Random royal stories or facts

[JustAnotherWhinger]

A random fact about King Harald of Norway got me think about all the random/interesting/bizarre stories and facts about royals and thought a thread of them could be interesting.

Harald, who died today, was the first monarch to be born in Norway for over 600 years.
His grandfather, Prince Carl of Denmark, was selected to be the new King of Norway in 1905 (he became King Haakon VII.

Another Danish prince, George, was selected to be the King of Greece in 1863 and reigned until he was assassinated in 1914. He was Prince Philip’s grandfather.

Great photos @Enko 💐

Lovely picture, thank you!

Looks like it'll be a full house of royals at Harald's funeral. (The article gets auto translated if you click through)
https://www.nrk.no/norge/disse-kommer-i-kong-haralds-gravferd-1.18010536

not King Charles though
and i cannot get the translation to work sadly

It’s quite rare for the British monarch to go to a royal funeral. It’s in large part so that offences isn’t caused by attending some funerals and not others.

It was seen as quite a remarkable statement when QEII attended King Baudoin’s funeral in 1993.

That's really intriguing . . . we seem to be the only nation that follow this apart from, perhaps, Japan? I think all the European countries will be represented by their monarchs

Do you know why QEII went to King Baudoin's funeral? I don't think she was related to him whereas there is the very close link to the Norwegian RF via Queen Maud

That makes sense - and I see from further down the page that Charles (then PoW) attended King Olav V's Funeral in 1991.
I think Princess Anne going will be seen as an extra mark of respect (or perhaps reflecting the family closeness?).

It didn't translate for me either, @HoraceCope.

Princess Anne is godmother to the new King (Haakon) so, my understanding is she's attending in that capacity, as support to her godson

Yes, was coming back to add that as have just read it elsewhere.

Tbh I don’t know why she went to the funeral. There are two very different stories that seem to be around

The first is that they spoke quite often and he was one of the people who understood her. He was 21 when he became King. His father was basically forced to abdicate. There was a lot of scandal and stresses and the responsibility ended up falling on him. So they were in similar positions.

The other is they the government made her go and she was very reluctant, but there was a big trade deal at the time that was seen as nationally important.

It’s made even stranger by the fact that when his wife, Queen Fabiola, died in 2014 the British royals didn’t send anyone at all to the funeral. The British ambassador represented them.

I don’t want to re post as it’s long, but in the King Harald funeral thread there’s a long list of royals who’ve confirmed attendance.

From Britain William is representing Charles and Anne is going as Haakon’s godmother.

@AustenitesUnite the British royal family seem more isolated from other royal families. On the continent you see royal families from other countries get together, the children meeting up and attending events together. But the British royal family don't do this.

Something that also struck me today is that Edward and Sophie are usually the BRF representatives at foreign royal events. They’ve been the ones doing the weddings and most ceremonial coronation style events for years now.

Yet for funerals the strict protocol being applied means it’s not them that go. Yet they’re likely the ones who know the other royal families best.

That’s a bit crap really.

That's interesting as I've noticed this but thought it was due to the age of the families.

The new Norwegian King & Queen and the Danish, Dutch, Belgian & Spanish Kings all have families with children who are teenagers or in their early twenties so haven't yet had much experience of Royal engagements other than attending their National Days etc. Most of them are either at university or doing military service which limits their time for attending engagements.

So I presumed the photos we see of them together were because of their age and, eventually they will branch out (particularly the Crown Princesses & Crown Prince Christian) and do their own engagements

It will be interesting to see how things develop in the next few years, particularly as Princess Elisabeth of Belgium (who I think is the eldest of this group) has just finished her masters degree at Harvard and has already completed her military service

Sorry, I've just reread your post and realised I may have misunderstood. Did you mean that the Royal families from Europe socialise with each other? If so, yes I agree. The photos from the "Coming of Age" type of parties indicate this and I can't remember any of the British Royals attending

But, again, I wonder if it's an age thing as the Wales children are so much younger than the cluster of European Royals who are all pretty much in the same age group . . .

I'd heard that monarchs don't usually attend the funerals of other monarchs but quite a lot of kings and queens attended Elizabeth II's funeral, IIRC. Perhaps she was an exception to the rule due to the sheer longevity of her reign?

When Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg died in 2019 there were quite a few monarchs at his funeral but the UK were represented by the Princess Royal and the Duke & Duchess of Gloucester

It was to be fully expected that the King & Queen of Belgium would attend as they are closely related but the Kings of Norway, Spain & Sweden attended as did the Queen of Denmark & Beatrix of the Netherlands as well as Prince Albert of Monaco

I think who goes is very much got a lot to do with the links between the families.

Grand Duke Jean’s wife, Josephine-Charlotte was the daughter of Princess Astrid of Sweden. Her Aunt was Crown Princess Martha of Norway, King Harald’s mother. Astrid and Martha were the daughters of Frederick VIII of Denmark and his wife was a Swedish princess.

British royals used to spend a lot of time with the Spanish and Greek royals, again due to connections. They also spent/spend a bit of time with exiled Russian royals.

I think there’s less connections between the British royals and other royal families now because there are less recent-ish marriage.

Of the last few generations of British royals only George, Duke of Kent and QEII married foreign royals. And they were both from Greece. Whereas in other families the connections are still much more recent.

Prince Richard’s wife is Danish (Thr Gloucesters)

And obviously Harry’s wife is American.

There's an Australian Princess Charlene also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlene,_Princess_of_Monaco

Married to that shit Prince Albert of Monaco

Isn’t Charlene South African rather than Australian?

Birgitte is indeed Danish, but not Danish royalty.

The point I was making (obviously not as clearly as I thought) was that the British royal family hasn’t had the same level of recent-ish marriages into the other royal families as other royals families have with each other.

She's South African, not Australian

Maybe you're thinking of Queen Mary of Denmark, formerly Mary Donaldson, who is Australian?

Oops. Got her confused with Kylie 😀

ETA

Queen Mary of Denmark is from Hobart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Mary_of_Denmark