The House of Orange has turned crimson with rage over shocking revelations depicting popular Queen Beatrix as a manipulative supersnob who falls asleep at parties after two many glasses of wine and her father Prince Bernard, aged 90, as a serial philanderer who kept a mistress at the palace for decades.
The Dutch royal family has long been immune to the kind of embarrassing scandal that has so plagued its British counterpart. But, to make matters worse, the lid has been lifted, not by the so called "boulevard" press in the Netherlands, but by an insider - the Queen's niece and god-daughter, no less.
Now the feud between Princess Margarita and her Dutch husband, Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, and the royal family is threatening to spill out into the courts.
The pair, now living in France, allege that a sustained slander campaign against them was orchestrated by the monarch and her court which has ruined their livelihoods.
De Roy van Zuydewijn, described as a business entrepreneur, claims to have lost millions of euros in contracts.
He and his wife say companies who were on the brink of signing contracts with his "Fincentives", a business specialising in personnel options, which he set up, mysteriously pulled out at the last minute. They claim the reason was pressure from the Dutch royal family.
According to palace insiders, de Roy van Zuydewijn was seen as a "bit of a dodgy character" who infuriated them for styling himself a baron and using the title in France. A genealogical expert told a Dutch newspaper with good royal contacts that his wing of the family had never been titled.
Now a well known law expert, Professor W. J. Slagter of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, who also runs a successful legal business, has confirmed that a legal action was planned and the couple intended calling 35 witnesses to back up their claim of a long-running hate campaign. The Rotterdam legal firm of Mastenbroek were said to be preparing court papers in advance of a civil action.
For two weeks now a Dutch public, unaccustomed to any controversial publicity about its royalty, has been flocking to the news-stands to lap up further instalments of life inside the royal goldfish bowl in the current affairs magazine HP De Tijd.
Princess Margarita Bourbon-Parma, who is the eldest daughter of the Queen's younger sister, Irene, told how she was raised by a succession of nursemaids while her mother, the author of holistic books who regularly swims with dolphins and talks to trees, busied herself elsewhere.
She portrayed her aunt and godmother, the Queen, as a tyrant who had decreed that the man she subsequently married, de Roy van Zuydewijn, was unsuitable and should be deemed an untouchable.
When the couple married in France in 2001, few members of the Dutch royal family turned up. They claim that, whenever they attended family gatherings since then, they have been ignored, insulted and ostracised. De Roy van Zuydewijn told how he was subjected to "psychological terror" around the royal dinner table during an inquisition about his business background. At one royal wedding the Queen personally ordered de Roy van Zuydewijn to be removed from the group photograph while his outstretched hand was deliberately ignored by a lady-in-waiting when he attempted to shake her hand. At one party they had attended, on the Queen's birthday, the monarch was slumped in a chair asleep and she drank a lot of glasses of wine, de Roy van Zuydewijn told the Dutch magazine.
But more disturbing disclosures also emerged. The couple claimed that their home in Amsterdam was bugged and de Roy van Zuydewijn's mail intercepted by the intelligence service.
Margarita's father, Carlos Bourbon de Parma, who is divorced from her mother, ordered an investigation into de Roy van Zuydewijn's medical records to see if he was HIV positive and tried to obtain bank and social welfare records to damage him, they say.
Princess Margarita also alleges her grandfather, Prince Bernard, who banned them from his 90th birthday, kept his mistress, who was also his personnel assistant, at apartments in the palace for decades and made his grandchildren call her "aunt".
Queen Beatrix is said to be appalled at the intrusion into the House of Orange's closely guarded privacy and furious with her niece. The only official statement has been one stating that "out of love for Margarita the family does not wish to comment".
Dutch royal biographer Fred Lammers, who has written books on Queen Beatrix and Crown Prince Willem Alexander, told the Independent: "This is all a nightmare come true; for years the Queen prided herself on avoiding the type of thing which has so damaged the British monarchy. Now it seems the skeletons are being rattled and, if anything, what's emerging here is even more damaging."
A TV documentary series screening in Holland will focus on the power wielded by the Queen's father, Prince Bernard, while his wife, Juliana, was on the throne. Several prominent interviewees have confirmed in the programme that he fathered a number of illegitimate children, according to the newspaper De Telegraaf.
- INDEPENDENT
Royal scandals go Dutch
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