“Trixie was Bossie,” says a childhood friend about Beatrix. She was already when they played together as toddlers in Canada during the Second World War. The documentary Beatrix makes it clear that the Queen mother a “Natural Born QueenWas, unlike her predecessors. All interviewees are full of praise for the professional, perfectionist way in which they breathed new life into the Dutch monarchy from 1980 to 2013. Annejet van der Zijl: “Beatrix had intended to keep the fairy tale factory going”.
The three -part documentary by Joost van Ginkel appears this Friday on Videoland, on the 87th birthday of Princess Beatrix. His monumental work floats on the wealth of archive material that he brought up. Van Pootjebadende toddler, through the freshly crowned queen that moves through the Nieuwe Kerk, to the cheerful eighties that the sheep carries – she is always aware of her role as worthy but charmingly smiling prince.
Her life was not easy, the documentary shows. Almost in the beginning it is about the “Palaceguerrilla” between her parents, Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. “She grew up in a family in dissolution.” Just like in the earlier triptych that Van Ginkel made about Prince Bernhard, the father is poorly coming from it, as a corrupt non-valeur and slanting marcher. And then Van Ginkel forgets to mention his concealed Nazi past. Bernhard was always gone, took his mistress on winter sports, and he belittled his wife, whom he called “the white elephant.”
Still, Beatrix went to her father as a child. She had less with the messy, emotional Juliana. For example, he brought in the prayer healer Greet Hofmans, the “magic roll” that caused the family and the monarchy to shake. The most shocking but unconfirmed story comes from biographer Jolande Withuis. The young Beatrix once lay in bed with severe abdominal pain and high fever. Her mother did not call the doctor but Hofmans had a healing prayer say. When Bernhard came home in the evening, he was able to bring his child to ‘a yacht friend who was surgeon’ just in time. He found an acute appendicitis.
Bernhard van Pedeste
Her father fell off his pedestal in the Lockheed affair in the 1970s, when it turned out that he had accepted 1.1 million guilders in bribes from an American aircraft factory. Initially she stood right in front of him: she blackmailed the cabinet to refrain from persecution of her father by threatening to give up the throne. Later, according to Annejet van der Zijl, she made burdening material about Bernhard disappear from the archives. Two blazers on her blazon – if necessary, she used horse resources to protect the monarchy. When she became queen, she put her father firmly on the chain, to his growing anger. After his death he gave her a staircase with a posthumous, lying interview de Volkskrant.
The documentary is positive about Beatrix but does not shy away from the controversies. The common thread in this is her reluctance against newcomers that she does not consider royal houseworthy. Ordinary citizens in the family, she thought, undermined the fairy tale. For example, according to the documentary, she used the AIVD as a private detective to draw the corridors of the fiancé of Princess Margarita. If she considered citizens worthy, such as Princess Mabel and Queen Máxima, then a criminal ex-boyfriend or father were not an objection, and she did everything to bring them in.
There is much praise for the dignity and perseverance with which Beatrix underwent the disasters in her life, in particular the death of her son Friso, and the depression, the Parkinson’s (is not mentioned) and the final death of her husband Prince Claus.
With her subjects it was not always cake and egg. During her wedding, Provo had smoking bombs go off, during her rise of the throne, Amsterdam squatters changed the city into a battlefield. Beatrix strictly came across in “the armor she was wearing to defend the institute,” but according to the interviewees she could also be loose and witty. When the popularity of her distant government style, she effectively deployed those charms in 1988: she brought a surprise visit to the Vrijmarkt in the Jordaan in Amsterdam where she loosened herself among the common people and a passer -by kissed her.
Dresses fit
News does not bring this documentary. Beatrix and her loved ones hardly speak. We don’t get closer to a childhood friend, a court lady, the court painter and the couturier. That is inevitable, but a pity. The story is told by Orange biographers. Detonate Volkskrant-Journalist Jan Tromp. First of all, he is not a biographer, and secondly he has disqualified himself for this work by tapping the lies of Prince Bernhard in 2004 Devoot.
A real downside in the documentary is the excessive attention for an former Adjutant in Portugal. His revelations are appealing thin: Beatrix once called the Portuguese prime minister “a piece” and she looked angry the adjutant once because he dropped a leaf. I understand, you try to get closer to the unapproachable prince, and you flew all the way to Portugal, but Van Ginkel should have cut it out.
This is the moving interview with Hofcouturier Sheila de Vries. He talks about fitting dresses with Beatrix. With some hesitation, she dares to call herself a kind of girlfriend, she had been tasked with cheering up the troubled queen. The great love with which she talks about Beatrix is contagious. For the Republican viewer too, Beatrix remains so upright as a special, strong woman who was exceptionally good in queen.