Whether in Monaco, Spain or the Netherlands: In many European aristocratic houses, the heirs to the throne have married bourgeois women. What sounds like a fairy tale, however, has some restrictions.
After more than ten years of marriage, Princess Charlène von Monaco is now very familiar with scandalous rumors about her life and work. However, it is not known whether she has ever gotten used to letting these sometimes ugly stories and speculations, which are often simply made up by yellow press or social media users, slip on her. But the mostly sad facial expression with which the 43-year-old appeared at public appointments at the side of her husband Albert in recent years does not seem to speak for it. Because since the former Olympic swimmer in 2011 gave her prince, 20 years her senior, she has inevitably been in the public eye. Each of your steps is observed, commented on and analyzed.
Charlène of Monaco has been in South Africa for months
At the moment it is of course a hit for her critics in the Principality and elsewhere that the mother of the country has stayed away from her adopted home Monaco since March of this year. The press office of the palace never tires of emphasizing that Charlène herself suffers most from the medical situation – and above all from the separation from her two children, the six-year-old twin couple Gabriella and Jacques.
Prince Albert even recently condescended to a rare personal statement on the occasion of his participation in appointments as part of the Kieler Woche to the magazine “Gala”. In it he emphasized that only a few follow-up examinations in connection with the last ENT operation carried out in South Africa would be pending and then one would know when the Princess could fly back to Europe. It seems questionable whether, deep down, she even feels like going back to her husband’s home, which has probably never really become hers. The former competitive swimmer, who was awarded three gold medals, may have imagined her life at the side of a real prince differently.
Prince Albert II has two illegitimate children
She had been in a relationship with him for a good ten years before they got married in 2011. And even at this time the rumor mill was seething. There was always talk of Albert’s affairs and two or three illegitimate children, two of which he actually had to recognize as his flesh and blood. One might think that Charlene would have known what she was getting into, even if it was perhaps more of a marriage of convenience than a love marriage on both sides.
In many cases it goes well when princes marry a commoner: The heirs to the throne of Denmark, Norway and the second in line to the British throne, Prince William, are good examples of this. In these all visibly happy marriages, even after many years, the respective royal relatives apparently succeeded in introducing the young women, who grew up with a completely different upbringing and in a normal environment, to their new tasks and successfully introducing them to the “palace biotope” ” to integrate.
One can only guess whether and if so which problems, even tears and confrontations, in the field of tension between old traditions and modern lifestyles behind closed doors, despite everything, can only be guessed at. How, for example, Kate Middleton, now married Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, dealt with being reviled as “Waitie Katie” in the British media over and over again in the seven years leading up to her wedding, remained unclear because she remained absolutely silent about it.
There was only evidence of this when her sister-in-law Meghan Markle and brother-in-law Prince Harry began to complain publicly about how cold and arrogant some court officials seem to deal with bourgeois newcomers to the royal court. And that even the Queen, a known loving grandmother, is first and foremost a monarch and only then is a family man. She likes to have conflicting issues resolved first through her private secretary or, if necessary, express herself by letter. However, it is only rarely available for personal discussions with close relatives and only after weeks of prior registration. This has also been learned from sources close to the Sussexes, such as Omid Scobie, who was jointly responsible for the book “Finding Freedom”.
Queen Letizia can also sing a song about the struggle against encrusted palace structures and traditional expectations of prince-brides. The formerly successful TV journalist, who had already had a short (later annulled) marriage when she became Felipe’s wife in 2004, was and is the great love of the then heir to the throne and current King of Spain. But she was not very welcome to his parents as the bride of their son and future Queen of Spain. This can be inferred, among other things, from a biography of Juan Carlos by the Spanish nobility expert Pilar Eyre.
Letizia and Felipe of Spain had to fight for their love
The father of King Juan Carlos, descended from the old Bourbon family, and above all the strict Queen Sophia, a native princess of Greece and great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, were initially against the association of their only son and heir to the throne with a commoner. And not just because Letizia had a past life. What bothered the royal couple most, besides the unequal origin, was the self-confident tone of the young woman, also towards her fiancé, and worse, even in public. When the young couple announced their engagement in front of TV cameras in November 2003, Letizia even spontaneously interrupted the Crown Prince with an impatient: “Now let me talk.”
An unheard of behavior in the eyes of the royal family and also for many Spaniards who are still strongly attached to a macho culture. For decades they had only known about Queen Sophia that she held back modestly and made her husband, the monarch, look good. As the wife of the heir to the throne, Letizia was defamed in the Spanish media as the “ice princess” for years after the wedding, and was considered hypothermic and arrogant, in contrast to the balanced and friendly Felipe.
The tabloids openly complained about why she couldn’t have such a sunny, pleasant disposition like the ever-popular Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, also a middle-class princess bride who, like Letizia, had been professionally successful before her royal wedding. Afterwards, however, the investment banker, who is gifted with high emotional intelligence, immediately and extremely successfully put her skills and charm into the service of the Dutch monarchy – without patronizing her husband – and has even been in the popularity rankings of her married home country in front of her husband. King Willem-Alexander.
From day one of the relationship with her prince, the Argentine had completely embarked on her royal mission, one day to become the new country mother in Holland. And that with the full support of her mother-in-law, the then Queen Beatrix. Already at the engagement interview she spoke Dutch for a long time, today she has been parlating it perfectly for a long time. Furthermore, she did everything possible to make Dutch customs and traditions her own. The fact that she carried out the most important princely wives’ duty of giving birth to one or more heirs to the throne (or in this case three heirs to the throne), as if on the side, is almost self-evident with so much cheerful and concentrated commitment to the Crown of Orange.
Charlène von Monaco does not speak French to this day
Not so with Charlène von Monaco: Her husband’s subjects resent her for the fact that she hardly speaks French to this day, and, unlike her world-famous mother-in-law, who died in 1982, the former Hollywood icon Grace Kelly, only rarely and reluctantly for charitable purposes in the Principality begins. She prefers to stand up for wildlife protection organizations in South Africa or, most recently, mediated in a succession dispute within the South African Zulu royal family. Last week, she posted a public image of herself and the newly enthroned Zulu king Misuzulu kaZwelithini on Instagram. In the caption, the Zulu ruler thanked Charlène for her commitment. What was particularly noticeable in the photo was how frighteningly thin and tormented the 43-year-old looked.
The South African also gave two healthy children to the Princely House of Monaco – but what a torture it felt to be on the front pages of the world’s tabloids: three long years after the dream wedding, she was expected to announce a pregnancy almost every day . Then it finally worked. Whether the children were received naturally or with the help of medical art was of course also a matter of broad discussion. After all, Prince Albert had already fathered children, there was no such proof of her fertility from Charlène (although, according to rumors, she had to undergo an appropriate test before the wedding).
Prince Albert is in Monaco with the twins
Now heir to the throne Jacques and his sister Princess Gabriella are already of school age and father Albert has looked after them like a single father for many months. On Twitter posts from the palace from official events in which the prince and his children last attended, the three seem like a harmonious little family. Apart from the twins, no one seems to be missing Charlène in Monaco. And if it weren’t for her children, whom she is apparently only allowed to see in the Principality or with her father – apparently not unaccompanied in her South African homeland – who knows whether she would be drawn back there. It will be interesting to see whether there will be a princely separation or even a divorce and then revelations about Charlène or her surroundings will follow, which will make her feelings and motives more transparent.
From outward appearances, the marriage of the Monegasque princely couple is in any case not a model for young women who would like to “suddenly become a princess” and hope to be automatically happy and satisfied with this decision until the end of their lives. Even if middle-class brides at Europe’s royal courts seem to be the rule rather than the exception in the 21st century, the success of such a connection is still anything but self-evident, even with all the love. Even today, the family environment and personal life experiences that both partners bring with them are still too different, and therefore perhaps the couple’s expectations of each other as to how marriage and family are to be designed when life has to take place under the magnifying glass of a huge public interest.
Prince Charles married his childhood sweetheart Camilla
Incidentally, a success story with detours can be reported with the much maligned Prince Charles of Great Britain: After a well-known unhappy marriage with the noble young beauty Diana Spencer, the Prince of Wales is now in the 16th year of marriage with his middle-class childhood sweetheart Camilla, apparently overjoyed. And the Duchess of Cornwall, formerly reviled as an ugly adulteress, has earned a lot of affection from the British by consistently ignoring the media incitement against her and by caring for various charity organizations. It is even now conceivable that after her husband’s accession to the throne, she will actually bear the title “Queen Camilla” in a few years. One can directly regret that in 1973 Charles was still refused permission to marry a commoner with previous relationship experience, even if he loved her back then and the two have obviously always been an excellent match.
With this bourgeois woman for her heir to the throne, the British monarchy would have been spared a lot from the very first attempt.
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