‘Prince of Orange angry’: sublime minimalism in retrospect on the royal wedding

‘It was one big commercial on Anne Frank’s grave,’ said Frits Barend Monday in m about the broadcast of m of two weeks ago, in which all the space was given to the research group that, on shaky grounds, designated a Jewish notary as a ‘traitor’ to the Frank family in 1944.

Presenter Margriet van der Linden felt rightly addressed. Mistakes had been made. That didn’t mean she made an explicit apology. The editors had doubts, but they were concerned with the publicity campaign, not the content of the research. While the misery – also in newspapers and other TV programs – arose precisely because people, numbed by the kettle music, did not consider the content sufficiently critical.

Fortunately, real research is also being done. discussed later m the four part documentary series A porcelain wedding (BNNVARA). It can be seen daily this week on the occasion of the 20th wedding anniversary of the royal couple, but the chance seems small that the film will be projected on the palace walls during the domestic festivities. The series deals with the run-up to the wedding on February 2, 2002, and especially the problems surrounding Jorge Zorreguieta, father of the bride but also minister in the murderous Videla regime.

The best find was at the beginning. Martin Maat and Hans Hermans obtained notes by the late Max van der Stoel of conversations with Prime Minister Kok, the Queen and her son. Kok had just said that father Zorreguieta was not welcome at the wedding. Van der Stoel turns out to be a screenwriter of sublime minimalism: „Prince of Orange angry. You want to have a statement signed at the dots. You put me in front of the block.”

Woman of his dreams

On January 15, 2001, Willem-Alexander in love quickly wanted to go to Buenos Aires to ask Zorreguieta for his daughter’s hand. Van der Stoel writes: “Her Majesty does not want, Prince of Orange wants, surprise for Máxima.” A multiple tragedy in eleven words: you can imagine how the royal china is thrown through the halls in frustration. Then you realize again how inhumane the monarchy is for those directly involved. Renunciation of the throne for the woman of his dreams had actually been a win-win situation for Willem-Alexander.

The extremely entertaining first episode of A porcelain wedding focused on the events of 1999, when Willem-Alexander and Máxima met and the press got wind of their relationship at the end of the summer. These are well-known stories, but the researchers also had news. A few months earlier, the deputy director of the BVD had asked Minister Bram Peper permission to visit the sister service in Argentina. That’s fine, said Peper and he gave another tourist tip: visit a concert by tango singer Fernando Soler.

It now appears that after that trip a document was drawn up about Jorge Zorreguieta, something Peper says he knows nothing about. He does show his interviewers a CD of the beautifully mustachioed Fernando Soler. For a moment you expect that Peper will now reveal the details of a tango spy plot, but he does nothing but hold the CD up for a while and place it next to him on a table. Great fragment.

The question remains who gave the order to investigate father Zorreguieta when only Willem-Alexander’s closest friends and family were aware of the relationship. It should be someone with a great devotion to duty, a heart for the monarchy and an entrance to the security services. The researchers of the possible traitor to Anne Frank would probably throw the name out into the world with “85 percent certainty”.