Let’s just first note something: Both Wiwill (Wiwill) and Alexander let their health slip. Wiwill partied hard in Paris with much alcohol and girls. Alexander locked himself up in his palace not even opening a window and keeping the shutters closed not letting in any fresh air nor light. Was it stubborness or inability?
I think it’s fair to say they were both very stubborn.
Wiwill refused to give up his love, but when Mattie’s parents also refused it left him all alone. Still mad with his father he decided to stay away from him as far as possible and he relocated himself to Paris and refused to return to the Netherlands. He only returned to visit his mother and brother.
Alexander on his part locked himself up. His stubborness became apparent when the King, after the death of the Queen, found himself a new woman and married her shortly after. Alexander let all the curtains in his palace down on the wedding day. Neither did he ever meet his half-sister Wilhelmina, and the new Queen Emma only once incidentally. The contact with his father got worse and worse, even after the King reaching out to him; Alexander refused.
That stubborness was also in their parents. The King pledged to fight the new constitution from the moment his father, the then King William II, signed and commited to the constitution (1848). He kept his pledge, but never managed to turn things around back to absolute power for the King.
Queen Sophie was a very independent woman with strong ideas of how things should go. In everything she did, she tried to do it her way and in some cases even manipulate people into doing things to her advances or views. She certainly never gave in to her husband and she fed her ideas and opinions to her children.
Part of their (King, Queen and Princes) behaviour came from stubborness, but I also believe in all these lives the tragedy of their fates had a great and cripling influence on them.
The King was stuck in a role he didn’t want to be in. He could have refused the throne, which at first sight he was about to do. In the end he did accept the throne and became the longest running King in the 19th century in the Netherlands. Why he accepted in the end is not clear. What is clear is that he was not happy within that role. The combination of his unhappiness and his natural difficult character, made him an unbearable, violent and unreasonable man.
The Queen was stuck in a marriage she didn’t want to be in. She accepted III’s hand, because of her own father who had, together with the then crown prince William II, arranged the marriage. When she ventilated her worries and disapprovement, she was told that princesses didn’t have a right to be happy.
Later in the marriage, after Maurits death, Sophie returned to Wurttemberg with the intention of divorcing III and staying in Stuttgart (where Wurttemberg was). Prince Frederic, III’s uncle, intervened and convinced Sophie not to push for divorce. Also her own father didn’t want her to divorce, so Sophie returned reluctantly.
Wiwill, who became heir apparent to his father in 1849, had great trouble accepting his fate, just like his father. On top of that he wasn’t allowed to marry the girl he loved. All the royal strains put on him left him bitter and angry.
Alexander, who became heir apparent to his father after the death of Wiwill in 1879, wasn’t interested in becoming a King either. Also Alexander had trouble with the strains of being a Prince.
Both had grown up constantly being put down by their father and a mother with a tendency for dramatizing in an invironment that in any case puts strains on ones behaviour in a time those strains were tightend even tighter.
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| This was made for the celebrations of III's 25th aniversary of being King. They never posed like that, because no-one involved was prepared to pose for a family portrait |
We’re talking here about two unhappy people, in an unhappy bond, in a situation that doesn’t give air, raising two children with amplified bad habits, unhappy and unhealthy (for mentality) behaviour, influencing those children and damaging them for life. We know the end results.
What puzzles me is the inaction of the two sons. Not the kind of inaction on a work related basis. III kept them from business as far as possible, just like he’d done with his wife. He gave them only small tasks. No, what puzzles me is the inaction on the own health front. I think their minds were so poisoned, they weren’t even able anymore to take at least care of their fysical health. I think they both landed in a vicous circle and they couldn’t break out anymore.
This might be the fatal combination: 1) Their father’s habit to throw themselves into the situation they don’t want to be in, because they don’t see a way out and 2) Their mother’s habit of dramatizing the situation even further.
1) King William III didn’t want to become King with the freshly rewritten constitution that had taken the last grains of absolute power from the King. When he found everybody badly wanted him to become King anyway, he relented and threw himself at the task screaming and kicking in an attempt to turn things around for his own benefit. In the 40 years he was King, he failed at that one thing and the Netherlands has a constitutional democry ever since his father, William II, signed the constitution.
2) Queen Sophie had the habit of dramatizing every situation. According to some people she did it to attract even more pity, or to submerge herself into it. It has been said she tried to create an image of a Queen people had to feel sorry for and think she was a poor social soul caught in a bad situation. I don’t know how much is true of that, but I do know she did write down certain situations more dramatic than they really were. Possibly, in the end she herself believed in the level of drama she had conjured up and therefore saw things even darker and therefore made it appear darker. It is true she was not a very happy person.
The result:
If both Wiwill and Alexander owned these two habits, it would have thrown them into situations that seemed unsolvable so they threw themselves at the situation, because they didn’t see a way out. Then the habit of dramatizing it even more would make the situation seem even graver and the boys would completely go with it striding towards their fate. In their opinion, there was no way out of a situation that was unsolvable and unbearable so they ran with it instead of finding the right means to fight it.
This seems a bit unfair, because both Wiwill and Alexander both fought for what they thought were their rights. Wiwill took a very strong and unmovable stand when it came to his marriage to Mattie (Anna Mathilda van Limburg-Stirum). King, Queen and country had to allow him to marry Mattie or he stayed away from the Netherlands forever. In the end it was Wiwill who lost.
Alexander fought three times in public by one open letter to a paper and by two brochures written by himself defending his decision to not appear at the opening of the States General. Then there was the whole case of his candidature to become Grand-Master National of the Freemasons. Alexander did manage, in the first case, two quieten his opponents and in the second case to win the position of Grand-Master National. All that for what it was worth.
So this turns out to be some musings rather than a proper analysis. I hope I have given some stuff for thought.
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