New kings in the Low Countries

King W-A seems to be cursed with one particularly unfortunate trait – he is incrudibly unphotogenic. I sympathise as I suffer also. While living in the Netherlands I’d seen him frequently in the papers looking like a bit of a fool. Then one day he came to the city of Leiden, where I lived, to do a bit of a walkabout with his mother. I saw him close up and barely recognised the tall man with the open, intelligent face who was doing a good job working the crowd. Then he spotted a press photographer and suddenly looked very familiar…(His wife of course, does not have this problem. At all. So hopefully his daughters will also escape) He must be one of the few people who really wishes he could have lived a few hundred years ago!

But it did make me think about some of the preconditions we place on holders of senior office nowadays,in terms of looking good in mass media. Gordon Brown is another figure who springs to mind as really having suffered from this.

I’ve enjoyed my visits to Belgium, but politically the country must be even more of a basket case than I’d suspected if it needs a monarch to hold it together.

The Anglophone press seems always to have used French forms (when they are distinct from the other options), presumably a consequence of having Brussels-based correspondents with (some) French and no Dutch. Using both French and Dutch (with optional German?) is much more neutral, but perhaps this is a case where we should simply use English forms in English?

By adopting German the Belgian royals would only be going back to their roots after all.

I got the impression that the real barrier for Flemish secession was the future status of Brussels- a mainly Francophone island in a Flemish sea.

@Ingrid (6)
Of course, German would be a great option. Long live König Philipp! His German speaking subjects are the true Belgians anyway, not being part of the two big groups but also defining themselves as not being German. So in the case of a breakup he could relocate to the German speaking part and form some sort of Lichtenstein with tax haven and all that ;-)

Since none of the rulers prior to 1830 were King of Belgium, the numbering starts there, though if its like the UK, the ruling name is likely determined by the king themselves. On the name thing, there’s also a now mostly-lapsed tradition of French forms being the root of “Anglicised” versions of non-French place and personal names in Europe, sometimes even in preference to the native English version. You can still see this in “Louis” being used for “Ludwig” “Luis” “Luigi” instead of “Lewis” and “Maurice” for “Maurits” “Maurizio” instead of “Morris”. Older English books would often refer to “Trier” as “Treves”, “Aachen” as “Aix-la-Chapelle”, “Regensburg” as “Ratisbon”, basically, the English literary habit was often to filter continental Europe through French, maybe that’s held over in Belgium because of the historical association of French with the ruling class.

Well, in Spain there is the use to translate the names of sovereigns to the local language, so in Castilian written articles it is ‘Rey Félipe de Bélgica’, in Catalan press it is ‘Rei Felip de Bèlgica’, for Basque and Galician I’m not sure how they’d do it.

On the name thing, there’s also a now mostly-lapsed tradition of French forms being the root of “Anglicised” versions of non-French place and personal names in Europe, sometimes even in preference to the native English version. You can still see this in “Louis” being used for “Ludwig” “Luis” “Luigi” instead of “Lewis” and “Maurice” for “Maurits” “Maurizio” instead of “Morris”. Older English books would often refer to “Trier” as “Treves”, “Aachen” as “Aix-la-Chapelle”, “Regensburg” as “Ratisbon”, basically, the English literary habit was often to filter continental Europe through French

Well, it was the language of diplomacy, I suppose.
There are others as well – Charlemagne (not Karl der Grosse or even Charles the Great), Cologne (not Koln) and so on.

But thought the Hapsburg rulers war Kings of many places, I don’t think were kings of the Low Countries.

Rulers, though, yes. Charles V and his successors.

There are others as well – Charlemagne (not Karl der Grosse or even Charles the Great), Cologne (not Koln) and so on.

Although I’ll take a lot of convincing that ‘Leghorn’ is the French for Livorno. The odd thing is that there was a parallel tradition of anglicising French place names, often by apparently pluralising them: Marseilles, Lyons.

@ Mike:

You’re only too right, unfortunately people still ‘care’ about royalty because they’ve turned themselves into hereditary celebrities, prompted by the excess media attention they’re still receiving from craven broadcasters such as the BBC. The need to hold on to this celebrity status is the main reason why ugly and/or uncharismatic royals have eschewed dynastic marriages in favour of attractive looking commoners.

It is, unfortunately, news. News about leeches.

Dont blame them personally. They dont have much of a choice and are as much victims as profiteers of the system.

Why does anybody care about royalty any more? They are a relict of an era of horrible violence and oppression, to which they greatly contributed.

As opposed to republican heads of state, who uniformly reflect an era of peace and liberty.

I’m clicking the non-royalist button on the Graun, but I think there’s something structurally advantageous to a constitutional setup that demands that the head of state has two names and three languages in order to represent the nation. (Filip/Philippe’s eldest, Elisabeth, only needs an acute accent, so smart planning on his part.)

Philip @ 24:
Now it says “Not a royalist?”, at least on the US site.
Perhaps because in a US context “Republican” usually refers to the douchebag political party of that name.

King Filip/Philippe, who is said to have less emotional and social intelligence as his father

There was an unfortunate turn of phrase in the former King’s eulogy to his successor – he said something like “and we know that you have all the intellectual and emotional capacities…” The sentence actually concluded “…to serve as King of the Belgians” or words to that effect, but I was very tempted to butt in with “…of a cabbage”.

I think it should say ‘Not a mindless cretin?’