thomas Kluge, who has earlier done portraits of Queen Margrethe, Prince Consort Henrik and Crown Prince Frederik.

On this date: Prince Charles is 65

The Prince of Wales, Prince Charles of Britain, celebrates his 65th birthday today - and, as many have pointed out, the heir to the British throne thus reaches what is the normal age of retirement in Britain.
However, as being a member of a royal family is no job, Prince Charles is far from retiring. Today he and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are concluding their official visit to India and travelling on to Sri Lanka, where Prince Charles will represent his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at the biannual meeting of the heads of government of the Commonwealth countries.
This is the first time in many years that Queen Elizabeth, who is head of the Commonwealth, is not herself present at this summit. As such it is a prime example of how her heir has gradually began to take on more of the aging monarch’s duties.
Prince Charles is the oldest heir apparent in British history and also the one who has held the position as first in line to the throne for the longest time (61 years and nine months so far), but he is not the oldest person ever to be first in line to the throne, a distinction which belongs to the Dowager Electress Sophia of Hanover, who was heiress presumptive to Queen Anne from the latter’s accession in 1702 until the former’s death at the age of 83 in 1714, less than two months before Queen Anne.
The last time the heir apparent to a European throne reached his country’s age of retirement must have been the then Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden on 11 November 1947. He succeeded his 92-year-old father, King Gustaf V, on 29 October 1950, two weeks before his 68th birthday.
When Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf turned 65 in November 1947 the succession to the Swedish throne had been complicated by the death of his eldest son, Prince Gustaf Adolf, in an airplane accident in January of the same year, leaving his then nine-month-old son, Prince Carl Gustaf (now King Carl XVI Gustaf), as next in line to the throne after his grandfather, thereby creating a 64-year-old-gap in the succession. Luckily no such troubles worry Prince Charles, who saw the succession to the throne secured for yet another generation with the birth of his grandson, Prince George, on 22 July this year. The common denominator between Gustaf VI Adolf and Prince Charles, his great-nephew by marriage, would be that they both have had enough interests and commitment to do something meaningful with their long apprenticeships.

The division of Princess Lilian’s estate

The Swedish newspaper Expressen on Saturday published details about the last will of Princess Lilian, who died in March at the age of 97. Such things are public in Sweden, and the Princess’s will and the inventory of her property drawn up after her death show that, as expected, nothing has been left for her nearest blood relatives, the half-sisters Janice Rees and Sonia Roberts, with whom she had no contact. Instead, the main beneficiaries of her will are the three children of the King of Sweden, the Queen of Sweden, Princess Lilian’s first cousin Jean Beaumond and the latter’s daughter Christine Robinson.
The Princess left assets worth 55,556,182 SEK, which does not include her home, Villa Solbacken at Djurgården in Stockholm, which was the property of her late husband, Prince Bertil, and in his will was left to Prince Carl Philip, but with his widow retaining the right to live there for the rest of her life. Prince Carl Philip also inherits everything in the villa which has not been specifically left to someone else.
The Princess’s second home, an apartment in 101 Chesterfield Gardens in Mayfair in London valued at 15,392,000 SEK is left to Christine Robinson, who has already lived there for fifteen years. All real and personal estate in England not specifically willed to someone else is to be shared equally between Jean Beaumond and Christine Robinson.
Princess Lilian’s collection of jewellery and silver, estimated to be worth 5,311,200 SEK, is divided between several relatives. As announced already in Princess Lilian’s memoirs, published in 2000, Crown Princess Victoria inherits the delicate laurel leaf tiara which was a wedding present to Prince Bertil’s mother, Crown Princess Margareta, in 1905 and which Crown Princess Victoria wore at Princess Madeleine’s wedding earlier this year.
The Crown Princess also inherits what is described as a ‘diadem of steel, white gold and diamonds’, but it is not quite clear to me what diadem this is. Expressen illustrates it with a photo of Princess Lilian wearing the sunray tiara, but this is obviously not the one as this was left to one of the family foundations by Queen Victoria. Crown Princess Victoria has recently worn twice a previously unseen diadem of cut steel, but this does not fit the description and was also worn once before Princess Lilian’s death.
Queen Silvia inherits a rather unusual necklace of five row of pearls adorned with large rubies, emeralds and sapphires as centre stones, also an inheritance from Crown Princess Margareta, as well as a modern necklace with a tennis player, a fur coat and 5,000,000 SEK. Princess Madeleine is left an aquamarine heart and a ring with an aquamarine.
Jean Beaumond, who also receives £ 500,000, is bequeathed a gold necklace with three medallions of rubies and diamonds, while her daughter receives a ring with diamonds and pearls, two boxes of bijouterie and £ 5,000.
Further, there is a watch of gold and diamonds for Princess Désirée’s daughter Hélène Silfverschiöld, who was Princess Lilian’s goddaughter, and a seat of earrings of diamonds and aquamarines as well as 50,000 SEK for another goddaughter, Eva Lilian Nilsson Wrede. A gold watch and 100,000 SEK was left to Baroness Elisabeth Palmstierna, Prince Bertil’s and Princess Lilian’s loyal Marshal of the Court, who served the royal family for six decades, retired at the age of 95 and died 27 days after Princess Lilian.
Other members of the staff are also remembered. The sisters Dagmar and Maj-Christin Nilsson, long-serving housekeepers, each receive 50,000 SEK, while the chauffeur, Stig Jurlander, inherits the Mercedes Benz car.
King Carl Gustaf inherits several artworks, including a portrait of his grandmother, Crown Princess Margareta, which hung at Villa Solbacken. A water colour portrait of Princess Lilian, also from Villa Solbacken, is however left to Jean Beaumond, while a portrait of the Princess’s great friend, the actress Kay Kendall, is left to Kendall’s sister, Rolla Campbell.
100,000 SEK are left to SOS Barnbyar in Sweden, while £ 1,000 goes to Anita, an poor child in India Princess Lilian ‘adopted’. The Anglican Church in Stockholm receives 10,000 SEK.
484,828 SEK go towards covering the costs of Princess Lilian’s funeral.

Memorial service held for Prince Friso

On Saturday a memorial service was held in the Old Church in Delft for Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau (by birth Prince of the Netherlands), who died on 12 August after a year and a half in coma following a skiing accident.
The mourners at the memorial service, held in the church where he married in 2004, were led by his widow, Princess Mabel, their daughters, countess Luana and Zaria of Orange-Nassau, and his mother, Princess (former Queen) Beatrix of the Netherlands. Prince Friso’s brothers, King Willem-Alexander and Prince Constantijn, attended with their wives, Queen Máxima and Princess Laurentien, but without their children.
The only foreign royals present seem to have been the Crown Prince of Norway, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and her husband Ari Behn, and Prince Hassan and Princess Sarvath of Jordan.
The extended Dutch royal family was out in force, including Princess Margriet of the Netherland and Pieter van Vollenhoven, Prince Maurits and Princess Marilène of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven, Prince Pieter-Christiaan and Princess Anita of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven, Prince Floris and Princess Aimée of Orange-Nassau van Vollenhoven, Princess Irene of the Netherlands, Duke Carlos of Parma, Prince Jaime and Princess Viktoria of Bourbon-Parma, Princess Margarita of Bourbon-Parma and Tjalling ten Cate, Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Parma and Albert Brenninkmeijer, Princess Christina of the Netherlands, Bernardo Guillermo and Juliana Guillermo.
Among the mourners were also Prince (Fürst) Wittekind of Waldeck and Pyrmont, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland and the singer Bono of U2.

Norway has a new government

In an extraordinary State Council at 10 a.m. today the King formally released Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his centre-left coalition government from their duties. In another extraordinary State Council at noon the King appointed Erna Solberg, the leader of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister. She will lead a minority coalition of her own party and the far right wing Progress Party, making her one of the first Conservative party leaders in Europe to welcome a right wing populist party into the government offices.
The new government has eighteen ministers, down from twenty at the end of the Stoltenberg era, which is explained by the merging of the Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs with the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and there, significantly, no longer being a Minister of International Development. The Conservatives have eleven of the posts, leaving seven to the Progress Party.
While Erna Solberg is Prime Minister, the leader of the Progress Party, Siv Jensen, has been appointed Minister of Finance, which promises to be interesting. For the Conservative Party Børge Brende becomes Foreign Minister, Jan Tore Sanner Minister of Local Government and Reform, Vidar Helgesen Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for European affairs (also an interesting choice of priorities), Thorhild Widwey Minister of Culture and Church Affairs (the name Church is, interestingly, retained although the state church has now been abolished), Elisabeth Aspaker Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs (which will now longer be a ministry of its own, but will merge with the Ministry of Commerce), Kristine (Tine) Sundtoft Minister of Climate and Environment, Monica Mæland Minister of Commerce, Bent Høie Minister of Health and Care Services, Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide Minister of Defence and Torbjørn Røe Isaksen Minister of Education and Research.
The loudest members of the Progress Party’s right wing have, interestingly, mostly been left out of the cabinet. Ketil Solvik-Olsen, the moderate deputy leader of the party, has been appointed Minister of Transport and Communications, while the other deputy leader, the far from moderate Per Sandberg, claims he has declined a cabinet post as he wants to spend more time with the family. Anders Anundsen becomes Minister of Justice and Public Security, Tord Lien Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Solveig Horne Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, Robert Eriksson Minister of Labour and Social Services and Sylvi Listhaug Minister of Agriculture and Food.

Prince Carl Philip not behind “his” design work

Prince Carl Philip of Sweden has in recent years been branded as the new “design prince”, a title often accorded to his late great-uncle, Sigvard Bernadotte, who won international renown as an industrial designer, but it has now been revealed that his claim to be a designer is a dubious one.
In the new issue of the magazine Form (no 5 - 2013) Bo Madestrand claimed (external link) to have proof that the Prince had not actually designed any of the works he is credited with, mentioning in particular the firescreen “The Castle on Fire”, which shows the silhouette of the old royal castle in Stockholm, which burned down in 1697. This was, according to Form, designed by another, anonymous designer.
The topic was picked up by Svenska Dagbladet on Monday (external link), where the journalist Erica Treijs recalled how the Prince obviously struggled at a press conference dedicated to his alleged work.
On Tuesday, the renowned company Svenskt Tenn, which sells the firescreen, decided to delete the Prince’s name from the information about the screen, rather crediting it to the design company CPhB Design AB (CPhB = Carl Philip Bernadotte).
Last night the designer Eric Ericson stepped forward (external link) to admit that he is the actual designer of the firescreen. He was at first asked to supervise the Prince’s work, he says, but soon realised that he was supposed to do all the work. Ericson describes it as an “unserious cooperation” and agrees with the others who in recent days have voiced the opinion that the Prince lacks the drive necessary to do the job, but adds that the Prince may become a designer through hard work.

Prime Minister to tender resignation

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg will submit his and thereby his centre-left coalition government’s resignation to the King today. At 10 a.m. the Minister of Finance, Sigbjørn Johnsen, will present the fiscal budget for 2014 to Parliament, after which the Prime Minister will inform Parliament of his intention to resign as a result of the election results.
His resignation will be tendered in an extraordinary State Council at the Royal Palace at 1 p.m. and the King will ask Stoltenberg to lead a caretaker government until the new government takes office. On the advice of the outgoing Prime Minister the King will then ask the leader of the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg, to form a new government. It is expected that the new cabinet, which will be a coalition of the Conservatives and the right wing populist Progress Party, will be appointed in an extraordinary State Council on Wednesday.

My latest article: Norwegian secundogeniture

Today I have a two-page article in Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, about the secundogeniture idea in the second Swedish-Norwegian union, i.e. the idea that the personal union could be dissolved by the Crown Prince inheriting the crown of Sweden while a younger prince became King of Norway.
There are plenty of examples of secundogeniture solutions being used to dissolve unions or keep countries apart (for instance Austria and Tuscany) and it was also through secundogeniture that the first Swedish-Norwegian union was dissolved in 1343.
The idea was mentioned in the 1880s, but gained momentum from 1897 and had supporters in high places, possibly including members of the royal family, but did not come to fruition before the Norwegian Parliament unilaterally declared the union dissolved on 7 June 1905. However, there are certain indications that the idea might have succeeded if the union had been dissolved through bilateral negotiations.

Conservative Speaker in defiance of parliamentary custom

Receiving the King and Queen of the Netherlands yesterday turned out to be one of the last things Dag Terje Andersen did in his role as Speaker of the Norwegian Parliament. It was announced yesterday that the Conservative MP Olaf Michael “Olemic” Thommessen will be elected Speaker when the new Parliament is constituted on 8 October. This is somewhat surprising as Thommessen was widely expected to become Minister of Culture in the new government and because it breaks with tradition whereby the Speaker is normally chosen among MPs from the largest party in Parliament, i.e. the Labour Party.
There are six seats in Parliament’s Presidium and while a parliamentary majority may in theory choose to use their strength to fill all seats with their own there is a “gentlemen’s agreement” that these ought to be distributed between the parties after size.
In the previous term this meant that Labour, which was significantly larger than any other party, had the posts of Speaker and Third Vice Speaker, the Progress Party the First Vice Speaker, the Conservatives the Second Vice Speaker, the Socialist Left Party the Fourth Vice Speaker and the Christian People’s Party the Fifth Vice Speaker. The last position should by right have been held by the Centre Party, but was given to the Christian People’s Party so that there were as many members of the presidium from the parties forming a majority government as from the opposition.
Having won a majority in this year’s general election the four parties to the right of the political centre have apparently decided to dispense with this parliamentary custom. It is, however, not the first time this happens; between 1985 and 1993 the centre-right majority ensured that the Speaker’s chair was filled by the Conservative MP Jo Benkow.
It remains to be decided who will be the other five members of the Presidium.

Prince Daniel and Prince Carl Philip awarded Order of the Polar Star

The President of Portugal, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, and his wife Maria yesterday began a state visit to Sweden and at the state banquet at the Royal Palace in Stockholm last night Prince Daniel and Prince Carl Philip wore what appears to be the neck-bagde of the Order of the Polar Star, which I am almost sure they have never worn before.
The royal website does not say anything about when they were awarded this second highest order, but what makes it all more peculiar is that the two princes wore it from the black riband that was exchanged for a blue one with yellow edges (like the Swedish flag) at the time of the order reform in 1975.
King Carl Gustaf habitually wears the Polar Star in its black riband when in civilian dress (and the now defunct Sword Order when in uniform), but this is because he was awarded the order before 1975. Christopher O’Neill, on the other hand, who was given the order on 6 June this year, two days before he married Princess Madeleine, wears it in the modern blue and yellow riband.
The only possible explanation I can think of for why the two princes have been given the old version must be that King Carl Gustaf has decided that members of the royal house (who are, since 1995, excluded from the rule which prohibits the award of Swedish orders to Swedish citizens) shall wear the old version. But if so, that is a new invention, given that the late Princess Lilian always wore the modern version of the grand cross from 1976 until she was given the higher Seraphim Order in 1995. (On the other hand, Princess Lilian received it just before the wedding when she was still a British subject).

Dutch King and Queen in Oslo

Today the new King and Queen of the Netherlands will pay a brief visit to Oslo. This is one of the one-day so-called introductory visits King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima are undertaking after their accession on 30 April. These visits are a new invention and are not state visits, but courtesy calls. Similar visits have already been made to other European heads of state, including the Queens of Denmark and Britain.
The King and Queen will hold a lunch at the Royal Palace in honour of the Dutch guests, which will also be attended by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess and by Princess Astrid. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will also meet outgoing Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and go to the Parliament Building to call on the Speaker of Parliament, Dag Terje Andersen (as the new Parliament convened yesterday but has not yet been constituted or opened the Speaker of the previous Parliament is still carrying out the duties of his office).

Queen Máxima designated Dutch regent

The Dutch Government Information Service yesterday announced that the government has made a proposition to Parliament designating Queen Máxima regent if the Princess of Orange, Princess Catharina-Amalia, should succeed to the throne before reaching her eighteenth birthday. If the Princess comes to the throne as a minor and Queen Máxima should herself be deceased the regency will devolve to Prince Constantijn, King Willem-Alexander’s only brother.
This is in line with Dutch and Orange traditions, whereby the surviving parent rather than the nearest adult in the line of succession has generally been designated regent. This was also the case in the reign of Queen Beatrix, when her consort, Prince Claus, was designated regent ahead of her sister, Princess Margriet.
The last time such a scenario became a reality was in 1890, when King Willem III upon his death was succeeded by his ten-year-old daughter Wilhelmina, whose mother, Queen Emma, served as regent for the next eight years. There are also several examples from before the House of Orange became the Dutch royal family of mothers deputising for their minor sons.

Right wing populists to enter Norwegian government

It was announced yesterday that the talks between the four parties right of the political centre which began after Norway’s general election on 9 September have concluded that the Conservative Party and the right wing populist Progress Party will begin negotiations to form a minority coalition government, while the two centre-right parties, the Liberal Party and the Christian People’s Party, will not enter the coalition. However, the four parties, who together hold a parliamentary majority, have signed an agreement whereby the Liberal Party and the Christian People’s Party have received certain concessions and the incoming government has agreed to seek parliamentary support from them.
If the negotiations succeed and lead to the formation of a government it will be the first time in Norwegian history that the Progress Party enters the government offices and indeed one of the few examples of a Conservative party forming a government with the right wing populists.
The King will open the new Parliament on 9 October. Five days later the outgoing Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, will present the fiscal budget for 2014 and thereafter tender his and his centre-left coalition government’s resignation to the King. The new government will thereafter take office within a few days.
The outcome announced yesterday marks the failure of the preferred strategy of incoming Prime Minister Erna Solberg, leader of the Conservative Party, whose aim was a majority government which included all the four parties right of the political centre. As things stand she will now first have to make compromises to the right with the Progress Party, which on crucial issues have placed itself outside the general political consensus, and when this has been achieved the government will have to make another compromise to the left to find parliamentary support. The next four years will surely not be boring politically.

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.