After a few days’ break, which I did not plan, but came as a result of all the events over here, I pick up the thread again. After the inauguration of our new king on the national holiday April 30 I decided to write this blog post on the experiences I had with royalty in my work.
For readers in countries without royalty it might seem a little bit outlandish, but dealing with the Palace is still something very special. First, let me state clearly, that I am not a monarchist and that I am happy to live in a democratic country in which the King (after 123 years of Queens on the Dutch throne we still have to get used to the fact that we do have a king now!) has no political power. You can compare royalty to a very long-running soap opera; you simply seem to know these people because they were always present in the media while politicians come and go.
Besides a conference on international law in the presence of Queen Beatrix, which I attended long ago as I worked for the University, there are two occasions I had to deal with “royalty”:
- I just worked for one week for a large Dutch development organisation when the Honorary President of the organisation, the husband of the former Queen, died. And I, as executive secretary, had to write a letter of condolence to the Queen, to be sent to her as well as published in national newspapers. Nice: the first official letter of condolence I had to write is for the Queen. I struggled with the task and our rather flamboyant director rewrote most of it; she introduced some “poetic” intermezzos about Africa and other, in my opinion, rather kitschy additions, but the main thing was, the letter was sent and published and we received a handwritten thank you-note by the Queen;
- The other occasion was a few years earlier when I worked as international secretary for a large employers’ organisation; we went with a large delegation to the annual congress of the European federation in Portugal when, bang in the middle of this visit a royal wedding was planned: a wedding our President, a former government Minister, and his wife had to attend. You can not be at two places the same time so we had to organize a flight back from Portugal to the Netherlands, but all the flights were fully booked. Last option, the Queen was with her own plane in Portugal to open the Dutch Pavillion at the World Expo in Lisbon and she had to return home as well. So the President asked us to phone the Queen and ask her if he could return with her on the royal aeroplane (I would not have dared to ask for myself). So we phoned the Royal Palace and spoke to the person in charge and, surprise, surprise, it was no problem. If he and his wife would be at the hotel of the Queen at 5.30 in the morning they could join the royal retinue. And so it happened more or less. Lesson learned: simply ask for what you want; “no” you have, “yes” you can get. But also: life is easier when you know people in power (I hate to write it, because it should not be that way).
M
psycho at work 