Just after getting up the stand, there is some tension on the face. Afterwards relief and a smile; The champagne bottle was broken against the bow of the ‘Den Helder’ and the new supply ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy was baptized. Amalia (21) has performed her first official task.
Since the beginning of this year, the Crown Princess has intended part of its allowance, the expense allowance that she receives from the State and is intended for personnel and equipment. The expectation is that she will become increasingly visible as a result.
After all, she wrote to the prime minister in 2021 that she found that allowance “uncomfortable” “as long as I can’t put much in return.” The income part of the allowance, 345,000 euros, refers to them until the end of her studies, the expense allowance of 1.6 million euros she now turns to “an independent and independent interpretation of my position”.
There were of course already performances. That first real official moment, a few days after her eighteenth birthday, when she was brought in by her father, King Willem-Alexander, into the Council of State, the highest advisory body of the government. If he die or get on, he must be able to carry out the royal authority. She was nervous, but it was joking that she would call him ‘you’ for this one time.
Half a year later, Amalia hit a coin together with Willem-Alexander, on King’s Day in Maastricht. Few stood out; Most spectators stood elsewhere along the route, at André Rieu or at the Vrijthof where there was also music. The princess gave the coin press such a swimper that he hit them almost loudly.
Two years ago, Amalia visited the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. In addition to a father who has been visiting for years and an extrovert mother, she seemed waiting, observing. This is also the case during the state visit of the Spanish royal couple on Amsterdam, the first in which she participated.
Experienced
Saturday morning in Vlissingen, at the Damen Naval yard (the naval branch of the shipbuilder), she gets out of the car confidently. Now her parents are not there, only a court lady, an adjutant and the chief of the king’s military house. The standard on the car is Hare: Orange, with the blue cross of the Nassau’s, the Rijkswapen, the hunting horn of the Oranges and the Red Tower of the Zorreguietas.
Amalia shakes out routine hands with the King’s Commissioner, the mayor, the State Secretary for Defense, the director of Damen Naval. Takes flowers by going down the knees for the ten -year -old flower girl, and poses in front of the cameras. Step up the last minute without hesitation with stiletto brackets – the walkway with holes of the Den Helder.
When her sister Alexia dipped a ship last year, he said audibly: “I find this very exciting.” Amalia will only say that afterwards – if the press asks. She expresses the sentence that belongs to the baptism of a ship without hesitation: “I dip you Den Helder and wish you and your crew a preserved speed.” To be sure, the text with adhesive tape is stuck under the flower arrangement.
Nothing has been left to chance at this baptism, just like never during a royal visit. On Friday, a Damen employee walked through the ship the entire route as if she were the princess. About the helicopter platform, through the infirmary and the operating room, to the bridge.
From there you see the race masts, with which the Den Helder will supply other naval ships, the ship pumps the ship oil, diesel and water, via one of the lines, boxes with ammunition and food can be transferred. De Den Helder was “made to keep frigates at sea for as long as possible,” commander Stefjan Veenstra explained earlier.
When the princess is on the bridge, she says somewhat joking that she will not be sitting anywhere, for fear of causing damage.
There is also, under a glass bell jar, the cap of a champagne bottle. With a red -white blue bow around it. That is not that of the bottle that she broke a little earlier. Where is it? John van ‘t Westende shrugs.
He is in his orange jacket and yellow helmet next to the stage, and is the one who hung the bottle, and the rope that she will cut through with a ‘baptismal ax’. This makes the ‘latter experiences’ away, the symbolic bunches loose. “We have done some test baptisms,” says Van ‘t Westende. “We know how the lines should be tense, but in practice it is still exciting.”
If the bottle was not broken, what then? “Then I was fired,” he says jokingly. He has two months until his retirement. But everything is going well. And when Amalia walks towards the ship after baptism, she doesn’t forget to thank John van ‘t Westende. That “is the krent in the porridge,” he says.