Showing posts with label Clara Guibourg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clara Guibourg. Show all posts

Sunday, June 19, 2011

One year after the Royal Wedding, Crown Princess Victoria shows her resolve even while her parents' popularity -and the monarchy's- have tumbled

Aftonbladet video: Highlights from the wedding at Storkyrkan and afterwards.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/nyheter/inrikes/article13171220.ab
06:33

If you watched the kungliga brรถllopet -like me- you'll recognize the song performed above as the secret song commissioned by Daniel for the wedding that was kept under tight wraps until that very moment.

Here's the complete video of that singular performance, the cherry-on-top even before they left the church and took their stroll around the city by carriage and boat before returning to say "Tack."



S
VT video: Agnes Carlsson & Bjรถrn Skifs - When You Tell the World You're Mine - Storkyrkan, Stockholm, June 19, 2010.


Aftonbladet video: Highlights from their first year of marriage



In the past year, even as Victoria's personal popular has increased, her parents' popularity and that of the Swedish monarchy in general have taken big hits from both republicans and an anti-monarchy media that sees the Swedish monarchy as... in short, an archaic construct in a modern era.
These groups see her parents as people whose ethics, trustworthiness, and general willingness to be straightforward about facts, to be MUCH LESS than they ought to be given their position in the country.
Especially in light of some facts that may prove more personally troubling than anyone can presently guess.


In May, in the U.S., the AP finally reported that Victoria's German-born mother, Queen Silvia, wants the longstanding questions surrounding her father's personal and professional activities and behavior in Germany and Brazil during the war to be re-examined.
This is usually referred to somewhat euphemistically in the news media as his "alleged Nazi ties." (Her mother was Brazilian.)


In the view of many of my well-informed friends in Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia, that moral cloud seems likely to get only more complicated, and some sensibilities may well be rubbed raw by the time the results are finally announced in the Fall.
(Though you're entitled to wonder where all this moral outrage is coming from now in a country that was officially neutral during the war.)

As to Victoria's father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, well, his personal behavior was the subject of an unflattering AP article in early June months after last year's publication of a not-entirely-believable book alleging many unsavory things.
That AP story made most major American newspapers and the cumulative weight of all of this has caused many people in Sweden to re-evaluate their personal feelings of respect for the king, even as his public 'explanation' -which I have watched a few times- only seemed to make things worse in the view of yours truly.

I suggest you read the AP story while you can before before they wipe this WaPo link clear.

Associated Press
Swedish monarchy under siege as king defends himself in strip club scandal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/swedish-monarchy-under-siege-as-king-defends-himself-in-strip-club-scandal/2011/06/06/AGra25JH_story.html


New York Times

Some Doubt if Any King Is Still Fit for Sweden

By John Tagliabue

August 25, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/world/europe/25sweden.html



TheLocal.se
From wedding bliss to royal crisis: the state of Sweden's monarchy
By Clara Guibourg
Published: 17 Jun 11 09:41 CET
http://www.thelocal.se/34412/20110617/