ONTD has lots and lots of pictures! Gorgeous, all of it!

Why wasn't I born royal, dabnabbit????

guys, you can still watch what is going on on Swedish TV.

They've been dating for eight years, she had to groom him. :) If you spot the princess then it's her father the King to the left of her, and then Daniels mother to the left of him.

Not bad for a little ol lady from Ockelbo (= really small town) who gave birth to a kidneydamaged sickly boy. ;)

Oh, now they cut away from the dinner. We're not allowed to see the royals eat. It's like trying to see a photo or footage of the king smoking (camel, non filtered), it's never shown.

Thanks for the link, TPS! Those dresses are so gorgeous. And Queen Margarethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark look like so much fun, don't they?

Queen Margarethe , with her cigar-smoking, oil-painting ways, always seems to be fun (with the most fun dresses).

When the high table arrived for dinner (the royals from various countries), Queen Anne Marie of Greece walked in and I said Greece? Didn't they get rid of their royals?, and my SO said: "well, she's Margarethas sister so she still princess of Denmark". "Hang on, so Ingrid of Sweden is her mother?" "Yep, her and King Gustav are cousins. In fact Constantine is not only her husband, but her triple third cousin too."
.....

"Wow, this party is just one inbred family dinner, isn't it?"

Well, the thing is, dabitch, they can abolish the monarchy but they can't abolish the monarchs. There are Kings of Italy and France still (actually the latter has multiple claimants). They're technically called pretenders.

And yes, because of Queen Victoria marrying off all her kids across Europe, now they're all triple third cousins of each other.

All that Swedish royalty and no Peter Forsberg? For shame.

Interesting, there was a big taboo about just anyone seeing a Royal eat in mainland Europe. There are stories of Kings and Queen sitting at the head of the long table, not eating, barely speaking until everyone had finished, then the room was curtained off and they got to eat and talk.

One country where this really didn't happen was France, cause the King was supposed to provide a Table for all his subjects and expected to do EVERYTHING in public.

Re, inbreeding. Charles the 2nd of Spain was so inbred he was quite deformed and couldn't eat solid food. Spain had become the richest, largest empire ever, but because their Absolute Monarchy was so ridgid and thier court so inflexible, they couldn't get rid of him and that empire just kinda dithered out of existence, holding places in the New World only in name, castles all bare and austere.

(and oh GOD the claims to the French crown are from at least three different families, what with the *two* monarchical restorations and then abolishings, French political history is a lot of things but it is not boring. )

It's so nice that everyone looks like they are genuinely enjoying themselves in the pictures.

I'm sure they're saying contentedly to eachother: So nice to be entre nous, don't you find?

Btw our queen Beatrix looked rather inelegant I thought in her tent-like gala dress. At least she's consistent through the decades. I'll say that for her.

And I was a bit disappointed that our crown prince was not wearing any epaulettes to speak of. Nor did he wear a sabre and bicorne or busby. So much taxes and what do we get?!
I know the navy doesn't have that gala uniform anymore since 1948. But he's above the rules, right? He can invent some operette uniform?!

Also I think the person who made that web page with all the royals doesn't understand exactly what crown prince(ss) means. In my understanding it's only one of them who's crown prince(ss); the one who's first in line of sucession for the crown.

Hey that was pretty interesting and I learned something!

As some bloggers pointed out, the situation would have been very different had it not been for the decision taken three years after Victoria was born - to make the Act of Succession gender-neutral.

In 1980, Sweden became the first country to allow the throne to be passed to the first-born child, whether male or female.

This meant that her younger brother, Carl Philip, was snubbed of his Crown Prince title just seven months after he was born.