Once this camouflage was removed and the media reflected what purported to be popular taste, the Press was able to deploy freedom of opinion and expression on a virtually unlimited scale. This introduced the heyday of the intrusive exposé, rampant gossip and runaway speculation on any subject that titillated public curiosity.
A King in the Firing Line
One of the early victims of this new Press freedom was King Leopold III of Belgium. In 1935, Leopold was widely blamed for causing the death of his wife, the beautiful and popular Queen Astrid. The queen died in a car crash in Switzerland. Her husband was driving.
Leopold’s reputation never recovered and further scandals damaged it even more. After the forces of Nazi Germany attacked Belgium in 1940, during World War Two, the King was accused of treason for making a hasty peace with the invaders.
After that, the Belgian public, burdened with Nazi occupation for the next four years, reacted with fury after Leopold remarried in 1941 while a prisoner-of-war in Laeken Castle. Although he never actively co operated with the Nazis, popular feeling against Leopold was so fierce that eventually, in 1951,he abdicated in favor of his son Baudouin.
The Sham Faith Healer
Meanwhile, in the neighboring Netherlands, Queen Juliana crossed swords several times with outraged public opinion. She first came under serious attack after 1952 when she called in a sham faith healer, Grete Hofmans, to save the eyesight of her youngest daughter, Princess Marijka.
Hofmans, a devout pacifist, was so great an influence on Juliana’s political views that the Queen became opposed to important military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The resultant scandal was not quietened until Juliana dismissed Hofmans in 1956.
Furore in the Netherlands
Several years later, the marriages of two of Juliana’s daughters caused fresh sensations. In 1963, Princess Irene converted to Catholicism and married Carlos Hugo, pretender to the Spanish throne, and a leader of Spain’s fascist party. As punishment, Irene had to renounce her place in the succession to the throne.
In 1965, Juliana’s heir, Princess Beatrix, announced her engagement to a German diplomat, Claus von Amsberg, who had fought with the German Army, the Wehrmacht, in World War Two.
The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands had caused the Dutch much pain and depredation, and angry demonstrators took to the streets, proclaiming the marriage an act of treason. The wedding took place nonetheless, in 1966.
A Prince Consort in Trouble
Next, In 1976, it was revealed that Queen Juliana’s husband, Prince Bernhard, had accepted a $1.1 million bribe from the American Lockheed Corporation to influence the Netherlands government to buy its fighter aircraft. Like the Hofmans affair, the Lockheed scandal cast doubts on the survival of the Dutch monarchy.
This was not Bernard’s first venture into dubious business deals. As a result of this latest transgression, he was stripped of his public offices and Juliana decided to abdicate in favor of Princess Beatrix. Nevertheless, anti-monarchy sentiment was so intense that there were riots on April 30, 1980 the day of Beatrix’s coronation.
The Father of the Bride Excluded
Beatrix herself veered close to scandal over the marriage of her own heir, Prince Willem-Alexander, to an Argentinian, Maxima Zorrieguita. Maxima’s father Jorge was the cause of the trouble, for he had been a government minister during Jorge Videla’s brutal dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1981.
Yet another royal marriage, it seemed, was heading for controversy, but the day was saved when Señor Zorrieguita agreed to a considerable sacrifice for a proud father: he stayed away from his daughter’s wedding which took place on February 2, 2002.
Scandal in Norway
Two years earlier, public opinion in Norway was in ferment over the romance between the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Haakon and Mette-Marit Tjessem Holby, an unmarried mother who had a child from a former relationship with a man convicted of possessing drugs.
Before long, the affair was scaling the heights of constitutional crisis. The couple made no secret of their intention to live together, and although this was a commonplace arrangement for ordinary Norwegians, there was strong public feeling that it was unseemly for royals.
Anti-Monarchists in Action
Support for the royal family plummeted and predictably, Norway’s republicans, called for an end to the monarchy.
In March 2001, just after the Crown Prince’s wedding plans were announced, a pressure group in Kirkenes, in northeast Norway, went public with a campaign aimed at dethroning the royal family. They even suggested that on the wedding day, August 25, 2001, Norwegians should leave the country in protest.
No such thing occurred and the Crown Prince and Mette-Marit were duly married on the appointed day at the Domkirken, the cathedral in Oslo which had been specially refurbished for the occasion.
Sources
Shaw, Karl: Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty (New York, NY: Broadway Books (Random House) 2001 ISBN-10: 0767907558/ISBN-13: 978-0767907552
Farquhar, Michael: A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors (London, UK: Penguin (non-classics) 2001) ISBN-10: 0140280243/ISBN-13: 978-014028024
Commoners in Royal Houses
Brenda Ralph Lewis - My interest in history dates from childhood. I am presently the author of 120 books and hundreds of articles, all on historical ...
