Later this week, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (who, before he got married, was commonly known as prince pils), will turn 40. For this occasion, the prince answered 40 questions* (Dutch only, sorry) from Dutch people on the royal family’s official website. Now I don’t really care about the Dutch royal family, or any other royal family for that matter, but I noticed a striking difference between the royal families of England and the Netherlands.

The latter always try to appear as ‘common’ as possible. When the prince was, for instance, asked what stories he reads to his daughters (he has three of them), he said they love Nijntje (Miffy) and the stories of Annie M. G. Schmidt. Those were exactly the ones that my parents used to read me and neither have anything even distinctly upper class about them.

In England, in the meantime, the royal family is in a bit of a crisis: prince William –the one to become king when both his dad and his grandma die (or go crazy)– has just broken up with his girlfriend of five years. Which is quite normal, after all it had only been his first proper relationship. Things happen. But for the English press –especially the tabloids, of course– things don’t ‘just’ happen. And thus it has been suggested all over that the real reason for the break-up is the class difference between William and, especially, Kate’s mum.

I’m not saying classes (or more generally: cultural backgrounds) don’t make a difference, because I think they do. But it’s interesting to see two essential differeces between two countries reflect in the way they view their royal family. (Actually, would there have been an American royal family, all problems would have been attributed to different ethnic backgrounds.)

* That’s not true. One of the questions was: ‘at what time does your mum send you to bed?’ which he didn’t answer.