Hereditary Prince Alois and Princess Sophie Current Events 1: Ending Aug 2023


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Status
Not open for further replies.
The Prince is playing a very dangerous game in my opinion, and if it ends in he and his family living as Mr. And Mrs. Liechtenstein and as former rulers of the Republic of Liechtenstein he will have only himself to blame. Just ridiculous to me....
 
The Prince is playing a very dangerous game in my opinion, and if it ends in he and his family living as Mr. And Mrs. Liechtenstein and as former rulers of the Republic of Liechtenstein he will have only himself to blame. Just ridiculous to me....

Well, just like any other former ruling family, they and their descendants would always be Princes of Liechtenstein. They family has enough money to actually leave. There are a LOT of princes/princesses but they are all independent and earning their own money so I doubt the family will be hurting. I think the people would probably suffer in the end more than the family. Although I agree that threatening to leave isn't the way to approach things. . .Being a very Catholic family, I understand their position on abortion and I don't fault them for that.

In the statement, Alois says the royal family will leave but I wonder if he actually speaks for the entire family or if there's someone in the line of succession who is more democratic who would gladly step in or be put in power? I don't want to get carried away, but this has happened before in history in the French monarchy for example. . .
 
Say if the Royal Family leaves, will Liechtenstein remain independent or will it become part of Austria/Switzerland?
 
Liechtenstein is an independent state. It will not be annexed by either Austria or Switzerland.

Alois is quoted [in the previous link] as stating "The [princely house] is not willing to undertake its political responsibilities unless the prince... has the necessary tools at his disposal. But if the people are no longer open to that, then the [princely house] will not want to undertake its political responsibilities and... will completely withdraw from political life."

In the unlikely event of that happening the Liechtenstein Constitution of 2003 would need a major re-write.
 
In that case, then, would Liechtenstein become a constitutional monarchy in the mould of the UK/Spain etc etc. Or purely ceremonial like Sweden? If I were a monarch in the 21st Century I'd much rather leave all the controversial decision making to directly elected politicians.

Or, alternatively, maybe no monarchy at all?
 
By saying 'Princely House' is Alois referring to himself or his father, Hans Adam? The former deals with most of the business of the country, but the latter is still Head of State, isn't he?
 
Prince Alois doesn't like a piece of legislation or something that the voters vote on, he threatens to quit or leave. He's probably not the first royal who didn't like a piece of legislation and probably will not be the last one to say so. Most don't step down or leave because of controversial legislation or a controversial issue on the ballot.

If the citizens passed the controversial measure (abortion) or a controversial measure on the ballot that he didn't like, then in a democratic society, that's how the chips fall. They didn't, so I guess it's a moot point.
 
Has there been any further news relating to the goingons with the Royal Family, or specifically Furst Hans-Adam II or Erprinssen Alois?
 
On a Sunday? In a Catholic country where Sundays are supposedly holy days with church services? Is this normally done? It must be an important vote.
 
On a Sunday? In a Catholic country where Sundays are supposedly holy days with church services? Is this normally done? It must be an important vote.

That's what the BBC article, dated June 29 2012, states.
 
On a Sunday? In a Catholic country where Sundays are supposedly holy days with church services? Is this normally done? It must be an important vote.
Elections are generally held on sunday in many European countries, to enable as many voters as possible to partecipate because Sunday is generally a day of rest.
 
The Prince of Liechtenstein, one of Europe's most powerful monarchs, will learn on Sunday whether his powers are to be cut.

Some excerpts from MarNoe's Telegraph link...

From his ancient schloss, dramatically perched on a clifftop high above his tiny capital city Vaduz, the Crown Prince of Liechtenstein rules his subjects as one of Europe's last truly powerful monarchs.On Sunday he will find out if that is to end, when the result of a hard-fought referendum is announced on whether to cut his power. The prince himself has warned that he might withdraw from his official duties if the vote goes against him - a threat, made in parliament, which many understood to mean that he and his family would pack up and leave for exile, with their wealth of around £3 billion.

Since the campaign took off, Prince Alois has rarely been seen in Vaduz, which lies directly below his castle with its fabulous views across the Rhine to snow-covered Alpine peaks.Liechtensteiners often used to bump into him in its streets, with his wife Princess Sophie and their four children, shopping or drinking coffee in one of the little cafes sandwiched between big shiny banks and souvenir shops full of cuckoo clocks, where he is on first name terms with many of them. The familiarity does not go the other way - "Your Serene Highness" is what they call him.

Liechtenstein is the second-richest nation on the planet after Monaco, with an average per capita income of £85,000 and hundreds of millionaires. So nobody expects the prince's 36,000 subjects to grab pitchforks and rampage out of their large neat chalets, with swimming pools and Mercedes limousines parked in the driveways. Liechtensteiners like their prince, who is 43, because he is personally charming and they credit his family for ensuring their enviable prosperity and stability. Most of their grandfathers lived in poverty, before they hit on the idea of starting banks for foreigners.

The royal family are the descendants of Austrian noblemen, related to the Habsburgs, and today used to mingling with billionaires and statesmen at home and abroad. Their little fiefdom was a backwater for centuries, abolishing serfdom in 1808, only declaring a constitutional monarchy in 1921, and not bringing in votes for women until 1984. Before that, in the 17th century, Liechtenstein was notorious throughout Europe as the "witch country", and one of the prince's predecessors was known for dancing to loud music to drown out the screams of accused women being tortured in the castle dungeons below.

Prince Alois attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and was briefly in the Coldstream Guards in Hong Kong before working in the City of London to learn the ropes of the family business, banking. He married Sophie Elisabeth Marie Gabrielle, a German duchess and former student of history and English literature in 1994, and their children - three sons and a daughter - are aged from 11 to 16. He is immensely wealthy. His family owns LGT, the biggest of the principality's 16 banks and a favoured place for the international wealthy to keep their money out of the clutches of their nations' tax authorities.

None of this damaged has the prince's prestige with the principality's royalists. Cars bear stickers saying "For God, Prince and Fatherland", and royalists have posted loyal video messages in a Facebook campaign. "The prince is like a father to us, it is a spiritual thing," said Markus Burgler, 51, a civil servant who has started an internet support campaign. He was confident that the referendum proposal would be comfortably defeated. "You British have your Queen, so you must understand why we support our prince," he said. He wholeheartedly backs the prince's unbending position and deferentially describes the Crown Prince's threats to step down from his duties as a matter of royal "opinion". He said: "We are prosperous under him, he is a guardian who ensures stability. "England has Big Ben, France has the Eiffel Tower, we have a prince. He is what makes us Liechtenstein."
.
 
:previous:
excerpts from the link...

Voters in Liechtenstein rejected a proposal to abolish the ruling prince's right to veto the results of popular referendums, underscoring how citizens see the ruling family as integral to the principality's wealth and stability.

Official figures showed 76.1 percent of voters rejected the proposal on Sunday.

The crown prince and his father Prince Hans Adam were greeted with loud cheers and applause when they appeared in Vaduz to thank voters for their support. "I want to thank you dearly that with such a convincing 'yes' you have agreed to continue the 300-year-old partnership between the people and the royal house, which been so successful up to now," Prince Hans Adam said.
 
Here a video of the Monarch (in German): Videonews - Liechtenstein He thanks the people for the overwhelming support, says while being optimistic he did not expect such a good result, and he calls now for national unity.
 
Liechtenstein Rejects Call To Remove Prince's Veto, 'Yes -- So That Your Vote Counts'

Voters in tiny Liechtenstein have soundly rejected a call to take away the ruling prince's power to veto referendum results. Government figures showed that 76.1 percent of voters, or 11,629 people, rejected the initiative titled "Yes – So that your vote counts" in a referendum Sunday. Turnout was 82.9 percent.

Hereditary Prince Alois threatened to use his veto in September to block a plan to legalize abortion, but a majority voted against the change. The royal family could have vetoed having its power of veto voted down. That would have made Alois the first prince to use his veto since his grandfather, Franz Joseph II, blocked a revision of the country's hunting laws three decades ago. Hans-Adam II, Alois' father, never exercised the right of veto.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
At least women have been able to vote there since 1984. So progressive.:whistling:

I wonder if the family threw a temper tantrum over that too.
 
Marie Caroline looks like Reese Witherspoon to me!:flowers:
 
Yes, Marie Caroline does look like Reese Witherspoon. but why is she holding a bottle of pop which has a "7" on it, maybe for 7-UP? (you can't see the whole bottle). Is this an advertisement. It's in German so I can't read it.
 
Yes, Marie Caroline does look like Reese Witherspoon. but why is she holding a bottle of pop which has a "7" on it, maybe for 7-UP? (you can't see the whole bottle). Is this an advertisement. It's in German so I can't read it.
It's not German, it's Swedish. The headline says "This week's cutest princess" and the text: "There are no lack of good-looking free (unmarried) princesses among European Royalty. Here you see Marie Caroline of Lichtenstein, who is the grandchild of one of the richest men in the world, prince Hans-Adam". The bottle is 7-Up but it's not an ad, probably just a coincidence that she was holding the bottle when someone took a photo of her. (The magazine Svensk Damtidning thinks of itself as "the royal magazine of Sweden", but it's really more similar to Hello and other similar magazines.)
 
Last edited:
.

Prince Alois is in Japan for a five-day visit. Today, October 2nd, he was received by Crown Prince Naruhito at the Togu Palace residence in Tokyo.


** Pic 1 ** Pic 2 **
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom