Every week we dive into the royal archives for royal snapshots with a good story. Today Princess Beatrix visits the education, training and knowledge center of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee in Apeldoorn and we ask ourselves: how warm are those tires?
The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee has been the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee since 1806. Except in the Second World War, when the designation ‘royal’ was lifted by the German occupiers. Yet it was precisely during the war that the Marechaussee played an important role in the life of our royal family. The members of the family, who lived in exile abroad, were guarded by the Princess Irene Brigade.
Golden tip about Claus
Also a very young princess Beatrix (she was two and a half when she left for Canada with her mother and sister Irene), who has always had a special warm heart for the Marechaussee. As early as July 1956, when she was just 18 years old, she was appointed the very first Schutsvrouwe of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. Her father Prince Bernhard beamed with pride at the occasion and you can see from Beatrix that she thinks it is special, such a task.
Incidentally, a Marechaussee of all places would betray her trust almost ten years later. The golden tip that Beatrix had a friend who often walked in the gardens of Drakensteyn Castle on weekends came from one of them. Not much later, Beatrix was photographed with Claus for the first time, after which the two quickly became engaged. No doubt the princess would have liked it otherwise.
The gatekeepers
It is a small blemish on an otherwise enormously long-term relationship, because the KMar, as the Marechaussee is also called, has deep ties with the Orange squad. It was King Willem I who once founded the organization and Queen Wilhelmina who asked the Marechaussee to secure the family’s palaces.
There is a good chance that you mainly know the Marechaussee as ‘the gatekeepers’ at Huis ten Bosch and Drakensteyn, for example, but the KMar officially watches over ‘the security of the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the kingdom’. Such as below on St. Eustatius, where the Queen stepped in the back for a lift in 2011, with visible pleasure.
The princess always took her task as patroness of the Marechaussee seriously. Just like the rest of her family. A visit to a military barracks of the Marechaussee is very regularly on the royal agenda. Like this Wednesday in Apeldoorn, at the education, training and knowledge center, where Beatrix is the first to admire the photo exhibition about her involvement with the KMar and where she also speaks with students and teachers.
take over
In fact, the KMar once even had a real royal in its student ranks: Prince Pieter-Christiaan, the son of Princess Margriet and Pieter van Vollenhoven, fulfilled his military service with the Marechaussee. Last weekend he proudly reported on Instagram that he had received the Jenever Cross for thirty years of honorable and long-term service.
Of course, things have changed in conscription since the youth of the princes. After Pieter-Christiaan, there would no longer be a royal to work for the Marechaussee, but the royals are mainly mentioned in name in the daily affairs of the KMar. For example, there is still a Queen Beatrix barracks (in The Hague) and since 2013 there has also been a Queen Máxima barracks at Schiphol.
The three princesses are honored in name by the army with their own corps (Alexia and Ariane) and their own regiment (Amalia). Although it is conceivable that Princess Beatrix will hang up her Schutswifery in the near future. And well, then we know a brand new 18-year-old who could take over…