Haakon, by a whisker

Best wearer of facial hair of 2014, so far, is the always bearded Haakon Magnus of Norway.  The Norwegian heir just won the poll to find the best beard among Europe's royals - but only by a whisker. Haakon Magnus took 41% of the votes, only just ahead of Prince Felipe of Spain on 33%.

Crown Prince Haakon Magnus of Norway has rarely been seen without his beard and moustache in the last few years - this is an official portrait from 2013

But there is some good news for Prince Harry.  The poll was inspired by reports that the Queen has asked the youngest Wales brother to shave off the facial hair he grew while trekking to Antarctica before getting back to royal duties.  But in the survey, Harry didn't finish last in the best royal beard wearer.  He was third - out of four - with 17% of the ballots.  The prince propping up the poll was Frederik of Denmark who got just 5%.

Royal pictures of 2013: Spain

The unexpected, and unusual, sight of a kiss between King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia caused a stir in September 2013.  The king was waiting for the arrival of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands when his queen surprised everyone by joining him and then planting a kiss on his cheek.  There was much speculation as to why Queen Sofia had chosen to show so much affection to her husband in public.  It was later reported that around this time the king had discovered he needed another operation on his hip and his wife was offering some comfort almost immediately after the diagnosis.  But just days later, rumours swept Spain via social media that the king was about to abdicate.  Within hours, the royal household denied this and revealed the king's new health problems.  But the picture remained one of the most surprising of 2013.

The unexpected kiss.  This rare display of public affection between Juan Carlos I and his consort, Sofia, sparked huge speculation

The whole county was devastated in July when a train crashed at speed on the approach to Santiago de Compostela and 79 people were killed, with hundreds more injured, in the incident.  The royal family spent a lot of time in the area after thecrash with the Prince and Princess of Asturias and the Infanta Elena attending the memorial service.  The image of the king and queen in the city so soon afterwards was symbolic of the concern and heartbreak many felt for those affected by the incident.

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain in Santiago de Compostela in the aftermath of a train crash that left 79 people dead

On October 12th 2013, the Prince of Asturias took the salute at Spain's National Day parade for the first time.  King Juan Carlos was still recovering from an operation on his hip and his son and heir led the royal family on this important day.  Queen Sofia did not attend the military parade, leaving Felipe and Letizia alone on the royal dias but the consort did lead the reception for dignitaries afterwards with the prince, princess and the Infanta Elena lending a hand with the handshaking. The image of a king in waiting acting for the king in this hugely significant event is one of the photos of the year for Spain's royals.

 The Prince and Princess of Asturias on the royal dias during Spain's National Day

on October 12th 2013

The prince had experienced bitter disappointment earlier in the year when he saw his dreams of bringing the Olympic Games to Madrid in 2020 come to nothing.  Prince Felipe had taken a leading role in the bid process and his energy and enthusiasm was credited by many for making the Spanish capital the favourite of the three cities bidding for the honour.  The prince's final speech to the International Olympic Committee was well received but was not enough to stop Madrid being eliminated first from the vote.  But the image of the prince, with his hand on his heart, trying to convince the IOC to bring the games to Spain enhanced his reputation.

Prince Felipe during his speech to the IOC in the last bidding round for the 2020 Olympics.  Madrid lost out to Tokyo

There was a brief moment of sunshine for the Spanish royals in the middle of another difficult year.  Queen Sofia gathered all her grandchildren around her for a short while during the annual holiday in Mallorca and posed with them for a generational shot that is becoming rarer and rarer for the Spansih royals.  The queen's devotion to her family had been shown earlier when she'd been photographed out and about with a handbag bearing photos of all eight of her grandchildren.

Queen Sofia of Spain with her daughter, the Infanta Elena, and her daughter-in-law, the Princess of Asturias, as well as all eight of her grandchildren during the family's annual holiday in Mallorca in August 2013

Letizia: a decade of surprises

Ten years ago today, the King and Queen of Spain made an announcement that ran to just twenty nine words and took the whole country by surprise.  The confirmation that their only son, and the heir to the throne, Prince Felipe was to marry came on a Saturday afternoon when no one was expecting it.  The name of his bride was as much a shock as the fact that he was getting married at all.  Letizia Ortiz began her path to royalty as part of one of the biggest surprises in recent regal history and she has carried on surprising ever since.

The unexpected consort - Letizia of Spain's relationship with Prince Felipe was Madrid's best kept secret for months

 

Virtually from the moment he became a teenager, the topic of who Prince Felipe would wed was an endless source of interest.  He was linked to just about every young royal in Europe at one point but it was the attention given to his actual romantic relationships that really made the news.  From the young love of Isabel Sartorius to the almost marriage to Eva Sannum, the prince and his possible princesses had kept everyone talking for years.  So the appearance of Letizia Ortiz with an engagement ring and a date already booked at the Almudena Cathedral surprised on many levels.  Apart from the fact that no one knew he had begun another relationship after the well publicized and difficult ending of his link to Eva Sannum in 2002, his choice of bride was about as unexpected as could be.  While concerns over her parents' divorce had ended the partnership with Isabel Sartorius, Felipe now presented a future wife who not only had divorced parents but was a divorcee herself. 

 

Doing quite a good job of pretending not to know one another, Prince Felipe is seen with Letizia Ortiz at the Principe de Asturias awards in 2003 when the couple already planned to get married

 

But if the choice of Letizia was unexpected, her passage as a princess has been filled with even more surprises.  The former Ms Ortiz has never tried to fit the mould of traditional consort in waiting.  The famous 'dejame terminar' of the engagement press conference raised laughs at the time but signaled something that became clearer about Letizia as time went on - she did things her way.  While royal engagements were usually filled with smiles and general chit chat about love, the bride to be's request that her fiancé let her finish became the most controversial words at a royal betrothal since Prince Charles' equally replayed 'Whatever love is'.  And while she temporarily tried tradition with a Pertegaz wedding dress, the new queen consort in waiting was soon back on her own path.

 

 

Prince Felipe of Spain married Letizia Ortiz on May 22nd 2003 in Madrid

 

It's hard to list all the surprises that Letizia has sprung in the ten years since she entered the royal fold.  From her clothes to her quotes, from her changing appearance to her relationship with the press, everything she does is just ever so slightly different from the way that others do it.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  But her insistence on doing things her way - even if the infamous quote of not working weekends has never been directly attributed to her - has led to a lot more criticism than other queen consorts in waiting get.

 

 

The princess in one of her most controversial outfits - trousers and no jacket for a military parade

 

Some see her as a breath of fresh air and a modernizing voice long needed by the royals, others as a liability.  However history writes her tale, one thing is sure.  The beginning will always remain one of royalty's biggest surprises. 

Kate, Letizia, Mette-Marit and Mary vs the press

The poll is now closed and it's honours even among the queens competing for title of most misunderstood. Margaret of Anjou and Anne Boleyn got 50% of the votes each with no one thinking poor old Isabella, the She Wolf of France has been harshly treated by history.

 

Margaret of Anjou and Anne Boleyn - misunderstood queen consorts of England

  

But why is their reputation so harsh?  Part of it is to do with how they were represented at the time.  Neither took any prisoners - well, Margaret did but she soon got rid of them - and their uncompromising outlook put them at odds with the idea of being a woman and a queen at the time and with the powerful courtiers whose prestige they undermined.  So does it all come down to getting a bad press?

 

How else does the story of a queen consort or one in waiting come to us other than in other people's words?  It's still not the done thing for these women to speak for themselves.  Royalty might be at the top of the tree in their own countries but they're one of the few groups of people without a voice of their own.  The magic of monarchy for many is in its mystique but if does that leave it open to misinterpretation? 

 

 

Kate is used to being on the front pages but future historians will know far more about her from what other people say than from the Duchess herself

 

The queens in waiting in Europe are a case in point.  Kate, Mary and Mette-Marit were all subjected to intense public scrutiny before getting engaged to their princes while Letizia found her life being picked apart after her marriage, such was the speed and surprise of her engagement. Who comes out best and who is the most misunderstood of our modern monarchs in waiting?

 

That's the poll this week - which future queen consort is having the hardest time in the way her story is being told?  Kate of Cambridge is riding a wave of public support and the moment, just two years into her royal marriage and about to deliver the future heir to the throne?  But she's had her moments and spent years being dubbed Waity Katie by some as her courtship with William spanned nearly a decade before they wed.  That will be part of the tale told by future historians - how fair is it?

 

 

Kate got her prince but they married almost ten years after first meeting - how will history tell that part of the duchess' story?

(Tom Soper Photography)

 

Because once there's a ring of some sorts on your finger then a princess in waiting gets a lot more protection than a possible princess.  Mary of Denmark also had a long courtship with her prince charming allowing the press to pick over every aspect of her life and character.  From meeting Crown Prince Frederick at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 to the announcement of her engagement in Octobr 2003 she was subject to intensive press scrutiny, even after her move to Denmark ahead of the marriage being confirmed. 

 

 

Mary Elizabeth Donaldson had three years of press scrutiny before she married the Crown Prince of Denmark

(photo Visit Copenhagen)

Mette Marit of Norway had a lot to pick over from her pre-princess days but however much help and protection royal houses try to give the girlfriends of the kings to be, there's only so much they can do.  Mette-Marit had to protect her young son as well and the fact that she was a single mother gave the papers plenty to talk about.  Once safely ensconced in the royal fold the questions are answered for you by press officers but how much of the way Mette-Marit's tale was told before her engagement will stick to her future appearances in the history books?

Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway had a lot for the press to chew over as she continued the relationship with Haakon Magnus that would lead to the throne

(photo Frankie Fouagnthin)

 

No such problems for Letizia whose engagement to Felipe of Spain was a surprise to many when it was announced on Spanish TV on a Saturday afternoon late in 2003.  With hardly anyone knowing that the couple were seeing one another, there were no tricky questions to answer for this future queen consort even though she was on TV every day reading the news.  Given that Felipe's previous girlfriends had seen their lives examined in close detail, it's no surprise he wanted to keep his latest relationship quiet but it did mean that a lot of the chatting that inevitably accompanies the arrival of a new royal love interest needed to find an outlet at a later date.  Would Letizia have got an easier ride from the press in the long run if she'd enjoyed a longer courtship?

 

 

Letizia of Spain was a well known journalist before she started making the headlines herself

(photo Holger Motzkau)

 

Later this week we'll look at how these princesses' stories have been told after their marriages and whether the press takes a different stance when a royal girlfriend becomes a wife.  And then there's the poll - which queen consort in waiting has had it hardest from the papers, TV and radio covering their lives, the voices that are the real historians of today?



Spanish royals cause a stir

While Denmark had it easy picking a name for their heir and Belgium and Sweden used recent history to inspire choices, other European monarchies have delved a bit deeper into their pasts and caused a bit of a stir while doing it.  In Spain, the choice of Leonor for the first child of heir to the throne, Felipe, came totally out of the blue.

 

Infanta Leonor of Spain with her parents, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia, and the King and Queen of Spain.  Her cousin, Pablo Urdangarin, stands in front of King Juan Carlos.

But once the surprise had passed, a long list of Spanish royal Eleanors came to light as role models for a future queen.  The name first entered the House of Castile in 1177 when Eleanor, the second daughter of Henry II of England and his queen consort, Eleanor of Aquitaine, married Alfonso VIII.  The new Queen of Castile wielded considerable political power and she enjoyed a successful reign until her husband died in 1214 when she herself became ill, dying soon afterwards .  Her name was passed to her granddaughter and the royal families played queen consort swap, this new Eleanor of Castile arriving in England to marry Edward I and become queen consort.

Eleanor of Castile was the great granddaughter of the first Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine who became Queen Consort of France and then of England.

 

 

No one is quite sure what the name Eleanor means with some linking it to the name Helen or Elena.  It was most likely a name created for that great medieval monarch, Queen Consort Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ruled England as consort from 1154 to 1189 and then exerted her influence as Queen Dowager until her death in 1204.  She was the mother of two kings, a young king, two queens and a duchess among others and her power was unrivalled by many men let alone women.

 

 



Eleanor of Aquitaine was a power player of epic proportions - her control of her lands, her tenants and the men around her has never really been rivaled

 

 

Eleanor's mother was Aenor and it's thought she was named after her, the world 'alia' meaning other being tagged on the front of her name to give Aliaenor or the other Aenor.  Whatever it's origins, her influence meant that it was picked up and used by noble families across western Europe.  It survived as a royal name well into the 18th century with a Queen of Sweden, Ulrika Eleonora, bringing it to prominence again.  Her unique place as a Queen Regnant who became a Queen Consort, being forced to abdicate in favour of her husband, adds another legend to the name.

 

 



 

Ulrika Eleonora was Queen Regnant of Sweden from 1718 to 1720

 

 

Given how long her influence has lasted, Eleanor of Aquitaine is a pretty formidable role model for any young royal.  But the presence of another future queen with the name might be enough to put the Cambridges of using it for a first born daughter who will one day be queen of her country.