The royal inauguration
May. 2nd, 2013 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mekyriaI write a bit about Queensday every year in my lj. Despite being a country full of opportunistic judgemental hypocrits, we still like to celebrate the birthday of our queen every year. Sure, there are comments about the cost of the royal household, and whether we need royalty or not, but overal our royal house is an excellent face for our country, a face that opens a lot of doors for us internationally. The royal family earns about 5 biljon per year for the Netherlands by playing the game of politics well so I am not complaining about their salary. Queen Beatrix announced her retirement in January and monday was the last queensday. The day will transfer to another date (27th of april, birthday of our king, instead of 30th of april, birthday of the mother of our former queen) and be called Kingsday. Boo!!! After 123 years of being reigned by a queen, we now have a king.
The whole country was in upheaval about the song composed for our soon to be King, as it was completely and utterly pounded into the ground by an academic based on the grammar and logical errors in the text. At least the Dutch like to unite over a sense of humor, as the offciail interview with the prince and his wife was soon dubbed over on national tv as satire. The prince himself mentioned in the interview that a name with a number is something that should be done with cows, not kings (on chosing to be called King Willem-Alexander instead of Willem V). All in all, a lot of fun was had at the expense of our king, but we are still excited by the news and we like our extra bank holiday too much to actually dethrone him.
He is a very modern man who decided to go with an inauguration instead of a crowning, would be okay if his function was strictly ceremonial, and even stated that he would follow the will of the people with regards to continuing the royal tradition. We watched the ceremony in the livingroom of Mr.R.'s mum, who had reinforcement in the form of three aunts in the age range of 70-80. Watching a royal ceremony is so much more fun when there are elderly people present. You really should try it. These ladies had the hots for the three adorable daughters of our prince, who behaved perfectly even though it was boring and cold to sit in the church during the ceremony. Here's a picture to show you how adorable they are and they are even cuter when they are in a family portrait. The abdicated queen whispered into the ear of the eldest princess during the ceremony to explain things. Good for her, for training our future queen.
The ceremony itself was nice, a big show of designer dresses, hats, proper form and very slow walking. Beautiful music too, by choirs and musici*.I told Mr.R afterwards that it felt to me like one of those moments that people might refer to later as a historic moment, and we were there to witness. Not as big as landing on the moon, but still. I even wore something orange for the occassion.
It was a memorable day, spent in good company and ended up on the balcony of Mr.R. with a bottle of oranjebitter (liquor made from oranges) and a good conversation in the warm afternoon sun. It was the first time for me to not be in Utrecht during queensday, scavaging the market with Ikaiya, but it was good. Time for a change: long live the King!
*for this occassion, I had to search for the 6th verse of our national anthem on my smartphone so I could sing along, as I can't remember ever singing more then the first verse. Apparently it is tradition to sing the first and sixth verse, leaving out the other 13 verses on account of nobody being able to remember the whole thing.
The whole country was in upheaval about the song composed for our soon to be King, as it was completely and utterly pounded into the ground by an academic based on the grammar and logical errors in the text. At least the Dutch like to unite over a sense of humor, as the offciail interview with the prince and his wife was soon dubbed over on national tv as satire. The prince himself mentioned in the interview that a name with a number is something that should be done with cows, not kings (on chosing to be called King Willem-Alexander instead of Willem V). All in all, a lot of fun was had at the expense of our king, but we are still excited by the news and we like our extra bank holiday too much to actually dethrone him.
He is a very modern man who decided to go with an inauguration instead of a crowning, would be okay if his function was strictly ceremonial, and even stated that he would follow the will of the people with regards to continuing the royal tradition. We watched the ceremony in the livingroom of Mr.R.'s mum, who had reinforcement in the form of three aunts in the age range of 70-80. Watching a royal ceremony is so much more fun when there are elderly people present. You really should try it. These ladies had the hots for the three adorable daughters of our prince, who behaved perfectly even though it was boring and cold to sit in the church during the ceremony. Here's a picture to show you how adorable they are and they are even cuter when they are in a family portrait. The abdicated queen whispered into the ear of the eldest princess during the ceremony to explain things. Good for her, for training our future queen.
The ceremony itself was nice, a big show of designer dresses, hats, proper form and very slow walking. Beautiful music too, by choirs and musici*.I told Mr.R afterwards that it felt to me like one of those moments that people might refer to later as a historic moment, and we were there to witness. Not as big as landing on the moon, but still. I even wore something orange for the occassion.
It was a memorable day, spent in good company and ended up on the balcony of Mr.R. with a bottle of oranjebitter (liquor made from oranges) and a good conversation in the warm afternoon sun. It was the first time for me to not be in Utrecht during queensday, scavaging the market with Ikaiya, but it was good. Time for a change: long live the King!
*for this occassion, I had to search for the 6th verse of our national anthem on my smartphone so I could sing along, as I can't remember ever singing more then the first verse. Apparently it is tradition to sing the first and sixth verse, leaving out the other 13 verses on account of nobody being able to remember the whole thing.
