Spanish Senate approves King Juan Carlos's abdication
By 233 votes against five, and twenty abstentions, the Spanish Senate on Tuesday passed the bill authorising King Juan Carlos's abdication. The King will sign it into law in a ceremony at the Royal...
View ArticleKing Juan Carlos has abdicated
In a simple ceremony of less than twenty minutes, held in the Hall of Columns at the Royal Palace at Madrid at 6 p.m. today, King Juan Carlos signed into law the so-called organic law authorising his...
View ArticleWill King Harald abdicate?
“After King Harald’s abdication – Mette Marit [sic] to be queen” was the title on the front page of last week’s edition of the Swedish gossip magazine Se & Hör. Inside we can read that the “royalty...
View ArticleMy latest article(s): King Juan Carlos and Princess Leonore
I have written two articles in the July issue of Majesty, which went on sale in Britain today and will soon also be on sale in other major European cities and parts of North America. The first deals...
View ArticlePrince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist to marry next summer
Last evening the Swedish royal court announced the engagement of Prince Carl Philip to his longtime girlfriend Sofia Hellqvist. The wedding will take place next summer, but there has not yet been time...
View ArticlePrince Amedeo marries in Rome
On Saturday Prince Amedeo of Belgium, a nephew of King Philippe, married his longtime girlfriend Elisabetta Maria Rosboch von Wolkenstein, known as Lili, in the ancient Basilica of Santa Maria in...
View ArticleMarianne Bernadotte speaks on radio on 90th birthday
Today is the ninetieth birthday of Countess Marianne Bernadotte af Wisborg, philantropist, actress and aunt by marriage to the King of Sweden and the Queen of Denmark. In 1961 she married as her second...
View ArticleMy latest article: Felipe VI
The August issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 35, No. 8) went on sale in Britain on Thursday, and this month I write about the inauguration of King Felipe VI and the up-hill struggle...
View ArticleOn this date: 300 years of the Hanoverians/Windsors
300 years ago today, at around 7.30 a.m. on 1 August 1714, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland died at the age. As the Queen had lost eighteen children and Catholics had been disinherited by the...
View ArticleBook news: Princess Esmeralda on her grandparents
In two weeks Princess Esmeralda of Belgium will release her third book on her family history. While her previous books have dealt with her father, King Léopold III, and her mother, Princess Lilian,...
View ArticleWidespread indifference to royal choice of private schools
The recent announcement that Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus would switch to private schools caused something of an outcry in Norway, where most children go to public schools, but on...
View ArticleMy latest article(s): Emeralds and Reims
I have two articles in the September issue of Majesty (Vol. 35, No. 9), which went on sale on Thursday. The first one deals with the emerald parure that is the pièce de résistance of the Norwegian...
View ArticlePrincess Ragnhild’s granddaughter marries – in a tiara
This is a bit of old news by now, but on 9 August the late Princess Ragnhild’s granddaughter, Victoria Ribeiro, married Felipe Falcão, to whom she became engaged in November last year. The only member...
View ArticleDuchess of Cambridge pregnant with second child
The British royal court has announced that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, aka Prince William of Britain and his wife Catherine, are expecting their second child. The announcement seems to come...
View ArticleRoyal jewels: Princess Astrid’s aigrette(s)
In recent years it seems Princess Astrid, who is now 82, has more or less given up wearing her larger tiaras, i.e. the Vasa diadem of her mother and the diamond and turquoise coronet of her...
View ArticleElizabeth, Queen of independent Scotland?
In a week from today, the Scots will vote over whether Scotland should become an independent country. While the no campaign has had a clear lead for months, the opinion polls are now so close that the...
View ArticleSocial Democrats win power in Sweden
Fredrik Reinfeldt has announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Sweden and leader of the Conservative party after having taken a severe beating in Sunday's general election, whose only real winner...
View ArticleAt the road's end: Prince Nicholas Romanov (1922-2014), head of the Romanov...
It has been reported that Prince Nicholas Romanov, the head of the Romanov Family Assocation, died on Monday, shortly before his 92nd birthday. A great-great-grandson of Emperor Nikolay I of Russia,...
View ArticleMy latest article: When Christian Frederik met Carl Johan
History is full of great adversaries who never met face to face - Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots, Napoléon I and Wellington, Churchill and Hitler, to mention a few examples - and it is...
View ArticleWalburga Habsburg Douglas loses Parliament seat
A week after the Swedish general election all the votes have now been counted and the distribution of Parliament seats between parties and candidates finalised. Some of my readers may be interested in...
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