SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
The only thing I was lacking when I flew to Amsterdam last weekend for the wedding of the Prince of Orange and Maxima Zorreguieta was something orange. From the moment I landed I have never seen so much orange. Eve iyone was wearing orange jackets, orange coats, orange scarves, orange crowns, orange afro-wigs. Amsterdam was completely orange. I was lucky enough to be invited, with thousands of others, to the wedding, because my wife, Santa, was friends with Maxima long ago. Since I've never been to a royal wedding, I was fascinated to be there but it also had lessons for us in Britain. On Friday night, we started our Orange odyssey at the national celebration in the Amsterdam Arena. We all know from Tony Blair's Millennium how ghastly such events can be: the Dutch, who unlike New Labour can mix history with mischief and modernity, could have taught him how to do it. This was exhilarating, funny, warm, sometimes outrageous, and entertaining — cleverly combining rap, heavy metal, torch-singers, weird modern ballet and inclusive multiculturalism with folksy songs, military bands and 18th-century costumes. Fifty-five thousand Dutch Orangeists behaved like teenage boyband fans for their monarchy. My favourite moment of this public part of the wedding was the arrival of Loes Luca, an extraordinary old Dutch torch-singer — their version of Shirley Bassey — who arrived in the stadium in a white stretch-limousine, whence she emerged to sing 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen for the Queen of Holland — and Nelson Mandela. The guardsmen in 18thcentury jodhpurs, boots and shakos, whom I presumed must be members of their household cavalry, turned out to be prancing dancers who would be more at home in a Robbie Williams video. In a priceless mixture of show-business, blazing charm and modern media monarchy, the crown prince and Maxima arrived in a vintage car, followed by hundreds of couples dancing in white tie, and then dismounted to universal Maximania. The marriage itself the next day was simple and touching: we sat in silence listening to the vows — and the roaring of the crowds outside. As for the festivities, the pale icing of Europe's interbred archipelago of Teutonic princelings was simply melted by the scarlet exuberance of the Latin tango.
The Maxima who has created Maximarlia and made Holland glamorous is a lovelylooking, intelligent, blonde, sensual, sunny Argentine, who has learnt fluent Dutch and possesses a gentle, all-conquering Latin charisma — but she never plays cheaply to the gallery. She has doubled the popularity of the royals to 75 per cent, The Dutch arc lucky to have her; but I couldn't fathom the many banners reading 'Maxima loopen'. This
means, I believe, 'Maxima walks', which I took to be a Dutch statement of the obvious until they explained to me that Dutch girls just walk like any old Anglo-Saxon but that Maxima, being Argentine, walks a special tango-fuelled walk that drives Dutchmen mad. She really can loopen. I even saw a republican demonstrator holding a placard: 'Maxima for President!'
The whole thing gave me hope. The Oranges and Windsors have both had their troubles. I returned to England to the usual dreary dirge of the BBC undermining the jubilee, which everyone was undermining before it had started. The Dutch enjoy things at which we chippy, self-hating Britons only sneer. I hope the planners of the Queen's jubilee were watching the Dutch way this weekend; it seemed to be the ideal of what a royal occasion in the modern media age should be. It shows there is life for the monarchies even after 20 years of corrosion by the media vandals who wish to destroy anything that is not new and rational. In Britain we can recapture the discreet charm of royalty without having to go back to the age of breathless deference. Somehow this sassy, knowing enthusiasm is better: the Dutch really meant it.
How many royal weddings does it take to get a prostitute to change a light bulb?' We
could not sleep a wink, so we went for a walk and discovered that even the red-light district had gone royalist, something I do not believe has ever happened in the entire history of the oldest profession. The courtesans of Amsterdam strutted in orange knickers and crowns, waving priapic orange paraphernalia round their heads — and they even changed their bulbs: the red lights went orange.
Abizarre thing happened to me the other day: I was invited to a posh London hotel to meet a mysterious apparatchik from the Kremlin. He asked me enigmatic questions about my biography of Prince Potemkin, Did I feel that Potemkin could be a role model, or even a hero, for Russia in the 21st century? The Soviet leaders, particularly Stalin, had admired Ivan the Terrible, but 'the powers above', as he put it, no longer felt that those blood-spattered tyrants were appropriate for a democracy. Potemkin and Catherine the Great possessed the right mix of humanitarianism, reform and autocracy, he suggested. Were there any parallels between the era of Potemkin and that of President Putin? He asked me to write a memorandum for the 'powers above'. I delivered my homework secretly and heard no more about it until I recently happened to hear President Putin being interviewed. He was asked about his historical inspirations. To my amazement, he replied that the era he most admired was that of Catherine and Potemkin. The book is being published in Russian later this year.
The titled glamour of the Ahnanach de Gotha is a long way from the blood-soaked comrades of the nomenklatura of Stalin's politburo — which I have been researching in Russia. Weirdly, I keep meeting old people in Moscow who claim to be Stalin's illegitimate children. A bernedalled old man at a recent art opening whispered to me, 'Do I look like anyone familiar?' Trying to be polite, I replied, 'Oh yes, you do, but I can't quite place it. Give me a clue!' He smiled: 'Do I look like my father?' Since I had no idea who his father was, I replied, 'I don't know your father."Maybe, maybe not,' he answered. 'Do I look like anyone familiar?' 'A perfect resemblance.' Who to?' To your father.' To this he replied, 'Which father?' I found myself sinking ever deeper into a dangerous misunderstanding. The gentleman whispered, 'My real father lay with Lenin.' I gasped. 'Lenin and your father lay together?' (My God, that would be a story!) 'In the Mausoleum!' 'Aha, so you mean Stalin is your real father.' The old man scowled, stood up, medals a-clanking, and excused himself, sternly: 'You're the historian, young man. I said nothing.'
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