The Windsors may not be the sharpest knives in the block, but at least they keep their meddling in politics to a minimum. Not so Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, a woman deservedly notorious (yes, yes, ludicrously biased choice of adjective) for her establishment left politics.

Pieter at Peaktalk has a useful post on Beatrix, triggered by the recent appearance of a documentary about her. He seems to be something of an admirer, but with reservations. These comments are worth repeating:

“…Despite her political instincts she remained notably absent during the aftermath of both the Fortuyn and Van Gogh killings. This is somewhat odd as the documentary makers point out that in both cases there was a rare call from Dutch politicians, public and media to let the queen come forward and unify the nation with a speech or other symbolic gesture. In the interviews the queen briefly refers to them as “political murders”, enabling her to duck any elaborate treatment of both assassinations. It’s a clever escape route, the queen does not get involved in politics, but in view of her active engagement in matters of state as well as her very clear concerns over the direction of the society she represents it’s odd that she declined to act on such a traumatic experience. Her visit to an immigrant youth center shortly after Van Gogh’s killing was designed to appease Muslim sentiments rather than native Dutch anxieties and was deemed to be inadequate. She isn’t that quiet on Europe. Together with the current prime-minister she delivers a well-crafted pitch for the European Constitution in the documentary, the former touching on the efficiency of it, while the queen refers to the past-wars and violence that often tore the old continent apart. Her interviewer engages her on this topic and without missing a beat Beatrix points out the dangers of nationalism while underlining the importance of one’s own culture. Read into it what you want, but it was a gentle yet forceful push to encourage Dutch viewers to try and see the benefits of European integration arguing that it could still enable the preservation of their own national culture. To give you some material to reflect on this, picture an American president arguing that nationalism is a bad thing on the eve of an amalgamation with Canada and Mexico. So, in summary the current Dutch monarch has been able to exercise a tremendous amount of influence on areas where in theory she shouldn’t have and in doing that she has used her powers selectively to promote certain causes. It’s hard to accuse her of enforcing a political agenda, but throughout her tenure she has often come out where she and the political leadership felt Dutch public opinion was headed and that was hardly ever on the right of the political center.”

Time to restore the republic, I reckon.