The Great Survivors

by Peter Conradi

  Yet while Charles has enjoyed the undoubted satisfaction of seeing many of his environmental ideas become mainstream, he has become criticized for his advocacy of homeopathy and was roundly mocked by the British media in 2010 when he declared himself proud to be considered “an enemy of the Enlightenment”.

  Most controversial have been his various assaults on modern architecture, which made headlines in 1984, when he described a proposed extension to London’s National Gallery as “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. Keen to put his ideas into action, he began in 1988 to develop Poundbury, an addition to the ancient town of Dorchester, built in a traditional style that he loves, but which many contemporary architects despise as pastiche.

  For critics, Charles crossed the line of acceptable behaviour in 2009 over his opposition to a £3-billion redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks. The project, financed by Qatari Diar, the investment arm of the gas-rich emirate’s ruling family, was effectively torpedoed by the Prince’s behind-the-scenes lobbying of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, a cousin of the Emir, who is prime minister and head of the company. Embarrassingly for Charles, the full extent of his involvement was revealed the following year, when the developers Christian and Nick Candy, who have made a fortune marketing expensive flats to the world’s super-rich, took the Qataris to court demanding £81 million for what they described as breach of contract – and won.

  Many Londoners undoubtedly shared the Prince’s opposition to the scheme and like him would have preferred a more traditional building. Yet there was clearly a broader constitutional issue at stake. Apologists for the Prince, who appeared on television to defend him, claimed rather disingenuously that Charles was entitled to express his opinion “like anyone else” – dodging the rather obvious point that inviting the Emir round to tea, as the Prince had done, would not have been an option open to his subjects, regardless of their views on the project.

  Critics, however, saw this as clear misuse of the influence that Charles automatically enjoys as part of his role. For Paul Richards, a former special advisor to the Labour government, it was merely the latest episode of surreptitious interference by the Prince, who over the years had written countless trademark “stiff letters” to ministers about political issues, whether on his own behalf or in the name of one of the twenty charities, foundations and campaigning groups he has established. Only a few have ever been published.

  “Unlike his predecessor as Prince of Wales, Edward VII, he has not occupied his time shooting grouse, collecting stamps and smoking twelve cigars a day,” Richards wrote in an article in the Mail on Sunday a few days after the judge’s ruling. “In some areas, such as environmentalism, Charles has been ahead of the pack. In others, like homoeopathy, he has been dismissed as a ‘quack’. Nevertheless, there’s something disturbing and unconstitutional about it all.” The only solution, Richards suggested, was to publish all of Charles’s written interventions. The result could be a lucrative book, he added, tongue in cheek: “The Prince would make enough royalties to fund his campaigns for potteries in Kabul, more loft insulation and organic eucalyptus ‌shampoo, for decades to come.”2

  Although considerably younger, Charles’s Continental counterparts have also had plenty of time to appreciate the contradictions inherent in their role – although they have faced up to their challenges in different ways. Helping his nation’s businesses, perhaps by leading trade delegations abroad, has been important for Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne, who has made many official visits to Europe and Latin America as well as to countries in the Arab world, the Far East and Australasia. He has also played a very active role in the promotion of Spain’s economic and commercial interests and of the Spanish language and culture in foreign countries. He frequently presides at economic and trade fairs held by Spain abroad. Like Frederik, Felipe is a keen competitive yachtsman.

  Climate change has also emerged as an area of special interest for heirs to the throne: at the end of May 2009, Frederik was joined by Victoria of Sweden and Haakon of Norway on a five-day visit to Greenland, where they took part in research seminars with environmental experts, visited the shrinking Ilulissat glacier and studied the impact of global warming on local people. That December Frederik also played a part, alongside his mother, in the ultimately abortive Copenhagen summit on climate change.

  In a newspaper interview three months later, Frederik underlined the role that royals, not as bound by short-term thinking as politicians, can play in raising awareness of the issue. “Greenland is a wonderful country,” he said. “But you can see the changes. I was most impressed by the visual things; that you can see what’s happening there. I think it’s important for me to have a message for other people from that, to convince the broader population that there are changes happening and that ‌we are making the change.”3

  In the years before he succeeded his father Rainier, Prince Albert of Monaco also developed an interest in the environment. The two men travelled together to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol was signed. Albert went on to visit the North Pole in 2006 and the South Pole in January 2009, which he reached only after a two-day cross-country ski trip through wind and fog and temperatures of –40°C. In 2006, the year after his father’s death, he founded and became the chairman of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, which focuses on climate change, the search for renewable energies and many other environmental issues.

  Haakon too has gone beyond environmentalism to become a global activist of sorts on a variety of issues relating to the developing world, from combating poverty to the battle against HIV-AIDS, and has taken part in the World Economic Forum in Davos. He regularly speaks to youth groups about the need for dignity, self-respect and involvement.

  Willem-Alexander, putting his bar-hopping youth behind him, has successfully reinvented himself as an expert on water management. Prince Pils has become Prince Water. The subject is an appropriate one for the future king of a country whose fate is so closely linked to the sea. The reclaiming of land has made a huge contribution to Dutch agricultural production, but floods have been the cause of its most serious natural disasters – such as the one in 1953 that killed 1,835 people and left 72,000 homeless. Water – or, more often, the lack of it – is also a major problem for large swathes of the developing world.

  Sport – provided it is in the service of the nation as a whole – can also be useful, but there are unexpected pitfalls there too, as Frederik found when he announced in October 2006 his desire to become a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The committee already counted a number of royals in its ranks – among them Willem-Alexander, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and Britain’s Princess Anne. Yet Frederik’s aspiration to join them prompted a tirade of criticism from royalists and republicans alike. According to Danish critics, the IOC was not only corrupt but by its nature political, especially over its willingness to turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses in member states. By becoming a member of the committee, it was argued, Frederik would make the Danish royal family complicit in such abuses. The timing was unfortunate in that the controversy coincided with a referendum in June 2009 on changing the rules of succession, which in turn provoked a broader media debate about the monarchy. The Prince ignored his critics and that October joined anyway.

  Such was the strength of feeling, however, that Jacques Rogue, the committee’s Belgian president, issued a statement making clear the Crown Prince would not be obliged by his new role to take a stand on politically sensitive subjects. “Living in a monarchy myself, I understand quite well the problematic position, but we will never ask the Danish Crown Prince to do something which conflicts with his institutional role,” said Rogge. “If the Crown Prince ends up in a conflict of interest, he ‌can simply abstain from voting.”4

  While the controversy was a relatively rare one for Frederik, Philippe, heir to the Belgian throne, has faced
a much rougher ride from his country’s press. His problems began at the beginning of the 1990s, when he was in his early thirties. Although often seen at the side of his childless uncle, King Baudouin, and with his own home and staff, the Prince increasingly became the subject of criticism. He was reproached for his timidity and awkwardness in public, and despite studying at Trinity College, Oxford, and gaining an MA in political science at Stanford, found it difficult to shake off accusations of being an intellectual lightweight. A change in rules of succession in 1991 to allow women to sit on the Belgian throne prompted negative comparisons of him with Astrid, his charming and popular younger sister.

  The sudden death of Baudouin two years later brought matters to a head. Although Philippe’s father Albert was next in line to the throne, he was already fifty-nine, and many royal watchers expected him to step aside in favour of his thirty-three-year-old son. It did not happen, and Albert himself instead became king. Those close to Philippe claim it came as a serious blow to him. Embarrassingly for the Prince, the fact he was passed over was seized on by critics – rightly or wrongly – as a further sign that he was not considered fit for the job.

  In the years since, Philippe has fought back hard to try to improve his reputation. In 1996 the palace took the unusual step of arranging informal meetings with journalists to allow him to explain his projects, aspirations and the way he saw his role. The next morning, most newspapers carried pictures of the Prince alongside headlines such as “Philippe is the true successor” and “Prince Philippe will be king”. Mathilde, whom he married three years later, has also been a considerable asset: the Princess has impressed with the effectiveness with which she has carried out her role and has consistently topped the royal popularity polls.

  Yet the various slurs have continued. Further fuel was added to the fire by the publication in 2003 of a book that again raised the possibility of Philippe not taking the throne: in this version, attributed to an unnamed vice-premier in the outgoing administration, his sister Astrid would become regent on the death of her father until Philippe’s daughter, Princess Elisabeth, was old enough to ‌reign in her own right.5

  Being Belgium, such criticisms have inevitably been coloured by the language question: there were suggestions that the Prince is somehow more Francophone than Dutch, despite his recruitment of a number of Dutch-speaking advisors and the decision to send Elisabeth and her brothers Prince Gabriel and Prince Emmanuel to nursery and primary school at the Dutch-language Sint-Jan Berchmans in Brussels.

  Philippe has generally borne such criticism in silence, but in 2007, after a particularly virulent burst of attacks in the Flemish media, he cracked. Spotting Yves Desmet, editor of the daily De Morgen and Pol Van Den Driessche, an editor from VTM television and one of those behind the 2003 book, at a New Year’s reception, he allegedly warned them he could have them banned from the palace if they continued writing negative stories about him. “You have to show me respect. I am the Crown Prince and will become the next king, so the press should not be critical of me,” the ‌pair quoted him as saying.6 Philippe’s words backfired badly: Guy Verhofstadt, the prime minister, was dragged into the row and called Philippe’s remarks “inappropriate”. The palace, meanwhile, issued a statement saying all reporters and media remained welcome there.

  In one of another crop of books about the Belgian royals published in 2009 to coincide with Albert and Paola’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, Kathy Pauwels, a leading Belgian royal watcher, claimed that Philippe was unhappy that his father, unlike his counterparts elsewhere in Europe, has not done enough to prepare his son for the throne.

  ‌Chapter 13

  ‌Spares and Spouses

  Ari Behn, the son-in-law of King Harald V of Norway, is a difficult man to categorize. If you believe some of the accounts in the country’s tabloids and celebrity magazines, he is the enfant terrible of the royal family and a Scandinavian Jack Kerouac: a hard-drinking writer whose ventures into the seedier side of life have turned him into a threat to the monarchy. Oh, and his wife Princess Märtha Louise has been accused of cashing in on her status with various commercial ventures that have included, most recently, a school where people can be taught to get in touch with their “inner angels”.

  It is hard to reconcile all this with the man I meet in the lobby bar of the Continental Hotel in the centre of Oslo, a short walk from the Royal Palace. In his late thirties, Behn is wearing a stylish black suit and sports a neatly trimmed beard flecked with grey. He is not drinking bourbon, but rather a glass of white wine, followed by tea. So much for the comparisons with Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson. Behn is softly spoken and friendly. Unfortunately, Märtha Louise is not with him.

  I am pleasantly surprised that Behn has agreed to see me at all after I ring him out of the blue; his relationship with the media is often uncomfortable, largely because of the controversy usually caused by the comments he makes when interviewed. Establishing a role after marrying into any royal family is difficult for anyone, says Behn, but especially so for men, even in twenty-first-century Norway, one of the most progressive countries in Europe.

  “If you’re a woman, it’s as if you have been chosen and picked up,” he tells me. “But as a man, you’re the seducer. That’s part of the whole thing, even in Norway now. But like it or not, the people have to deal with it.” His profession further complicates things: “I have to go out there and speak freely. It’s what writers have to do,” he continues. “It’s a balance between being prince consort and a writer. It’s impossible, a challenge that I have to master… I don’t have trouble with people attacking me; the only trouble I have is with not being able to talk back. That’s what really frustrates me.”

  Behn first became known in 1999 at the age of twenty-seven, following the publication of his first collection of short stories, Trist som faen (Sad as Hell). Well received by the critics, the book sold more than a hundred thousand copies, a runaway best-seller by Norwegian standards. He followed with a series of short television films that touched on prostitution and cocaine use in Las Vegas.

  But then he rather deviated from the script: returning from America to Norway in late 2000, Behn fell in love with Märtha Louise, at the time second in line to the throne after her younger brother, Haakon. They met not in a fashionable bar or club but over tea at Behn’s mother’s house. His mother, Marianne Solberg Behn, had got to know the Princess while they were both studying a course on the Rosen method, a form of alternative medicine based on massage.

  Märtha Louise’s relationship with Behn was revealed in March the following year by the newspaper Dagbladet. At the time the Norwegian media was full of revelations about the wild youth of Haakon’s fiancée Mette-Marit, whom the Crown Prince was due to marry that August. As if that weren’t controversial enough, another colourful figure in the form of Behn, described by one commentator as a “bouncer’s nightmare”, was now set to join the Norwegian royal family. After the news broke, Behn left suddenly for a few weeks – to Timbuktu. He and Märtha Louise got engaged in December 2001 and married at Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim in May the following year.

  Märtha Louise was born in 1971, the first child of the future King Harald and Queen Sonja. Norwegian law did not allow a woman to become queen regnant, and although the rules were amended in 1990 to give equal rights to men and women, the change – unlike in Sweden – was not made retrospectively. And so it was her younger brother Haakon who was destined to become the next monarch.

  As a young woman she had a passion for showjumping – an appropriate hobby for a princess, although eyebrows were raised when Stein-Erik Hagen, one of the richest men in Norway, gifted her two horses. They were raised again when the King was guest of honour at the opening of Hagen’s shopping centre in Latvia.

  Märtha Louise’s private life was also beginning to provoke controversy: she reportedly had a series of liaisons with eligible – and not so eligible – men, several of them sports personalities: Britain’s Prince Edward is said to hav
e tentatively attempted a romance with her in 1990. Then in 1994 she was accused of having an affair with Philip Morris, a married English showjumping star almost twice her age. She was named in Morris’s subsequent divorce at the insistence of his wife Irene, who worked as a clerk in an Asda supermarket in Chester, and was spared an appearance in court only after lawyers acting for her father successfully argued she was entitled to diplomatic immunity. A series of disastrous relationships followed, including one with a New Zealand showjumper.

  And then along came Behn. Talking to reporters several days before the wedding, the Princess shrugged off suggestions that her choice of partner was denting support for the Norwegian monarchy – reminding them of how many of her compatriots had frowned when her father had himself married a commoner more than thirty years earlier. “We’re keeping a tradition going,” she said.

  Before her marriage Märtha Louise took a controversial decision: she would not rely on a state allowance but would instead pay her own way by setting up an entertainment company. The government stopped paying her at the beginning of 2002; her father also ruled that she would lose her title of Royal Highness from the beginning of February. She did, however, retain her place in the succession.

  The Princess’s commercial activities initially largely consisted of reciting folk tales and singing with well-known Norwegian choirs. Then in 2004 she published her first book, Hvorfor de kongelige ikke har krone på hodet (Why Kings and Queens Don’t Wear Crowns), a children’s story about the founders of Norway’s current dynasty; it was accompanied by a CD of her reading it aloud. In October that year, she and Behn went to live in New York.