‌Chapter 12

‌Playing the Waiting Game

When Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark celebrated his fortieth birthday in May 2008, he did so in style. Some 140 guests joined the heir to the throne and his wife Mary for the party in the Orangery of Fredensborg Palace. Friends sang songs in his honour, and even Mary chipped in. When a group of five of them formed an ad-hoc boy band, the Crown Prince joined them on stage on harmonica. Later they all moved to a marquee erected in the garden behind Chancellery House, where a band played and drinks were served with ice brought specially from Greenland. It was not until five a.m. that the last guests finally left.

It was, by all accounts, a hell of a party, and came at the end of a week of celebrations begun on Frederik’s birthday itself, when crowds braved dismal weather to gather outside the Amalienborg Palace to catch a glimpse of the Crown Prince and the rest of the family in their familiar spot on the balcony. Among them were his two-year-old son Christian and daughter Princess Isabella, who had recently turned one and was making her first appearance on the balcony wearing a pink dress and cardigan – and a somewhat bemused expression.

Frederik had plenty to celebrate: a beautiful wife, two children and, of course, all the comforts that come from being born into a royal family. Looking back on his life, he could also boast of a highly successful few years in the military during which, through sheer grit and determination, he had qualified as a member of the elite Frømandskorpset (Frogman Corps) and took a tour of duty on the Sirius Patrol, a military dog-sled patrol servicing the northern Greenland coast under some of the most extreme weather conditions on earth.

But now that Frederik had reached an age when his contemporaries in the world of business, banking or the law were moving to the high point of their careers, what precisely was his role in life? A passionate yachtsman, the Crown Prince travelled the world taking part in competitions, but far from bringing him kudos, it looked to some rather more like having fun than hard work. There was growing concern too at the lavishness of his lifestyle, which appeared to be confirmed by royal accounts published the following May showing that he and Mary had overspent their 16.5-million-kroner budget by 2.1 million – which would have to come out of Frederik’s “personal savings”. In the couple’s worst blowout to date, all categories of expenditure rose, from payments to staff to “court expenses” (read clothes, make-up, parties), “administrative expenses” and the cost of the upkeep of their palace. Such was the overspend that in February the pair cut five from their staff of thirty.

It is a question that could be asked not just of Frederik but of every other heir to a European throne. What is it like to be born into a job that you know you will not be able to fulfil until your father – or, in Frederik’s case, your mother – dies? Once your formal education is out of the way, how do you prepare further? And how else do you spend the time until then, knowing that your every decision and action will be scrutinized and judged for your entire life in a way that almost no one else in your country has to endure?

In the days when kings ruled rather than reigned there were plenty of tasks, often military in nature, to keep a crown prince busy. Long after kings ceased to lead their armies into battle, it remained acceptable for their sons and heirs to do so. Often the heir to the throne was also plotting against his father – although in Europe, at least in the past few hundred years, none have gone so far as to attempt to overthrow him. Relatively low life expectancy also meant crown princes succeeded to the throne earlier.

There were some glorious exceptions, however, most notably in Britain, where the adult years of the future George IV – first as the Prince of Wales and then as Prince Regent – at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century passed in a haze of womanizing and extravagant spending that turned him into one of the most reviled British royals of all time, before he finally became king at the age of fifty-seven. A century later his great-nephew, the future Edward VII, followed a similarly hedonistic course, not acceding to the throne until he was fifty-nine.

Both men, by temperament, clearly enjoyed food, drink and the company of beautiful women, and had the time and money (albeit largely borrowed) to pursue their passions. In Edward’s case, at least, there was another explanation for his dissolute behaviour: his mother Queen Victoria had never been much impressed by his intellect or application and was unwilling to give him any part in affairs of state during his long wait to succeed her. Without such a role he had nothing to do apart from pursue his own pleasure, which in turn further diminished his reputation in the eyes of his mother.

Recent years have provided fewer role models, whether positive or negative, for the current generation of crown princes and princesses. The problem for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II – just twenty-five when King George VI died – and Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who was twenty-seven when he succeeded his grandfather, was a lack rather than a surfeit of time to prepare for the job. Juan Carlos of Spain was thirty-seven when he came to the throne, but his apprenticeship during Franco’s dictatorship was a very specific one and of little relevance to his son, who came of age in a democratic Spain. Albert II of Belgium, by contrast, at fifty-nine was far older when he succeeded his childless brother, Baudouin – but it would be wrong to say he had spent his life preparing for the role. Once it became clear his brother was not going to have children, it was expected that the throne would pass directly to Albert’s son, Philippe.

Margrethe and Beatrix, who became queens in their early thirties and early forties respectively, had more time to prepare – although young children also provided something of a sense of purpose to their lives. The most relevant example perhaps is that of King Harald of Norway, who did not accede to the throne until he was fifty-three. In September 1957, when he was twenty, he started attending meetings of the Council of State, and the following year served as regent in his father’s absence for the first time. Like many royals, he had a passion for yachting – which he was able to pursue at the highest level – representing Norway at the Olympics in 1964 and 1968 and continuing to take part in many international competitions.

There is general acceptance these days that members of the royal family should earn – or at least be seen to be earning – their keep. For that reason, in most countries, when the monarch-to-be is deemed to have come of age, he will become a member of a council or other advisory body and also be prepared to act as a regent in case of the monarch’s ill health – as Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon did, for example, for more than four months starting in November 2003, while King Harald was being treated for cancer, and again for another two months from March 2005 when his father was recovering from heart surgery. And then there are all the ceremonial duties that the king or queen doesn’t have the time or inclination to undertake and other representational functions to perform.

This alone is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the young monarch-in-waiting who wishes actually to do something with his or her life. Yet choosing an appropriate activity can be difficult, and they will be driven by different motives from any other young person setting out onto the job market. For a start, it is not about money: the heirs to Europe’s thrones all receive generous allowances. Nor do they have to worry about where they live: their families each have several palaces at their disposal.

So what would be the ideal royal job? Ideally, the crown prince or princess should be involved in activities that benefit the nation as a whole rather than serve their own self-interest or that of a narrow group of society. It must also not be something that could be considered political. For that reason, staying on in the armed forces beyond the initial couple of years or so deemed de rigueur can be the ideal solution. Spells in the diplomatic service, involvement in overseas aid projects or perhaps working for the European Union can be useful – except in the case of Britain, where it would be doubtless be greeted with outrage by the more ‌Eurosceptic wing of the media.1

As the oldest of the Europe’s monarchs-in-waiting, Prince Charles’s experience is instructive. He has had four decades of adult life to try to define what it means to be heir to the throne – and also in which to face controversy when he is perceived to have overstepped the mark. It has been a mixed picture.

Concern for the natural world has long loomed large in his thinking; he had already embraced environmentalism and sustainability when his fellow European heirs to the throne were all still at school. He has also long since progressed from merely expressing concern to concrete action. In 1986 – the year that saw him mocked after telling a television interviewer he talked to his plants – his Duchy Home Farm went organic, at a time when few people even knew what that meant, and in the early 1990s he began to warn of the dangers of global warming. The Prince brought his ideas together in the autumn of 2010 with the publication of Harmony, a book and film project expounding his vision of life, which drew comparisons with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. He has also rightfully won praise for his charity work, especially with the Prince’s Trust, which has worked with more than six hundred thousand people aged thirteen to thirty since he founded it in 1976.

Yet while Charles has enjoyed the undoubted satisfaction of seeing many of his environmental ideas become mainstream, he has become criticized for his advocacy of homeopathy and was roundly mocked by the British media in 2010 when he declared himself proud to be considered “an enemy of the Enlightenment”.

Most controversial have been his various assaults on modern architecture, which made headlines in 1984, when he described a proposed extension to London’s National Gallery as “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. Keen to put his ideas into action, he began in 1988 to develop Poundbury, an addition to the ancient town of Dorchester, built in a traditional style that he loves, but which many contemporary architects despise as pastiche.

For critics, Charles crossed the line of acceptable behaviour in 2009 over his opposition to a £3-billion redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks. The project, financed by Qatari Diar, the investment arm of the gas-rich emirate’s ruling family, was effectively torpedoed by the Prince’s behind-the-scenes lobbying of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a cousin of the Emir, who is prime minister and head of the company. Embarrassingly for Charles, the full extent of his involvement was revealed the following year, when the developers Christian and Nick Candy, who have made a fortune marketing expensive flats to the world’s super-rich, took the Qataris to court demanding £81 million for what they described as breach of contract – and won.

Many Londoners undoubtedly shared the Prince’s opposition to the scheme and like him would have preferred a more traditional building. Yet there was clearly a broader constitutional issue at stake. Apologists for the Prince, who appeared on television to defend him, claimed rather disingenuously that Charles was entitled to express his opinion “like anyone else” – dodging the rather obvious point that inviting the Emir round to tea, as the Prince had done, would not have been an option open to his subjects, regardless of their views on the project.

Critics, however, saw this as clear misuse of the influence that Charles automatically enjoys as part of his role. For Paul Richards, a former special advisor to the Labour government, it was merely the latest episode of surreptitious interference by the Prince, who over the years had written countless trademark “stiff letters” to ministers about political issues, whether on his own behalf or in the name of one of the twenty charities, foundations and campaigning groups he has established. Only a few have ever been published.

“Unlike his predecessor as Prince of Wales, Edward VII, he has not occupied his time shooting grouse, collecting stamps and smoking twelve cigars a day,” Richards wrote in an article in the Mail on Sunday a few days after the judge’s ruling. “In some areas, such as environmentalism, Charles has been ahead of the pack. In others, like homoeopathy, he has been dismissed as a ‘quack’. Nevertheless, there’s something disturbing and unconstitutional about it all.” The only solution, Richards suggested, was to publish all of Charles’s written interventions. The result could be a lucrative book, he added, tongue in cheek: “The Prince would make enough royalties to fund his campaigns for potteries in Kabul, more loft insulation and organic eucalyptus ‌shampoo, for decades to come.”2

Although considerably younger, Charles’s Continental counterparts have also had plenty of time to appreciate the contradictions inherent in their role – although they have faced up to their challenges in different ways. Helping his nation’s businesses, perhaps by leading trade delegations abroad, has been important for Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne, who has made many official visits to Europe and Latin America as well as to countries in the Arab world, the Far East and Australasia. He has also played a very active role in the promotion of Spain’s economic and commercial interests and of the Spanish language and culture in foreign countries. He frequently presides at economic and trade fairs held by Spain abroad. Like Frederik, Felipe is a keen competitive yachtsman.

Climate change has also emerged as an area of special interest for heirs to the throne: at the end of May 2009, Frederik was joined by Victoria of Sweden and Haakon of Norway on a five-day visit to Greenland, where they took part in research seminars with environmental experts, visited the shrinking Ilulissat glacier and studied the impact of global warming on local people. That December Frederik also played a part, alongside his mother, in the ultimately abortive Copenhagen summit on climate change.

In a newspaper interview three months later, Frederik underlined the role that royals, not as bound by short-term thinking as politicians, can play in raising awareness of the issue. “Greenland is a wonderful country,” he said. “But you can see the changes. I was most impressed by the visual things; that you can see what’s happening there. I think it’s important for me to have a message for other people from that, to convince the broader population that there are changes happening and that ‌we are making the change.”3

In the years before he succeeded his father Rainier, Prince Albert of Monaco also developed an interest in the environment. The two men travelled together to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol was signed. Albert went on to visit the North Pole in 2006 and the South Pole in January 2009, which he reached only after a two-day cross-country ski trip through wind and fog and temperatures of –40°C. In 2006, the year after his father’s death, he founded and became the chairman of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, which focuses on climate change, the search for renewable energies and many other environmental issues.

Haakon too has gone beyond environmentalism to become a global activist of sorts on a variety of issues relating to the developing world, from combating poverty to the battle against HIV-AIDS, and has taken part in the World Economic Forum in Davos. He regularly speaks to youth groups about the need for dignity, self-respect and involvement.

Willem-Alexander, putting his bar-hopping youth behind him, has successfully reinvented himself as an expert on water management. Prince Pils has become Prince Water. The subject is an appropriate one for the future king of a country whose fate is so closely linked to the sea. The reclaiming of land has made a huge contribution to Dutch agricultural production, but floods have been the cause of its most serious natural disasters – such as the one in 1953 that killed 1,835 people and left 72,000 homeless. Water – or, more often, the lack of it – is also a major problem for large swathes of the developing world.

Sport – provided it is in the service of the nation as a whole – can also be useful, but there are unexpected pitfalls there too, as Frederik found when he announced in October 2006 his desire to become a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The committee already counted a number of royals in its ranks – among them Willem-Alexander, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and Britain’s Princess Anne. Yet Frederik’s aspiration to join them prompted a tirade of criticism from royalists and republicans alike. According to Danish critics, the IOC was not only corrupt but by its nature political, especially over its willingness to turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses in member states. By becoming a member of the committee, it was argued, Frederik would make the Danish royal family complicit in such abuses. The timing was unfortunate in that the controversy coincided with a referendum in June 2009 on changing the rules of succession, which in turn provoked a broader media debate about the monarchy. The Prince ignored his critics and that October joined anyway.

Such was the strength of feeling, however, that Jacques Rogue, the committee’s Belgian president, issued a statement making clear the Crown Prince would not be obliged by his new role to take a stand on politically sensitive subjects. “Living in a monarchy myself, I understand quite well the problematic position, but we will never ask the Danish Crown Prince to do something which conflicts with his institutional role,” said Rogge. “If the Crown Prince ends up in a conflict of interest, he ‌can simply abstain from voting.”4

While the controversy was a relatively rare one for Frederik, Philippe, heir to the Belgian throne, has faced a much rougher ride from his country’s press. His problems began at the beginning of the 1990s, when he was in his early thirties. Although often seen at the side of his childless uncle, King Baudouin, and with his own home and staff, the Prince increasingly became the subject of criticism. He was reproached for his timidity and awkwardness in public, and despite studying at Trinity College, Oxford, and gaining an MA in political science at Stanford, found it difficult to shake off accusations of being an intellectual lightweight. A change in rules of succession in 1991 to allow women to sit on the Belgian throne prompted negative comparisons of him with Astrid, his charming and popular younger sister.

The sudden death of Baudouin two years later brought matters to a head. Although Philippe’s father Albert was next in line to the throne, he was already fifty-nine, and many royal watchers expected him to step aside in favour of his thirty-three-year-old son. It did not happen, and Albert himself instead became king. Those close to Philippe claim it came as a serious blow to him. Embarrassingly for the Prince, the fact he was passed over was seized on by critics – rightly or wrongly – as a further sign that he was not considered fit for the job.

In the years since, Philippe has fought back hard to try to improve his reputation. In 1996 the palace took the unusual step of arranging informal meetings with journalists to allow him to explain his projects, aspirations and the way he saw his role. The next morning, most newspapers carried pictures of the Prince alongside headlines such as “Philippe is the true successor” and “Prince Philippe will be king”. Mathilde, whom he married three years later, has also been a considerable asset: the Princess has impressed with the effectiveness with which she has carried out her role and has consistently topped the royal popularity polls.

Yet the various slurs have continued. Further fuel was added to the fire by the publication in 2003 of a book that again raised the possibility of Philippe not taking the throne: in this version, attributed to an unnamed vice-premier in the outgoing administration, his sister Astrid would become regent on the death of her father until Philippe’s daughter, Princess Elisabeth, was old enough to ‌reign in her own right.5

Being Belgium, such criticisms have inevitably been coloured by the language question: there were suggestions that the Prince is somehow more Francophone than Dutch, despite his recruitment of a number of Dutch-speaking advisors and the decision to send Elisabeth and her brothers Prince Gabriel and Prince Emmanuel to nursery and primary school at the Dutch-language Sint-Jan Berchmans in Brussels.

Philippe has generally borne such criticism in silence, but in 2007, after a particularly virulent burst of attacks in the Flemish media, he cracked. Spotting Yves Desmet, editor of the daily De Morgen and Pol Van Den Driessche, an editor from VTM television and one of those behind the 2003 book, at a New Year’s reception, he allegedly warned them he could have them banned from the palace if they continued writing negative stories about him. “You have to show me respect. I am the Crown Prince and will become the next king, so the press should not be critical of me,” the ‌pair quoted him as saying.6 Philippe’s words backfired badly: Guy Verhofstadt, the prime minister, was dragged into the row and called Philippe’s remarks “inappropriate”. The palace, meanwhile, issued a statement saying all reporters and media remained welcome there.

In one of another crop of books about the Belgian royals published in 2009 to coincide with Albert and Paola’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, Kathy Pauwels, a leading Belgian royal watcher, claimed that Philippe was unhappy that his father, unlike his counterparts elsewhere in Europe, has not done enough to prepare his son for the throne.