The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 29 September 2004

First Among Equals - Part Three

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Click here for Part Two

Spain achieved the remarkable in Europe in 1975 when the monarchy was restored.  After almost a hundred years of unrest, civil war and dictatorship, the burden of steering the country towards democracy fell not to a provisional government but to Prince Juan Carlos Borbon y Borbon.  In a surprising move, Spain’s dictator Head of State, General Franco, named the young Juan Carlos as his successor in 1969. 

It can only have been a daunting task for the young King, but nevertheless, a splendid example of the duty and responsibility members of former reigning families feel for their countries.  King Juan Carlos went about steering Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy with a firm resolve and became an icon for Spaniards desperate for democracy after the hard-line rule of Franco. 

Through Spain’s many changes over the past twenty-five years, Queen Sofia, Juan Carlos’ wife, has stood firmly by his side.  Born a Greek Princess, Sofia changed her religion from Greek Orthodoxy to Catholicism to marry the Bourbon Prince.  Like Spain, their marriage has faced challenges over its life but through the rumours of the King’s infidelity, Queen Sofia has at times placed her responsibilities toward her adopted Spain ahead of her own happiness. 

The reformed Spanish Court is known for its regimental ways, which Queen Sofia found difficult in the beginning, however it seems that the nation’s enormous respect for the couple has allowed her to work with the Court. 

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia have three children, the Infanta Elena, the Infanta Christina and the Prince of Asturias, Prince Felipe.   The couple’s daughters married commoners, Elena married Jaime de Marchichalar in 1995 and they have two children.  Christina married Olympian Inaki Urdangarin in 1997 and the couple has three children. 

Interestingly, both daughters to a great degree have cultivated their own niches in Spanish life.  Elena represents the Madrid region, while Christina has embraced Catalan culture and is based in Barcelona.  If you watched the recent wedding of Prince Felipe to Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, you may have noticed that Elena wore a long, black lace mantilla and Christina a normal hat, the former a tradition of the region but not one in Catalan culture. 

Even though his sisters married commoners, finding a wife for Prince Felipe proved more difficult.  With his six-feet-four height and handsome looks, Felipe was not short of girls eager to apply for the job of Princess of Asturias.  Unfortunately for Felipe, it was long expected that he would marry someone of royal lineage.   

He had four major relationships, a German baroness, a Spanish aristocrat, an American heiress and, of course, the gorgeous Norwegian model Eva Sannum.  Eva, a model, even converted to the Catholic faith in the hope that it would improve her standing in Spain but it failed to impress.   

It has been said that a model could never win over the prince’s parents, particularly Queen Sofia.  Felipe’s relationship with Eva spanned five years.  Perhaps the relationship ran its course but a more likely reason is that it was unable to stand the relentless outside pressure. 

In these times and given the great successes of other royal and commoner unions, such as King Carl Gustav of Sweden and King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, one wonders what so perturbed the King and Queen of Spain.  The reason probably lies in the fragile relationship between Spaniards and their monarchy.  

It is said that in Spain there are more Juan Carlists than monarchists.  The nation has a proven history of being easily disillusioned by its monarchy and there is no guarantee that the country’s strong admiration of the current King and Queen will continue into the next generation, when King Felipe and Queen Letizia succeed to the throne.  King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia can only be well aware of this and thus the importance of a popular Princess of Asturias. 

Not surprisingly, Felipe seemed pensive for some time after the end of his relationship with Eva Sannum.  Reportedly he issued an ultimatum to his parents that he would marry for love in spite of his position.  To be fair, the prince is not an idiot and it is very unlikely that he would choose anyone that he did not think was up to the enormous job that they would one day be required to face. 

Happily for Felipe he did fall in love again and this time the future bride was known to all of Spain.  The surprise was that the population had no idea that Felipe was romantically involved.  The announcement of his engagement to Letizia Ortiz astonished the country.  One of Spain’s most well known young television presenters captured the Prince’s heart without anyone knowing, quite a logistical achievement! 

Once people recovered from the initial shock, they threw themselves behind the Prince and Letizia.  Indeed, royal wedding fever hit Spain, as it had never done before.  People were anxious to see how the King and Queen reacted to the engagement and were relieved to see the couple behave warmly towards Letizia, who had a year long marriage annulled some years before. 

Felipe and Letizia’s marriage, a week after the Danish royal wedding this year, was the grandest royal wedding seen in decades and made full use of the Madrid’s magnificent cathedrals and palaces.  While no one can know what will happen to Spain after King Juan Carlos’ reign, his son and daughter-in-law appear just as resolved in dedicating their lives to the future of the country. http://www.casareal.es/casareal/home2i.html  

Despite being one of the smallest countries on Earth, most people know of Monaco.  Whilst it has been around for some 700 years under the influence of the Grimaldi family and headed by His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III, its world wide fame owes much to the current Prince’s beautiful American born wife, HSH Princess Grace of Monaco. 

Together with his former movie start wife, Rainier forged a nation small in size but with a big financial backbone.   The nation perches at the point where the Maritime Alps meet the Mediterranean Sea and on its four hundred acres live 25,000 citizens and residents.  Residential skyscrapers appear to rise out of the sea and are looked over by the ancient Rock, which is crowned with the prince’s pink palace.   

It is one country where the monarch can literally gaze from the palace and see his entire realm.  It is also one of the few countries in the world that can claim to have increased its land size by twenty-five percent.   In the area east of the Rock, Prince Rainier began a project twenty years ago to reclaim land from the sea by landfill and drainage.  Once completed, the operation added a hundred acres of land to the country. 

Princess Grace’s life seems on the outside to have been a complete fairytale.  An ethereal beauty, as Grace Kelly she was also a success in her own right and an Academy Award winning actress.  She left Hollywood in the prime of her career to marry her prince but appears not to have felt her life the stuff of Hans Christian Andersen. 

Princess Grace possibly didn’t realise the extent of what she was giving up to marry Prince Rainier.  It is one thing to live life as a movie star, under the constant glare of one kind of spotlight and restrictions in one’s private life but quite another to be the consort of a reigning Prince and representing the citizens of an entire nation.   It was also a momentous cultural change.   Apart from being the daughter of a demanding and difficult man, Jack Kelly, Grace had grown up in a relatively free and easy way in America, vastly different to the confining and often unforgiving clique of European high society.  Being a creative and contemplative woman, the princess never completely adjusted to the demands of duty that came with being Princess of Monaco and yearned to work in Hollywood again. 

Prince Rainier and Princess Grace’s three children are as well known as their parents.  Few people might know the names royal family members of other larger European monarchies but courtesy of the Grimaldi children’s famous mother and their inherited good looks, the three are widely recognised. 

In my opinion, their eldest child HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover is one of the great beauties of the world.  In her youth she was known for her wild ways and ill-fated marriage to the French playboy Philippe Junot.   Her second marriage to Stefano Casiraghi was a love match and the couple had three children, Andrea, Charlotte and Louis.  The princess was utterly bereft when Stefano was killed in a motor boat race in 1990. 

Caroline takes her duties very seriously and is a great ambassador for her country.  When she remarried in 199X to HRH Prince Ernst of Hanover, she married ‘up’ becoming a Royal Highness.  She and Ernst have a daughter, Princess Alexandra.   

Understandably,  Caroline is very media shy.  Her life has been one of enormous interest to others but the paparazzi have dogged her mercilessly.  We are poorer for this, as she is actually an exceptionally smart woman who speaks a number of languages fluently, including ancient Greek and has a sound academic background. 

In 2003 Prince Rainier amended the laws of succession so that rather than revert to France, should Prince Albert remain unmarried and not produce and heir, the throne will pass to him and then to Caroline and her children.  There is every chance that this scenario shall indeed eventuate and if not Princess Caroline, her eldest son Andrea will become the Prince of Monaco. 

There are lots of rumours circulating about Prince Albert, Rainier’s heir.  Some say he is gay while others say that he is waiting to become Prince, so that he may marry the woman of his choice without parental intervention.  Whatever the state of his personal life, the Prince works hard for his country and appears quite capable of running the principality.  He will face challenges in the role as the European Union gains strength and continues its path of ‘modernising’ Europe and breaking down the quirky tax and banking laws that make small countries like Monaco and Liechtenstein so popular. 

The youngest child of Rainier and Grace, Princess Stephanie is the family’s most infamous member.  Her private life is nothing short of exhausting to observe.  The poor girl is inadvertently responsible for the denuding of some of the world’s forests in the reams of gossip that have been written about her life.  For all her madcap ways, what is interesting to note is that despite her soap-operatic lifestyle, she is not a malicious human being.  

Sadly for Stephanie, she will always be remembered for being in that fatal accident that claimed the life of her mother, Princess Grace.  Speculation that she was, in fact, behind the wheel of the car at the time of the crash continues to haunt her.   She has publicly said that this was not the case but the gossip continues.  There is little doubt that the incessant rumour and speculation and the crash itself, has had a profound effect on the Princess.  She was, after all, a teenager at the time of the crash and the burden of the speculation, untrue or true must have been unbearable.  

The Prince of Monaco, Rainier, has spent the last twenty years of his life without his beautiful wife by his side.  The utter devastation we saw in his face at the funeral of his Princess was so intense that one could not help but feel guilty watching him in such a private moment.  Their marriage may have had its challenges but the couple made a superb team, a combined force that strengthened and possibly ensured the principality’s future. http://www.monaco.mc/monaco/700ans/grimaldi.html#rain  

The only other principality in Europe still under the control of a ruling family is Liechtenstein.  Nestled between Switzerland and Austria, the country covers 160 sq. km and is home to thirty three thousand citizens. 

The principality has recently been in the news when HSH Prince Hans Adam, Head of the House, passed on most of the day to day running of the country to his heir Prince Alois. 

Prince Hans Adam has been a controversial figure.  Earlier this year he organised a referendum to give the ruling Prince even more power.  In the lead up, he joked that if he did not get his way he would sell the country to Bill Gates!  Perhaps the threat of Bill Gates living in the mediaeval castle high above the capital, Vaduz, stirred the population into a resounding ‘yes’ vote but a more likely answer is that Liechtensteiners let their prince have his way. 

While Liechtenstein has been in the family hands for centuries, the country has been a sovereign state since 1806, although the first Prince to actually visit the state did so some years after in 1842.  The country remained neutral, in the Second World War after Hans Adam’s father and predecessor, Prince Franz Joseph met with Hitler to ensure the Principality was not drawn into war.   

Hans Adam’s late mother, the elegant Princess Gina recalled that during the war, when neighbouring Austria was in blacked out in case of allied bombing, Liechtenstein was lit up like a Christmas tree. 

Princess Gina was a young woman when she married Prince Franz Josef and in an interview she later recalled that, “I remember walking past a very old lady in a village one day who turned to her friend and said, ‘That’s our new mother!’  I was quite taken aback because, being so young, I didn’t feel motherly at all!” 

The family’s wealth is immense.  No one knows exactly what the family is worth and it probably doesn’t bear guessing.  They probably have the greatest private collection of art works in the world and enormous land holdings across Europe but, despite this wealth, they are extremely low-key. 

HSH Prince Hans Adam and his wife HSH Princess Marie have four children.  The hereditary Prince Alois is married to HRH Duchess Sophie of Bavaria and the couple has four children.  The second son, Prince Maximilian is married to African American fashion designer, Angela Brown and the couple has a son.  The third son, Prince Constantin is married to Countess Marie Kolnoky and the princely couple’s only daughter, Princess Tatjana, is married to Philipp von Lattorff. http://tinyurl.com/5caxh 

- Gioffredo