The Amelia Interview!
So my friends, once again I have translated an interview almost to the extent that my fingers are hurting

Here is the Amelia interview, which is a bit talked about due to the articles in the press about it. It's from the magazines new number that came out yesterday, and which I bought today.
A small warning for Lena though: this article contains a few mentionings of her ponytail - remeber to breathe!
From Amelia’s Editor Page (Amelia Adamo):
Inside the royal skin
Five years ago, I interviewed Victoria’s mother Queen Silvia. It became an interview about feminism, abortions and charity. The daughter, the Crown Princess, who is soon to be 28 years old, is more careful with her statements. She is brought up with a flashlight in her face wherever she moves and knows that every sentence that includes any form of sharp points, she will have to eat up. I have hanged in the heels of Victoria in the EU city Strasbourg, and have in every way tried to get inside the royal skin. How I succeeded? Read for yourself on page 10.
(Here I’m skipping some things about the EU). When I told people that I had interviewed Victoria, I was asked how she really is. The same question was asked about her mother five years ago.
- I don’t know really. Kind, awaiting, happy, questioning (asking), funny.
“I was Victoria’s plaster" - The interview by Amelia Adamo
During two days, Amelia’s editor Amelia Adamo ran in Crown Princess Victoria’s footsteps. It came to be long days towards the representational dinners in the evenings, in a raging speed behind a wagging ponytail. And an exclusive interview about duty, love, trafficking, anorexia, money and clothes.
I have been “Crown Princess-ing” for two days. It felt a bit ridiculous. I say “du” or “ni” to most people, including the Prime Minister of Sweden, but the “du-reform” has not yet reached the Court. If you address Victoria, Sweden’s heir, you say “Crown Princess”. Now and then a “ni” slip in, and when I get a bit eager, I say “du” in the speed of it all.
-It’s okay, I don’t bite, Victoria says at those times, used to the faxt that many journalists have difficulties to not be allowed to address her with “du”, miss Bernadotte or “ni”. All is better than “Crown Princess”. I feel like I’m in an Austrian opera.´The “Crown Princess-ing” is also an effective way of keeping the distance and with that the increasing interest of us to know if they are as us others, for real.
Victoria is not amused by rule abiding interviews. In stead, journalists get invited to follow her when she in a raging speed and with a full schedule, educates herself to one day taking over the actual crown from her father The King.
It’s the Court’s Director of the Press and Information Department and Victoria’s mentor, Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, who with a practised hand creates a schedule for both media and the royal student. It’s Elisabeth who, together with Victoria, created the agenda and makes sure there is time for working out and free time together with duty and “school”. The curriculum is to get to know Sweden and Sweden in the world, the Parliament, the Government, the defence, the cultural life, aid. Peace- and conflict solving is first in the catalogue of interests, closely followed by the HIV/AID:s issue, if the Crown Princess can choose herself.
Media practice, no, that is not included, even though they speak a lot about how to handle the press and information, where the boundaries are and what a Royal House has too put up with, at home on the palace.
I came with her to Strasbourg, the border town in France where the EU Parliament in Brussels move once a month. Knowledge about the EU Parliament, the European Council and the European Court is included in Victoria’s educational programme. I was her plaster for two days. Sometimes I was not allowed to be present. At those times I stood in the EU corridors together with the security guards, and learned a bit about SÄPO. The King and the Crown Princess have security protection 24-hours-a-day. The two security guards know a lot about our Crown Princess habits, but their lips are sealed. They will hardly sell their knowledge to the gossip magazines, as is often the case in England.
It was two very interested days. Not just because I learned that there are 70 000 cases lying around and waiting for handling in the European Court and that the European Council’s building is inspired by the number 12. But also because I leaned how the surroundings act when a royal turns up. You have to pinch yourself in the arm and tell yourself that this is 2004 (not the 1800:s).
And in the middle of all the stir, with a touch of humbleness, a chose free, natural and sympathetic woman with big ambitions to do something good for Sweden. Eager to learn and happy, she asks question after question, and a less spoiled upper class person you have too look for!
How is it possible, I thought, that she’s managed to not become more “flashlight hurt” person after standing in the spotlight for 26 years. The damage she got was anorexia that struck her when she was the most insecure. Painful also for us who saw the photographs of a skeleton thin young woman, but who was taken care of in an excellent way and became totally recovered.
- At that time, I experienced a big inner conflict. It was very important for me to put words on my feelings and I got professional help, and also the media respected that I had to be left alone. My time in the USA meant a lot for my recovery.
Can the Crown Princess look at the pictures from that time without closing you eyes?
- How can I avoid them, they are always put out. But I can manage it, although I would rather not have too.
- I care about Emma Igelström (swimmer star who’s had to break her aim for the Olympics because of eating disorders)
and other who are struck, because I know what they go through. But I can’t wow for different methods. The disease depends on personal reasons. I can say that I learned very much on that journey and I’m glad that the problem cam so early, I got my troubles then. I have fought really hard, but also got really good support and understanding.
What has been most important for you in your personal development?
- That I have learned to find peace, that I can make a stop.
I watch when Victoria and the Swedish MP:s in the European Parliament take in a three course lunch. She eats with good appetite, and there is nothing in this healthy woman’s person who reminds of the anorexia days. No anxious moving of pieces of food on the plate as often when sick people is going to eat. The different MP:s like Marit Paulsen (Folkpartiet), Per Gahrton (Miljöpartiet), Anders Wijkman (Kristdemokraterna) and Maj Britt Theorin (Socialdemokraterna) shortly tells about their work. Victoria curiously asks and soon she gets in to one of her mother The Queen’s interest areas: trafficking.
- Drugs, says Victoria wisely,
you sell one time. Women are sold hundreds of times.
We agree that maybe there would be more speed in the trafficking issue if the men also got involved. Today, this modern issue of trafficking is a women’s issue. France, Holland and Germany are not very involved at all; they have their brothels to protect.
We are sitting at the highest point of the quit new European Parliament building, where they have set a table. Soon it’s time for the election of new MP:s to the European Parliament. Victoria thinks that It’s important to vote, although she doesn’t do so herself. The member of the Royal House doesn’t vote by tradition.
How is it to always be seen? Everyone looks at the Crown Princess’ clothes, hair, and makeup and makes a judgement?
- Unfortunately I don’t have a natural interest in clothes. It would make things easier. My profession is very much about wearing the right clothes out of the respect of others. I myself think there is too much of a focus on clothes. My sister tires to help me, but clothes is not something that I prioritise.
Victoria dresses very practically. Suit, linen, almost no jewellery, but elegant shoes with high heels. Almost no makeup and a shining thick hair in a ponytail and glasses, she is taken around by different EU dignitaries who have spent much more time on dressing and makeup. But she changes her watch, during the day a sports model and in the evening a more elegant one. When I point this out, she laughs and says:
- It makes mother happy.
Crown Princess Victoria is unpaid. Her work to be the heir to the throne is to represent Sweden, and it’s father who makes sure she has money. The King gets money from the state, about 94 million crowns. They are divided: 49 million goes to the palaces and all that comes with that. 48 million makes the appanage to the Royal House (Princess Lilian included), to the Court, the Marshal of the Realm, the Royal Mews etc, and all in all about 50 people. The King decides how the money is to be spent.
- Yes, I have to go to father and ask for money.
How is he then, generous or stingy?
- He is orderly with money. I have so that I cope; I’m not very interested in buying expensive things.
Victoria lives for free in a wing at Drottningholm.
How is it to live so close to your parents? They have a super eye on everything, and see who comes and goes.
- For me it works fine, I’m comfortable. It’s nice to have your own entrance and to be able to eat breakfast on your own. It’s only two rooms and a kitchen, nothing fancy.
In the book “Victoria, Victoria”, that Alice Bah and Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg wrote a few years ago, Victoria tells how it felt when mother and father constantly had assignments and had to leave their children.
- I’m a big sister, so I took it more with ease, but my sibling, and especially Madeleine, cried and screamed after them and mother thought it was really hard.
Why not father?
- It hurt for him too, absolutely. But it was different for father, he is used too it, grown up in an environment where you put your feelings in another room and it’s duty before all that applies.
Duty for the Crown Princess then?
- For me it is very important that I do a good job, and I try to live up to the expectations that exist. Duty has a high priority with me too. I want very much, and I gladly want it.
- I think it’s very hard to combine an active working life with being a mother or have a family, and I admire them who succeed. But the work that mother has demands that you are away a lot and that was how it was when we were little. We had nannies that we were very comfortable with and who made us feel secure, but it’s not something that you replace parents with.
To be an heir to a throne is to wait and wait for me. Kings can abdicate, but they never retire. And the Bernadotte’s are known to live long lives.
- I can’t think like that. I just think that now I’m going to do a good job, I see my father as The King and mother as The Queen and I don’t strive for anything else. I constantly learn. It’s fun.
Wasn’t it hurting when The King said that he preferred a male heir?
- I didn’t take it personal. My father said it when there was still a male heir, it’s always hard to look into the future. My father meant that is was a change that would mean it would be a difficult role for a women to have and at the same time be a mother. But times change, and so do we.
I think that The King would be proud if he saw his firstborn work. With long legs she walks on in the endless corridors of the EU Parliament, greets people, asks things, chats unconstrained with everyone who takes part in the heavy schedule. The curly ponytail wags and the simple beige-white (one day, light blue the second day) suit doesn’t tell that here walks a celebrity.
The day goes on and it’s getting late. But the ponytail wags on and there is still force under both legs and the smile. Before I even manage to dip one foot into a hot footbath on my hotel, it’s time for the next meeting: Ambassador Dinner on the Swedish residence in Strasbourg. There stands a new group of excited people who are to be greeted. We eat dinner. Victoria sits between the Icelandic and the Swedish Ambassador. I hear her laugh and see her face full of expressions, and I wonder – what is she on, ginseng or natural forces?
Princess Madeleine and Prince Carl Philip, do they envy you situation?
- Hardly.
Every now and then the siblings meet outside of protocol. With the years, the interests have been able to unite and it is not just mother The Queen’s Sunday dinners who make them come together. All three have steady relationships. Prince Carl Philip, just turned 25, has a many year relationship with Emma Pernald and around him are absolutely no scandal rumours, those who during a period surrounded Princess Madeleine and her doubtful partners, today also she a role model, she studies the History of Art and behaves just as well as her brother and sister. Victoria’s boyfriend Daniel Westling, a gym trainer with his own gym, has all eyes on him. Everything is debated, length of hair, clothes, the education – not an easy situation for a coming husband to an heir.
Father The King did the same thing, chose a woman of the people. She totally charmed to Swedish people with her accent, her hair and her eyes. If it’s serious between Victoria and Daniel, he knows what lies ahead of him. A charm class is recommended if he doesn’t have it naturally. Then the Swedish people will surely take this Ockelbo son to their heart.
Victoria has become a professional on avoiding to answer, also when I try to squeeze her for something about her darling. What I understand, she is happy with him being sporty; she hardly wants a guy who prefers bar tours.
- Then we wouldn’t have anything in common, she answers with a smile and adds,
it’s an eternal luck that someone dares to take on having a relationship with me. It’s not easy, she says, with the constant attention from the media.
How happy is the Crown Princess, on a scale from one to ten?
She laughs and says:
- No no, then everyone would speculate. But I can say that I’m feeling very good!
She has big brown eyes but with a touch of scepticism. And why should she think that my intentions are honest? The Royal House has sued the German press and won, and gotten the whole gathered German gossip press core to apologize on their front pages. In Sweden, you try to avoid legal processes, but the gossip magazine lies hurt. When I ask if she goes to therapy to handle all the attention, she diplomatically says:
- There are people close to me that I have a great confidence in and can talk too. It’s important that there are persons who take time and listen, but they don’t have to be experts.
What does she know about an ordinary life, I ask, forgetting the dyslexia. So she reminds me of her life in an ordinary school in Bromma, in an ordinary kindergarten/pre-school and the hard years when she got extra help for her word blindness. And that she still have problem learning things, but have found a technique that works. Victoria hears and takes notes, reading is a constant trouble. She still doesn’t hand over a text without anyone had going through it.
She is a nature person, loves skiing, gladly spends time in the nature, and doesn’t sit at home with a book or magazine.
Amelia, does the Crown Princess read it?
- No, she answers truthfully,
I don’t read magazines like that. I read morning newspapers.
She seems cool even when I ask what she feels about the republican Birgitta Olsson (Folkpartiet) who has as her goal to make sure the Bernadottes looses their job.
- Sweden is a free country. It’s important with different views on things. But of course I don’t agree. I want to work for Sweden and I know that we make a good effort. I feel like an ambassador for our country and I often get a “receipt” of it, maybe not as much at home as abroad.
When I say feminism, allocation of quoting, the Crown Princess say:
– “Pass”. Whatever I say it gets miss interpreted.
The subject is much too sensitive.
What is important for women today?
- Respect!
She and Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, shadow, mentor, speaking partner, live on a hotel in Strasbourg’s old town. But the EU schedule is yet not finished. She steps into one of the constantly awaiting cars, with her security guards and her entourage, to be transported to yet another dinner with new big shots that she is to politely chat with. Miss Bernadotte is not on the lazy side of life. She has hardly seen the beautiful hotel, not Strasbourg either. And the next morning there is a plane to take her and the little entourage to a dyslexia conference in another country.
I feel one thing after these two intense days in the immediate presence of the Sweden’s Crown Princess: What she does, she does seriously. This is not Spy Bar girl. She wants to give Sweden the best she can. And mother and fathers words of wisdom for Victoria have seemed to work: Be yourself, keep a distance, show happiness and be curious.