Royal debate stirs as Sweden preps for princess' wedding
Source: Agencies |
June 14, 2010, Monday
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IT will be a royal moment of glory set against the bleak backdrop of Europe's financial crisis.
The June 19 wedding in Stockholm Cathedral between Crown Princess Victoria and her personal trainer Daniel Westling has triggered debate about why an otherwise egalitarian country like Sweden retains such an archaic - and expensive - institution.
As in neighboring monarchies Norway and Denmark, the Swedish royals' responsibilities are purely ceremonial but they still enjoy privileged lives compared to ordinary people.
Many here are questioning the 20 million kronor (US$2.5 million) price tag of the wedding at a time when ordinary citizens are being asked to endure a new age of austerity.
The royal court defends the lavish outlays, saying the wedding will generate large returns from tourism and souvenir sales.
But anti-royal rumbles are on the rise.
Since Victoria, 32, and Westling, 36, announced their engagement a year ago membership in the Swedish Republican Association has doubled to 6,000 and more than 56,000 people have joined a Facebook group calling for a refusal to pay for the wedding.
While newspapers and TV shows have speculated on wedding dresses and royal etiquette, columnists have started debating the monarchy.
In the capital, Stockholm, a group of poets turned down a request to compose love poems for the wedding celebrations and wrote anti-royal poems instead.
"The royal family is a guarantor of the class society and that is the decisive argument against the monarchy," one of the poets, Thomas Tidholm, said.
According to the royal court, half of the wedding's cost will be paid by Victoria's father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, and the other half by the government. The Swedish state is also expected to spend tens of millions of kronors on renovating the cathedral, security and hosting international media.
Most Swedes are pleased to see Victoria marrying a man of the people, although some say it might destroy the fairy-tale image the monarchy needs to survive.
Westling, who ran his own gym business in Stockholm before the engagement, grew up in an ordinary middle class family in the rural village of Ockelbo in central Sweden. His mother worked as a clerk at the Swedish post office and his father was manager at a municipal social services center.
The monarchy tradition in Sweden dates back more than 1,000 years. The current Bernadotte family, with 64-year-old King Carl XVI Gustaf at the helm, originates from 1810 when French Marshall Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected successor to the Swedish throne by Parliament.
The monarchy's greatest challenge in recent times was in the 1970s when lawmakers stripped King Gustaf VI Adolf of his last remaining powers in a compromise between royalists and republicans.
The June 19 wedding in Stockholm Cathedral between Crown Princess Victoria and her personal trainer Daniel Westling has triggered debate about why an otherwise egalitarian country like Sweden retains such an archaic - and expensive - institution.
As in neighboring monarchies Norway and Denmark, the Swedish royals' responsibilities are purely ceremonial but they still enjoy privileged lives compared to ordinary people.
Many here are questioning the 20 million kronor (US$2.5 million) price tag of the wedding at a time when ordinary citizens are being asked to endure a new age of austerity.
The royal court defends the lavish outlays, saying the wedding will generate large returns from tourism and souvenir sales.
But anti-royal rumbles are on the rise.
Since Victoria, 32, and Westling, 36, announced their engagement a year ago membership in the Swedish Republican Association has doubled to 6,000 and more than 56,000 people have joined a Facebook group calling for a refusal to pay for the wedding.
While newspapers and TV shows have speculated on wedding dresses and royal etiquette, columnists have started debating the monarchy.
In the capital, Stockholm, a group of poets turned down a request to compose love poems for the wedding celebrations and wrote anti-royal poems instead.
"The royal family is a guarantor of the class society and that is the decisive argument against the monarchy," one of the poets, Thomas Tidholm, said.
According to the royal court, half of the wedding's cost will be paid by Victoria's father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, and the other half by the government. The Swedish state is also expected to spend tens of millions of kronors on renovating the cathedral, security and hosting international media.
Most Swedes are pleased to see Victoria marrying a man of the people, although some say it might destroy the fairy-tale image the monarchy needs to survive.
Westling, who ran his own gym business in Stockholm before the engagement, grew up in an ordinary middle class family in the rural village of Ockelbo in central Sweden. His mother worked as a clerk at the Swedish post office and his father was manager at a municipal social services center.
The monarchy tradition in Sweden dates back more than 1,000 years. The current Bernadotte family, with 64-year-old King Carl XVI Gustaf at the helm, originates from 1810 when French Marshall Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected successor to the Swedish throne by Parliament.
The monarchy's greatest challenge in recent times was in the 1970s when lawmakers stripped King Gustaf VI Adolf of his last remaining powers in a compromise between royalists and republicans.
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