Queen William II

Females Rule

Yes, yes; filling my quota.

In the TV-series “Wij Alexander”, some hotel employee remarks mockingly to a shop owner:

“Didn’t only the females survive in the Dutch Royal family?”

 (paraphrased)


Yes, that’s right. Or like a poster on a forum puts it:

"The Orange Dynasty needs the women to survive."

The males have a tendency to die young, unmarried, or childless and in quite a few cases all of those.

"Willem II had 4 sons -- Willem III -- Alexander (died at 29, never married) -- Hendrik (died 59, married twice, no children) -- Ernst (died as infant).

If Willem III had not married a second wife - one third of his age and produced Wilhelmina - dynastic disaster would have struck.

He married Emma on 7 Jan 1879
brother Hendrik died 13 Jan 1879
son Willem died 11 June 1879
daughter Wilhelmina born 31 Aug 1880
son Alexander died 21 Jun 1884
The Dutch royal family was three people - King, Queen, Princess
Next closest relations were Willem III's sister Sophie and her family. She had married the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

The Dutch royal family has been singularly unsuccessful in producing males that live and reproduce.

Willem II's offspring are noted above -- He was one of two sons of Willem I -- His only brother Frederik had two sons - one died as an infant, the second lived to be almost 10!!

Willem I was the only surviving son of Willem V Stadhoulder - His first son died on the date of his birth; son #3 died at 25 unmarried."

These weak males were often the cause of the original Orange-Nassau becoming extinct.

"(The Orange-Nassaus are one of those IRRITATING dynasties that keep dying out, branch after branch after branch. The Vasas and the Jagiellons went the same way. I prefer dynasties that implode majestically, like the Plantagenets.)"

Don't we all? Or no, we don't, it’s good for a lot of gossip and rumour. It keeps the family interesting and somewhat tragically fairytale.

"Wiwill (the prince, as he was called) exiled himself and died in Paris after fornicating, gambling and drinking himself to death - in the good copany of the future Edward VII as we are always fond to add."

Love the last sentence. At that point the prince had grown out of his nickname of Wiwil and was now Willem. He was just rarely called that, rather Willem or the more fruity variation of Le Prince de Citron.

Source: Google forum

I posted this, because I noticed it as well. They were smart enough to marry in strong women, who in turn gave them some more weak males. Since they were marrying family, cousins most of the time, it’s hardly a surprise. No wonder the 20th century went by fairly smoothly under female rule.

Even now it's the women making the strongest impression. Just look at our former Queen Beatrix and at our current Queen Maxima. Then look at our King Willem-Alexander.

Yeah, sure. We know who's boss.

Our next head of the kingdom will be Amalia, Willem-Alexander's and Maxima's oldest daughter. Another Queen.

From left to right: Princess Ariane, Princess Alexia and Princess Amalia

Reflecting on the book “Wiwill”

Yesterday I finished reading the book about prince Willem IV, Alexander’s older brother.

To me it seems the prince’s governor, De Casembroot, really didn’t like the Queen, Sophie from Württemberg, King Willem III’s first wife, and gave a very coloured impression of her. The other way around is true too; the Queen didn’t like him much either, which might have influenced her behaviour towards De Casembroot. The book is not a very good basis to build a judgement on. Yet, I don’t like her much.

According to other sources, like the book about the Queen, to her friends she was a warm, intelligent, developed and sharp person. She might well have been, but it’s also known she found it easy to dislike people or thought them beneath her. She would behave according to her opinion on someone; not necessarily pleasant and all the above.

Another thing that bothers me a bit is how’s written about Alexander. Yes, he was somewhat nervous and sickly, but there was a person there. An interesting person, even. Unfortunately, the book “Wiwill” talks only about the period in which De Casembroot was with Willem/Wiwill. That means, since Alexander is eleven years younger than Willem, there’s not much to say about him yet. It was a bit disappointing, but I could have expected that.

The only standard, in no way different view to others, is the view on the King. As is well known, the King was unpredictable, mean and unreasonable, but could also be jovial, generous and friendly. He even managed a few times to say something wise. Most of the time, however, he was the ogre we all know and love.

There were things said about Maurits, but it was so little and so insignificant, I can’t even remember it. The poor child never got a fair chance to make an impression on his own instead of being compared to his brothers who did live to be grownups.


Bol.com     Google     Literatuurplein

the book "Prins Wiwill"

Whether he was smart, I don’t know. According to Wiwipedia he might have been, according to other sources, which I can’t remember, he wasn’t particularly. Over the last couple of days I read, almost finished, the book “Prins Wiwill”. The book is a dramatized telling of events. Though an interesting and easy read, it does force the author’s interpretations and opinions about people and events on the reader. I wonder how many times the prince really was in tears and how many times the author decided the prince was.

One such thing, or rather person, victimized by this approach is Queen Sophie. In part the strong opinion ventilated in the book has been brought on by the prince’s personal care taker. This man, De Casembroot, has written a diary in the period he was responsible for the prince’s upbringing. The book is based on that diary. Very likely the author’s opinion about the Queen is mainly based on what De Casembroot wrote. According to De Casembroot, the Queen is a manipulative wench who’s not afraid to use everybody, including her own son, to oppose everything the King says, does and might think and does. In some accounts it is even said she was teaching her son where to lie down on the ground and how to press his ear to the floor to hear best what was going on in the room below.

I’m not sure how much of that is true. I’ve got the feeling a lot of those rumours are what they are; rumours, passed on by all the personnel. Maybe it is true, but there’s no way we’re going to see any evidence for that.

Not only the Queen doesn’t come off lightly, Prince Wiwil doesn’t come off very well either. According to the book he’s an uninspired, lazy, indifferent kid who’s suffering from tantrums and sometimes even shows behaviour foul and mad as his dad’s. Just like his mom, in this book, the view that is shed on him is pepperred in the opninions and ignorance of the time he lived in.

In both cases I believe parts of it, because I read it somewhere else, or because I observed, for as far as I can, certain behaviour before. A lot I will write off as “the view of the time”. For instance, De Casembroot is against everything Thorbeckian, which is very liberal, especially for the time. Thorbecke was once a minister in the 19th century Dutch government. He wrote the constitution we’re living on and extract our rights from to this day. I think it’s no surprise I am, to use the 19th century expression, a Thorbeckian.

In the coming week I planned to read a book about Queen Sophie, based on her letters, if I’m not mistaken. In this case I’m going to have to remind myself, Queen Sophie liked to dramatize everything. That has become very clear from the books about Wiwil and Alexander.

What will be left is to read about Willem III, their father. I think I have a fair amount of information about the man so far. What I’m interested in, in the King’s case, is why his marriage with Sophie didn’t work, but did work with Emma. What were the differences? What did Sophie do to tick the King off and what did Emma do to calm him down?

All this study is to try and understand Wiwil and Alexander. Their tragedy, especially their demise, puzzles me. Both did nothing to save themselves. More and more I start to believe Sophie has been the great cause for that. Sure, King Willem III didn’t help, yet, Queen Wilhelmina talks about her “dear father” and she turned out to be a good Queen. I know Emma has a very big hand in that one. Still, Wilhelmina’s “dear father” stands so far apart from the hatred both Wiwil and Alexander felt. Can one man really manage to have such different and strong effects on persons all by himself. Even so, could the King?