Orange madness is not something of recent years. Around the inauguration of Queen Wilhelmina, all kinds of orange knick-knacks were already for sale. And the brewers had their hands in their hair:too few beer taps for all those thirsty people!
We have not had Oranges as king or queen for very long in the Netherlands. After the French suppression in 1813 the call was made for an Orange. Willem Frederik, the son of the expelled last stadtholder William V, was offered the crown. The allied rulers were in favor of a strong buffer state between the Netherlands and Belgium to the north of France and gave their blessing to Willem.
Willem I designs script
But what now? In the Netherlands there was no tradition of crowning kings. The future King William I was quite a control freak and interfered with everything. He designed the script for the day and the ceremonies with his own hands. In doing so, he had to take into account his Protestant and Catholic subjects. Willem I chose Amsterdam as the place for the ceremony, as this city had the most prestige.
The old town hall on Dam Square, still nailed down to a residence by the French King Lodewijk, was given to Willem as a gift from the municipality. From the palace he would walk to the adjacent and equally imposing Nieuwe Kerk. This was where the vote of the representatives of the people for the new constitution had to take place during a meeting, followed by Willem's inauguration.
William could not be literally crowned, as a coronation ceremony had to be performed by an 'emissary of God'. So a cleric, and that became difficult without an official state church and with both Protestant and Catholic subjects. He decided on an inauguration by swearing the oath on the constitution instead of the Bible.
This non-religious ceremony nevertheless took on a religious tinge, because the Protestant Willem I insisted that the church service should take place immediately after the inauguration, presided by a Protestant minister. The Catholics were not happy about this, but Willem didn't care. He was an old-fashioned monarch in heart and soul and would regularly clash with his representatives. William I gained absolute power with his kingship:he took the decisions about all new laws and he could ignore the opinion of his parliament when it suited him.
Calvinistic frugality
The day itself started at eight in the morning with 101 gun salutes. Willem was put on a simple army uniform next to the red coronation cloak with ermine, specially made for him. He had also chosen the crown, scepter and orb himself and they were very simple:it should not cost too much. The foreign guests would secretly laugh at this sobriety.
After his wife and daughters arrived by carriage, it was Willem's turn. He walked from the palace to the church, together with his two sons and at an appropriate distance from the public on Dam Square. Two thousand lucky ones among them had managed to get a ticket for a place inside, after being in line for one night.
The inauguration would take quite a while. The chairman of the meeting first gave a long speech, Willem then gave his inauguration speech and then the entire constitution was read aloud. After all this Willem, with two fingers raised in the air and the other hand on the Constitution, would swear allegiance to the Constitution, “so help me God Almighty!”
To conclude, the chairman swore his oath of allegiance to the new king on behalf of all Dutchmen. Unfortunately for the relieved attendees, who thought it was over, the secular ceremony was followed by another church service, including a sermon of one and a half hours.
After all the ceremonies in the church were over and everyone left, the king's employees began to scatter commemorative coins of gold, silver and especially copper from the balcony. The Illuminati followed in the evening :burning lanterns hung all over the city, laying Amsterdam in a friendly glow. Willem I made another tour to see all this beauty and to be applauded before joining his guests at the gala ball. The Amsterdammers also partied outside for hours.
Glamour that beats the clock
The inauguration of William I became the basis of the next throne changes. He did not remain king until his death, but abdicated after unsuccessful attempts to keep Belgium under the Dutch flag. His frivolous son Willem II succeeded him in 1840. The prince loved glamor and made sure that both he and the church looked tip-top and in the latest fashion. He also had a more beautiful royal cloak, crown and associated attributes made. He threw buckets of tax money at it to start his kingship with allure, while his subjects died of starvation. He was not thanked for this.
The day itself was largely the same as in 1814, only the whole ceremony and church service lasted even longer than the last time. And that while it was November and freezing cold in the church. After the entire ceremony, everyone left the church and the royal family made their way to the balcony. From this inauguration, waving to the frenzied crowd was part of the tradition.
The Illuminati at the end of the day stole the show again and was even more beautiful and ingenious than last time, this time with gas lighting. During the festivities that evening, panic arose in the street and six people were trampled in the Kalverstraat, including two pregnant women. This horror would, except for a single line, be banned from the newspapers:the press only brought positive news, for example about the beautifully decorated church and the attire of noble ladies.
King Gorilla
Willem II would not even sit on the throne for a decade. It could have been even shorter, as he ruled in a Europe overrun by revolutions. Monarchs were brutally deposed and Willem II realized in time in 1848 that he had to opt for a new constitution. The great concession was to transfer his power to ministers. His successor, later William III, did not feel like acting as a puppet and left for his mistress in London.
The crown prince was not really the jewel of the royal family:he drank a lot and often, went to the whores or had them come into the palace and was touchy in character. Yet, when his father died unexpectedly in 1849, the Netherlands would rather have him as king than no king.
Willem gave in and was, in the tradition of his father and grandfather and as laid down in the constitution, inaugurated in Amsterdam. He impressed with his large and stately figure. In terms of dressing of himself and of the day, he had found a middle way between the stingy approach of Willem I and the excess of Willem II.
The new king was not very religious and caused the sermon to expire. He also abolished the reading of the constitution. As a replacement, all MPs present, after William's oath, swore allegiance to their new king one by one. During the ensuing balcony scene, the new king and his family waved and commemorative coins were scattered again. The royal family unwittingly witnessed how the mob of maddening paupers began to beat each other's brains for a few cents. This was the end of coin throwing.
Old William, also known as King Gorilla because of his loose lifestyle, remarried at the age of 61 to Emma van Waldeck-Pyrmont, who was 40 years younger. He survived all the children from his first marriage, but fortunately the king had another daughter with Emma in 1880, Wilhelmina. For her, the constitution was amended and from then on a woman was allowed to be the head of the Netherlands. Rather a queen than a male relative from Germany on the throne, even if the common opinion was that women and politics did not mix.
Orange condoms
When Willem died in 1890, Emma took his place as Queen Regent. Her PR was masterful and she distributed adorable photos of the princess throughout Wilhelmina's childhood and toured the country with her. In this way, the Netherlands has been acquainted with the royal family in a positive way for years. It didn't do the Oranges any harm.
An inauguration committee had already started the preparations for the ceremonies diligently in 1895, so that everything was arranged down to the last detail. Orange madness was no stranger to the Dutch even then and the whole country was decorated. In addition, you could buy all kinds of merchandise tap the head, from orange condoms to orange train tickets and from memorial plaques to underpants.
The day before the just eighteen-year-old Wilhelmina was to swear the oath, she received several death threats. She and Emma took the letters very seriously:it was a time of anarchist attacks on heads of state, which had already resulted in some deaths. The well-known Empress Sissi would die in such an attack four days later.
In fact, Wilhelmina did not dare to walk alone from the palace to the Nieuwe Kerk, but the protocol prescribed that she could only be accompanied by men. Since she was not yet married and had no brothers, Wilhelmina had no choice. Her plea to Emma to leave protocol behind and walk beside her had had no effect.
Fortunately nothing happened and the girl arrived at the throne in one piece. Her voice was unexpectedly strong and clear during her speech, making it difficult for even the most stubborn Republicans to hold back their tears. Against protocol, the crowd started shouting 'Long live the Queen!' after she had sworn the oath.
After all representatives of the people had had their say, the ceremony was over. After more than half an hour the new queen was outside again, exhausted. At eleven o'clock in the evening, the party people on Dam Square took off their shoes to give her a good night's sleep.
Drunken king's cloak
Wilhelmina's daughter Juliana feared ascending the throne her whole life. She had a completely different view of royalty than her mother and often went against Wilhelmina. She also dreaded the golden cage:she preferred to be ordinary. When the time came in 1948, she was nervous. Juliana was already married to Bernard and mother of four children, when Wilhelmina indicated that she had run out after exactly fifty years of reign. Willem I's abdication script was adhered to and on September 4, Wilhelmina was declared dead before the law had put her signature.
Two days later, the inauguration of Juliana took place, the preparation of which had mainly been in the hands of Bernard. After the war, he thought the people were now entitled to a fairy tale and was not deterred by Juliana, who would have preferred a sober ceremony. Bernard, who himself looked regal in his decorated dress uniform, went to church against protocol next to Juliana. Juliana sparkled in her royal cloak, which, however, was fake. Her 19-year-old couturier thought Willem II's old cloak was too discolored and had made a new one on her own. He was only supposed to confess it the day before the inauguration and this has been kept a secret for years.
During the ceremony, without anyone noticing her nerves, Juliana spoke the famous words, “Who am I, that I may do this?”, referring to Moses, who was to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt. Then turn to her mother. This personal touch in the speech was unprecedented and would prove emblematic of Juliana's kingship.
The moment she swore allegiance to the constitution was captured on camera and edited afterwards. This also applies to the camera images of the balcony scene on September 2. It has been carefully brushed away that Wilhelmina's teeth came loose when she "Long live the Queen!" wanted to call. The RVD, founded in 1945, took its work seriously.
Most violent throne change ever
Juliana wouldn't sit through the ride either:in 1980 her daughter Beatrix took over from her. This time, the enthronement and inauguration would take place on the same day, on Queen's Day. After the signatures of both ladies, the balcony scene with Claus and their three children followed. The crowd was kept at bay as the atmosphere in the city was grim. The squatters were protesting the housing shortage with their slogan "No home, no coronation" and received support from anyone who felt like rioting. During the balcony scene, someone set off two smoke bombs on Dam Square and Beatrix kept her speech short.
The noise from outside penetrated the church, where a real battle was going on a few hundred meters away. The police and riot police had been ordered not to shoot and complied with it, despite being pelted with stones and officers having to be taken away seriously injured. The rioters had to be stopped because once on Dam Square they would disrupt the ceremony. However, a group managed to escape the eye of the police and set a few more cars on fire before they could be stopped near Dam Square.
During Beatrix's speech, the sound of the police helicopters above the church could clearly be heard. Beatrix's voice remained determined and calm and for the first time the oath also sounded in people's homes:television images of the historic moment poured into the living rooms en masse. That evening it would remain restless in the capital for a long time, but Beatrix and her guests were not bothered by this:they watched the Illuminati, this time a large fireworks display above the IJ, without being disturbed.
Argentine charm
Now, 33 years later, the Dutch royal family is more popular than ever. This has a lot to do with the arrival of the charming and charismatic Maxima. Republicans expected in 1980 that Beatrix would be the last queen, but nothing could be further from the truth.
On April 30, 2013, Willem I's script will be taken out again and the festive day will start with the traditional 101 gun salute. Beatrix will die before the law because of her signature, but that should not spoil the fun. Our new king will swear allegiance to the constitution and the Dutch people to him. Thrice Hooray!