Search Queries #2 Tuesday, Aug 3 2010 

Belgium and Luxembourg and Monaco and Norway and Sweden and UK , , , , , , , , , Sam 1:21 pm

Another round of queries. You wouldn’t believe how many people want to see naked royals *shakes head*.

Height
For the most part I don’t have completely accurate measurements, especially for the likes of someone like Carl Philip, but here a few tendencies and rough estimates:
Prince Carl Philip: is small for a Scandinavian male, which is probably due to the fact that he’s not very Scandinavian by blood (the House of Bernadotte had only one or two Queens who had Swedish roots, the rest are foreigners, German, British, French etc.). Estimates are between 1,73 m and 1,76 m (do your own foot and inch calculations, I’m metric). Considering his sisters are always wearing heels next to him and CP is vain enough to have his own heels a little higher than normal, it’s hard to guess. But as his girlfriends have always been smaller than him, they must have been really tiny tiny. But yeah, 1,75 m is a good estimate for him.

Prince William is between 1,90 m and 1,92 m, estimates differ. But he’s tall. Prince Harry is maybe 2-3 cm smaller than his brother, still one of the taller ones out there.

Andrea Casiraghi falls into that category as well, with 1,90 m to 1,93 m. His brother Pierre is a few centimetres shorter, but not much. All things considered, it doesn’t really matter.

HGD Guillaume has not inherited a lot of his father’s height, he’s closer to Carl Philip with I’d say 1,76 m, maybe 1,78 m tops. Prince Félix has had more luck, he’s taller than his brother, about 1,85 m I’d say. No guarantees though.

Prince Amedeo (who I think hasn’t been a search query so far but as I was talking about him anyway…) is freakishly tall as well, ranging high up there with the 1,90 m gang. He also has a pronounced slouch when he’s with his family, because save for Joachim and Lorenz, they’re all considerably smaller.

Any more you’d like to know?

As for HGD Guillaume being able to marry a Muslim woman…honestly I have no idea. Gut feeling says no, as the House of Nassau-Weilburg is decidedly Catholic since a few generations back, but I don’t know how that relates exactly to the laws of succession. They do not, like GB, have a code that a spouse has to convert into a specific faith prior to the marriage, and Astrid of the Belgians has only later converted from Church of Sweden (which is Lutheran) to the Catholic denomination, but I have no idea how that would relate as to a completely non-Christian faith, sorry. Would be interesting to know, though, maybe Luxarazzi (tender of the Lëtzebuerg blog and usually very well informed) can make a comment as to that regard?

As for suitable brides for Prince William… Suitable how? Royal? If you don’t count on religious denominations (which are changeable) you can take Charlotte Casiraghi, Princess Theodora, Princess Madeleine, and a few Archduchesses into account, as well as some of the as-of-today defunct monarchies in Germany, Italy and the Balkans. The most suitable of those (taking into account religious faith, lack of incest within her own family, lack if incest with the British royal family and the necessary spine to stand up to the Commonwealth) is probably Madeleine, although good luck convincing her of Wills. I suppose you can sooner make CP and Wills go gay with each other before you get Madde to shoulder that particular criss on her shoulders.

I also don’t think that HGD Guillaume and Princess Madeleine will hit it off, despite the fact that they probably know each other pretty well and Aftonbladet has speculated into that direction before as well. Looking at Madde, I don’t think she’d be happy in a such decidedly Catholic monarchy.

Whatever did you want to tell me with hereditary grand duke pin up anyway? I can probably offer a few shots of him in swimming trunks, but that’s about it. And those are a good few years older as well.

Oh and Prince Félix isn’t tingling my gaydar one little bit. While that, of course, doesn’t mean much I have my doubts. Really.

For all I know Princess Mette-Marit is not pregnant again. The woman is 37 years old and has 3 children, cut her a break. The succession is more than taken care of, I doubt she and Haakon want more (unless an accident happens, we’ve had a few of those in the last generation already *waves to Caroline and Astrid*).

There seems to be an interest in seeing our current Queens (Margrethe, Sofia) young is that right? I could probably try to track down pictures…

That seems to be largely it for the moment…

 

Belgian National Day and other afflictions Tuesday, Aug 3 2010 

Belgium , , , , , , Sam 11:54 am

Promised, didn’t I?

The Belgians had their National Day the other week and I was really hoping the kids would be out in full force. Sadly, they weren’t :-(. Still, a few glimpses were possible and I can use this to introduce two more princes (and a princess).

From left to right: His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Joachim of Austria, Prince of Belgium (as the Austrian throne is defunct and only exists in form of its dynasty anymore, he will be labelled as Prince Joachim from now on, as he is a member of the Belgian royal family), His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Lorenz of Austria, Prince of Belgium (Joachim’s father who is quite high up in the Austrian succession and as I recently learned has quite a few dynastic ideas, and yes I haven’t forgotten I wanted to post about dynastic power, I’ll get to that, but for us here he is Archduke Lorenz, as that was his title before being granted the Prince of Belgium in 1991), Her Imperial and Royal Highness Archduchess Astrid of Austria, Princess of Belgium (Joachim’s mother Princess Astrid, since she is a born princess of Belgium and she acts as such rather than as Archduchess of Austria), Princess Claire (wife to Prince Laurent), Prince Laurent (youngest son of King Albert II; there’s probably stuff to say about Laurent and Claire but I haven’t been reading up on them, especially Laurent as there was a scandal, too much, so I’ll just cover the bases by saying: they exists and here they are.).

Gotta love a princess in uniform. You go, Astrid!

Generally speaking, Princess Astrid is a bit…different (make whatever you want of that but look at her dress and hattery choices at royal wedding sat some point, at Vikkan’s she was quite conventional), but I suppose you have to be in order to marry a Habsburg. Even though I’ve heard speculation that this was a half arranged marriage.

Prince Joachim is only just 18 years old, but the puppy protection is off now and mama drags him out to be official. You can see how happy he is about it.

Joachim has two older siblings (and two younger siblings *g*) and I suppose him and me both were hoping his older brother, Prince Amedeo (yes, with e and not a; the name Amedeo stems from the side of Lorenz’ mother, who was a Savoy and the oldest sons of the main line are often called Amedeo there), would take the honours of sitting next to his parents (for Joachim that would have meant not having to play royal, for me that would have meant getting another glimpse at Amedeo, after more than a year *g*). Sadly, he didn’t.

I can’t even tell you if he was there or not. After all, there was a military parade going on and he might have well been part of that.

Why? Oh, well. For one, and it needed Lara to point me to that, this is the proud mama-wave:

And for two, it would make quite a lot of sense.

Astrid was the first of King Albert’s (back then still Prince Albert) children to have children of her own, back on the 80’s. Amedeo is 24 years old, born in 1986, long before Prince Philippe (not Crown Prince then) was even thinking about marrying anyone, let alone to have children of his own. By the time Amedeo was old enough to be sent away to school, everyone must have been worried about the state of succession, which might be one reason for the royal decree of 1991, abolishing agnatic primogeniture and granting Astrid’s children (and her husband) titles of princes and princesses of Belgium. Amedeo was raised as heir presumptive to Philippe, the whole works with boarding school in England, military officer academy in Belgium, etc etc.


(Poor love *pats him*.)

This image is from the 2005 National Day Military Parade, so he just might have been part of the one this year as well, in the same capacity you see here. And yes, the hat is awful.

Anyway, Philippe did marry and had children after all, freeing Amedeo to get out of the royal circuit. I suppose Astrid wasn’t too happy about this, even though it was her who always tried to keep her children out of the limelight. One reason why I’m thinking this is because Amedeo applied to the London School of Economics (LSE) under false name and was admitted under a pseudonym. These days, he’s living in New York, working for Deloitte and running marathons.

Lorenz occasionally joins him, btw.

The most recent picture, aside from the marathon one, I have of him is this:


(Amedeo with his parents and his sister, Her Imperial and Royal Highness Archduchess Maria Laura of Austria, Princess of Belgium.)

It’s from sometime last year as well and while I quite enjoy seeing him in jeans and leather jacket, I wouldn’t have minded a few more glimpses at him from National Day footage.

As for Joachim, he’s next in line to succeed anything from Lorenz after Amedeo, and I suppose he’s praying to whatever power there is that it won’t hit him, if his facial expressions are any indication.

Amedeo himself will inherit the title Duke of Modena, additional to being head of the House of Austria-Este. If he is really really unlucky he’s next in line to the headship to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (that has to do with dynastic power plays, as there is a quite loud discussion running if a certain marriage is morganaic or not, if it was, the headship would fall to Lorenz, with his sons next in line, but I guess I’ll talk about that in the dynastic power post rather than here, especially as Habsburg House Law is not my forte). All of that doesn’t mean he’s going to live a public life, unless he marries into a ruling House somewhere (or is married off, the way his life has been pre-planned until he got himself admitted to LSE suggests he’s not going to come away lightly), but it does mean that he might have a bigger rile (dynastically speaking) and more weight (in the royal circuit) than he probably wants.

Wait and see?

 

Still not a real job Tuesday, Aug 3 2010 

UK Sam 9:04 am

I’m somewhat between shock and relief still, after Svenkdam confirmed a little article the Hindustan Times ran a couple of days ago, about Miss Middleton preparing a photo exhibition of some kind.

I believe Miss Middleton has been studying photography as well when she was pursuing her art history degree in St. Andrews, so she might actually know what she’s on about. While I still don’t think it’s an actual job (Miss Middleton being who he is probably landed this one with the help of a lot of Vitamin C, but I suppose sooner or later that’d inevitable), it is progress and she’s not spending her days waiting around for the bf to come home, running him baths and cooking him dinner.

Best of luck, Miss Middleton.

That said, there have been rumours, like this one which is one only in part. The gist of it: Four years ago, Prince William kissed a singer (with tongue!) during an award presentation and the media (silly season, you remember) dug that one up again, saying Miss Middleton was miffed about it now and retainers had told her to prepare herself that it wasn’t a question if William would take a mistress, but when. It would be a tradition among the Windsor men, look at Charles and…*sigh* there have been too many rumours about Prince Philip in his day as well.

It’s…problematic, after a fashion. I’m not discrediting these rumours, nor am I thinking the warning are too far off the mark. William, has bound himself early and everyone who says he’s not quite getting away now anymore is right (I’ve elaborated on this in earlier posts already), but if/when he marries her, I fear for the day when he’s meeting his ‘one true love’ (OTL). I suppose he could be quite happy if he met them, no mistress and all, especially if he had to work for it. But as things stand? Convenience, even if it gives you an heir, is not the same as being happy and content.