Dutch princess causes royal stir after going public with family row
Thu Feb 13,10:14 AM ET
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - An unusually open conflict in the Dutch royal house was tarnishing its image of family harmony Thursday, after an embittered princess went public with complaints she was targeted by a smear campaign intended to destroy her marriage.
Princess Margarita de Bourbon de Parme, the eldest daughter of the Queen Beatrix's sister Princess Irene, told the respected weekly magazine HP/De Tijd that her home had been bugged and her husband's confidential records fed to the press to blacken his name.
"I was loyal to my family my entire life, but the moment I expected support there was none. They have tried to destroy what makes me happy," she said in a nine-page interview published Wednesday. A similar story also featured in Germany's Stern magazine.
The row in the House of Orange was splashed across the front pages of national newspapers, which ran bold headlines quoting her as saying that her father has an illegitimate child. She also claimed that Queen Beatrix had coldly rejected her pleas to stop the royal house from releasing damaging information to the media.
In an effort to end a string of negative media reports about her, Princess Margarita said she first went to the queen asking for help and then wrote former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok. Under the Dutch constitution, the prime minister bears responsibility for the royal family and speaks on their behalf. She did not indicate when she wrote, but Kok left office last year.
"I have the feeling the flow of negative press is being fed by my own family," the article quotes Margarita as having written to Kok. "I am asking you to intervene."
The interviews prompted a statement of three terse sentences, distributed through the government's official press office, in which the palace expressed regret over the articles and said it "doesn't recognize the family's portrayal" in them.
"Out of love for Princess Margarita, the family restricts itself to this reaction," it said.
Margarita married Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, who is not of royal decent, in September 2001 in a relatively low-key ceremony in the Dutch capital. The newlyweds live in a castle in the Gascogne region of southwestern France and rarely appeared in the Dutch press.
In the article, the first of a series to run in coming weeks, Margarita claimed the royal house took such a disliking to her choice of partner that the couple have been socially isolated.
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Article From: Yahoo News