Margrethe II, who celebrates 30 years on the Danish throne this year, is the 53rd monarch in an uninterrupted line of succession that dates back more than a millennium. Few Danes make a habit of wearing folk dress, but for national festivities the 62-year-old Queen, a talented stage and textile designer whose education included stints at Cambridge, the London School of Economics and the Sorbonne, occasionally dons regional garb to become a living embodiment of Danish traditionalism. But Margrethe has also spoken out against the more sinister side of nationalism: animosity toward those who don't share the same tradition, history and culture. Where Elizabeth II's annual Christmas address, like all her public utterances, is studiedly uncontroversial, Margrethe — whose Hong Kong-born daughter-in-law Alexandra is the first person of Asian ancestry to marry into a major European royal house — has used hers to rebuke her subjects for their hostility to immigrants and asylum seekers.
Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, 56, has also recognized the role the monarch can play in a country with swiftly changing demographics. As a result of liberal asylum policies and generous social-welfare benefits, Sweden's immigrant population of more than 10% is among the highest in Europe. In a 1996 speech referring to these "new Swedish citizens who have come here from countries all over the world ... with a completely different religious and cultural background from the one we have known," the King acknowledged that "this is a difficult situation for my country." But, he added, "under these circumstances it is precisely the strength of the monarchy that the King can be an impartial and uniting symbol."
Carl Gustaf's claim to his throne isn't quite so ancient as his cousin Margrethe's. Sweden's royal dynasty is descended from Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, a former marshal of Napoleon's who was elected crown prince by the Swedish Riksdag and adopted in 1810 by the childless Karl XIII, King of Sweden and Norway. The newly minted Prince Karl Johan never even learned Swedish. His family's nonroyal, foreign origins don't seem to have hampered Carl Gustaf's ability to play the part of national cheerleader. Like Margrethe, he and his family — his German-Brazilian wife Silvia and their three children — cut attractive figures in traditional costume. Although the Swedish monarchy came perilously close to abolition in the socialist heyday of the 1970s, today it enjoys comfortable approval ratings of around 85%.
The Netherlands' formidable Queen Beatrix, 64, whom the Dutch media refer to as the Majesty, is far too dignified to venture forth in the streets of the Hague in clogs. But like her Scandinavian counterparts, she also takes seriously her family's role as a symbol of national identity. The House of Orange has been central to Dutch history for more than four centuries and remains a focus for nationalist sentiment. "The Dutch are Orangist, not monarchist," says former Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo. For the recent wedding of the Crown Prince, also known as the Prince of Orange, the streets of Amsterdam were draped in his color, not the red, white and blue of the national flag. Thirty-five-year-old Willem-Alexander's choice of bride — an Argentinian whose father was a junior minister in the brutal Videla junta of the late 1970s — initially threatened to alienate his liberal-minded future subjects, but the palace and Prime Minister Wim Kok's government did a masterful job of stage management. The prince and his fiancée, who speedily mastered Dutch, embarked on a tour of each of the Netherlands' 12 provinces, where they posed in front of windmills and sampled regional cheeses. Her problematic parents promised not to attend the wedding, and as the big day approached, the future Princess Máxima, 31, was outscoring all other members of the royal family in popularity polls. The p.r. campaign was so effective that even her Catholicism wasn't a significant hurdle for admission to the staunchly Protestant House of Orange. (The Dutch population is almost evenly divided between the two faiths.)
The fault lines of religion in the Netherlands are negligible compared to the ethnic and linguistic fissures that split the populations of Belgium and Spain. "In these two countries there is an internal problem of autonomy," says Francis Delpérée, a constitutional law expert at Belgium's University of Louvain. "Like Juan Carlos in Spain, King Albert II represents a symbol of unity in a much-divided country." Belgium consists mostly of Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north and French-speaking Walloons in the south, and the two groups have little to do with each other. Politics, education, television and most other aspects of daily life are accordingly segmented. Indeed, the monarchy is one of the few national institutions that even attempts to bridge the divide, and how well it does so is up for debate. There was widespread rejoicing last year at the birth of the first child, a daughter, to Crown Prince Philippe, 42, and his wife. But even the popular Crown Princess Mathilde, 29 — herself a native French-speaking Belgian with a degree in speech therapy — and other members of the family have come under fire for their poor command of Dutch.
The challenge is even more daunting for Spain's King Juan Carlos, 64, who reigns over a country of sometimes violently disparate parts. "As the autonomous regions become ever more powerful and Spain becomes a quasi-federalist nation, the King can serve as a unifying force," says Tom Burns Marañon, author of Conversations on the King. "Cohesion depends on the personality of the King. He needs to be very sensitive to the differences." Though the King's approval ratings are still a comfortable 80%, royal biographer Charles Powell is not so impressed. "The Spanish royals have not been particularly successful in the Basque Country or even in Catalunya," he says. A member of the Basque separatist group eta was recently sentenced to 13 years in prison for plotting an attempt on the King's life while Juan Carlos was vacationing in Mallorca in 1995. Soothing Spain's separatist sentiments is a nearly impossible task, but Powell faults the monarchy for failing to capitalize on its position. "They worked so hard to give [Crown] Prince Felipe a wonderful education, but no one has ever heard him speaking more than a few phrases of Basque, Catalan or any of the other regional languages. This is a great mistake. It would endear him to the people and show he is taking his job seriously."
Perhaps part of the difficulty is that the precise nature of that job is ill-defined. All 10 European sovereigns are heads of state of their respective countries, but the actual scope of their powers runs the gamut from purely ceremonial to surprisingly real. When he succeeds his father, 34-year-old Felipe, Prince of the Asturias, will occupy a throne whose prerogatives are much diminished from those Juan Carlos had when he became King upon Franco's death in 1975.
The grandson of the deposed King Alfonso XIII, Juan Carlos had sworn to uphold Franco's National Movement, but once on the throne proved himself an unwavering champion of democracy. He supported a constitution that stripped him of much of the power he originally held, including the right to appoint and dismiss ministers. He is credited with saving Spanish democracy in 1981 by reacting swiftly to an attempted military coup that threatened to return the country to a Franco-style dictatorship, and 80% of Spaniards believe the monarchy remains the guarantor of order and stability. Today, the role of the King centers around ceremonial functions and regular attendance at international forums like the annual Latin American summit. Juan Carlos has boasted that his son, who attended schools in Spain and Canada and has an international relations degree from Georgetown University, is the best-educated royal in Spanish history, and Felipe has begun to take on a greater share of public duties.
Despite constitutional reform as recently as 1993 that curbed the Belgian monarch's power, King Albert's role is hardly ceremonial. Every bill or projet de loi submitted to Parliament by the government is signed by the King, who approves and promulgates all laws. The King represents the highest executive authority, which he shares with his ministers, whom he appoints and removes from office. "In the U.K., after the elections, Queen Elizabeth calls Tony Blair and instructs him to carry on," says Delpérée. "In Belgium, after the first results of elections are known, King Albert thinks: 'My job is just starting' and begins to negotiate with the winning parties to form the government." Last year a parliamentary inquiry into the 1961 assassination of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba reviewed evidence indicating that then King Baudouin must have known of plans to eliminate the charismatic African nationalist. As renewed attention focused on the monarch's role, Belgium's Flemish political parties called for greater limits to the King's powers. Debate on a proposal introduced by the small nationalist Flemish party Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie that would reduce the King's role to a purely ceremonial one is due to take place soon.
