| Tober said: (..) (..) |
Someone wasn’t “just rounded up” by the big monarchies of Europe.
For one he was invited back by Dutch political factions after the fall of Napoleon when we regained independence, seeking to quickly restore the country. William I was the son of William V, the last Stadtholder of the Republican period. For those who don’t know, a Stadholder is a regional governing official with its origin in the later Medieval period. At first there were a couple acting as stewards of one or more provinces, but eventually the Stadholder of Holland became mostly a head of state. Anyway, William I was known as William VI Prince of Orange as a child but took the regal number ‘I’ when he returned in a ship landing on the beach in Scheveningen, first as Prince then named King. His return and his ascension to a throne was met with great enthusiasm I might add. William V and the last couple of generations of the House of Orange-Nassau before him were de facto kings already anyway, and they could trace their lineage back to William the Silent (and William the Silent’s brother), the ‘father of the fatherland’ and who we got our Orange national colour from, himself.
As an interesting side-note William I wasn’t our first King. Shortly before him the ‘Kingdom of Holland’ briefly existed as a vassal state to Napoleon’s French Empire, with Napoleon’s brother Louis Napoleon as its King. He was actually fairly popular because he defied his brother and completely took the side of the Dutch people and tried to do good. This might have helped strengthen the acceptance amongst the people to welcome William I as King.
Last edited by S.Peelman - on 07 August 2024
