The Netherlands: TheTroubled Orange Family

THE NETHERLANDS

Queen Juliana of The Netherlands and her consort, Prince Bernhard, last week watched their daughter,Princess Irene, get married. But they watched from a distance of 800 miles and over television in a room at Warmelo palace, near Amsterdam.

The TV power failed at 12:15 p.m., but there had been time to see Princess Irene become the bride of Prince Hugo Carlos de Borbon y Parma, and fortunately, the Dutch royal family was spared the spectacle outside Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore that looked more like a political rally than wedding festivities. The crowd rang with Carlist-battle cries of “Vivan los reyes!”, and students from Spain’s Loyola College, in the heart of Carlist country, serenaded the pair with guitars, tambourines and castanets. Irene’s father-inlaw, Prince Xavier de Borbon y Parma, as gaunt and straight-backed as an El Greco grandee, arranged a brief interview with Pope Paul VI, who gave the newlyweds his personal blessing and their first wedding present—a crucifix. No reigning monarchs attended the wedding, but the guests included such ghost royalty as Austria’s ex-Empress Zita and Portugal’s Duke of Braganza. Emotionally the Roman weekly L’Espresso addressed an open letter to Irene telling her “you are like a lamb caught in a den of tigers.”

Petty Game. Dutch opinion, though in less perfervid language, essentially agreed that the princess was letting herself be used by the Carlists for their own purpose, however absurd, of gaining the Spanish throne. To a lot of people outside Holland, this petty political game—and the government’s anxious insistence that the Dutch monarchy must stay out of it—did not seem reason enough for Irene’s own parents to boycott the wedding. But under the Dutch constitution the government is held responsible for the monarch’s actions. Besides, Holland maintains a sometimes precarious balance between its Protestant and Catholic citizens, was thus bound to take the issue seriously.

The Dutch were upset by the entire tragicomedy of errors, from their belated discovery that Irene had been converted to Roman Catholicism and become engaged, through the Queen’s radio announcement that the engagement had been broken, which then had to be retracted, down to the arrival in The Netherlands of the flamboyant Bour-bon-Parmas with their preposterous suggestion that the Roman Catholic wedding take place in a Dutch Protestant church. All this made the Dutch, who have a cozy, middle-class relationship with their monarchy, feel a sense of family embarrassment at the dissension in the House of Orange.

Muddled Queen. Most Dutch people now feel that Irene was too headstrong, but that the Queen could have prevented a lot of the trouble if she had been tough a little earlier in the day. Juliana was brought up under the domineering thumb of her mother, the great Wilhelmina, and was determined that her own daughters should have a happier childhood. Crown Princess Beatrix received a good education with a stress on her coming constitutional role, but the three other girls were scarcely trained as princesses and had wide freedom. A friend of the royal family recalls, “Sometimes weeks would go by when the Queen had no idea what Irene was doing.”

Juliana herself is a somewhat uncertain and muddled Queen, always late for appointments because she gets too involved in whatever she is doing. In the 1950s, she fell under the influence of a faith healer named Greet Hofmans. Juliana had long felt a personal guilt for the near blindness of her youngest daughter, Christina, an affliction probably caused by an attack of measles during the Queen’s pregnancy. Hofmans claimed she could cure Christina, and Juliana soon depended on her for spiritual and political advice as well. It was Prince Bernhard who got rid of the faith healer. While Dutch papers remained loyally silent, Bernhard leaked the story to the foreign press, and the resulting uproar brought the Queen and government into direct conflict. As a result, Greet Hofmans moved out of the palace and now lives in an old-fashioned wooden trailer on the estate of a Dutch banker.

Active Member. The Queen calls the Prince “Bernilo,” and he calls her “Julie.” He is as slim and debonair as she is shy and plump. At 52, he has long since overcome the handicap of being German by birth, is one of the busiest men in the kingdom, sits as an active member of the boards of Royal Fokker Aircraft, Royal Netherlands steelworks and KLM (in the interest of fairness, he serves only on the board of companies that have no Dutch competitors). Not only is he his nation’s most effective representative abroad, but he also provides the authority and humor the Queen lacks. In the case of Irene, he backed the view of the Queen and the government that, given the Carlist political complications, the wedding must take place without official family sanction.

With the embattled wedding finally over and Irene formally ruled out of the line of succession by Parliament, attention turned to Beatrix, who at 26 is already surer of herself than Juliana ever was. Particularly close to her father, “Trix” shares his spontaneous enjoyment of life. Once, when christening a new ship, she drenched the assembled dignitaries with champagne, and her laughter at the sight was heard throughout the country on TV. Her only apparent major problem is getting married. The government would dearly like to break the habit of finding royal consorts among the Protestant German aristocracy. But suitable Protestant princes, German or otherwise, are hard to find nowadays. The remaining daughter, pretty, 21-year-old Princess Margriet, shares her mother’s stoutness, and her hairdos have a lamentable tendency to come down about her ears.

Rinse & Set. While Irene and her new husband were honeymooning in Italy,Juliana received the good wishes of her people on her 55th birthday. Wearing glasses and with a new hair rinse and set, she drove along the road in front of the palace in a Chevrolet convertible so that the crowds could get a better look. Later, on TV, she told the nation a little unconvincingly that her roles as Queen and mother had never clashed in the matter of Irene’s wedding. She thanked her subjects for “the love you have shown our daughter Irene, whom we love so much. Difficulties often make us realize how much we love someone, and we know that you hope with us that our daughter will find true happiness.”

*In 1833, Spain’s King Ferdinand VII, dying without a male heir, named his daughter Isabella as monarch of Spain. His younger brother Carlos opposed this decision, and his supporters fought two civil wars in a futile effort to put a Carlist king on the throne. The feud still continues among Spanish monarchists, with Carlists backing Irene’s husband, and anti-Carlists the far more likely pretender Don Juan, a descendant of Isabella.