Tag: royal coronation

Which European royals are attending King Charles III’s coronation?

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The British royal family have close friendships – and numerous familial connections – with royal families all across Europe.

The coronation of Britain’s King Charles III will see the biggest gathering of European royalty since the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September last year. 

Historically, convention dictated that no other reigning royals would be in attendance at the coronation of a British monarch. But Charles and Camilla have extended invitations to their friends and relatives in royal families around Europe and the world — monarchs and royals from Africa, Asia and the Middle East have arrived in London to take part in the ceremonies. 

So which European royals are attending the coronation, and how are they related to the British royals? 

Here’s our guide:

Belgium

King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium are attending the coronation. Their eldest daughter, Princess Elisabeth, studies history and politics at Oxford University, and accompanied her father to a reception at Buckingham Palace on Friday evening, the night before the coronation. 

How are the British and Belgian royal families related? It’s complicated, but: King Philippe’s ancestor is King Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, who was also Queen Victoria’s uncle. And Queen Victoria was Charles III’s great-great-great-grandmother.

Denmark

Queen Margrethe II will be unable to attend as she is recovering from back surgery. Instead, her eldest son and heir Crown Prince Frederik and his wife Crown Princess Mary will be there. 

The Danish royal couple met at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and romance blossomed. 

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is a distant relative of King Charles through their shared ancestry with Queen Victoria.

Greece

Queen Anne-Marie of Greece is attending the coronation with her son Crown Prince Pavlos and daughter-in-law Crown Princess Marie-Chantal. King Charles III is Pavlos’s godfather, while Prince William is the godfather to Pavlos and Marie-Chantal’s son Prince Constantine.

Anne-Marie’s late husband, the former King Constantine II of Greece, died in January this year. He was Prince William’s godfather.

The Greek royals are related to many other European royal houses: Queen Anne-Marie is the youngest sister of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II. She is also a first cousin of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and a second cousin of King Harald V of Norway. She was also a third cousin of her own late husband King Constantine, as they both had King Christian IX of Denmark as a great-great-grandfather. 

Liechtenstein

The House of Liechtenstein dates back to the early 1600s, and the royal family gives its name to the tiny European country of just 38,000 people. 

Hereditary Prince Alois and Hereditary Princess Sophie of Liechtenstein are attending the coronation in London. 

Prince Alois rules Liechtenstein jointly with his father, Hereditary Prince Hans-Adam II, who was an eighth cousin of Queen Elizabeth II – both were descendants of Ludwig, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

“Hereditary Prince Alois … therefore is the ninth nephew of HM Queen Elizabeth II,” the Liechtenstein royal household told Euronews recently – so King Charles, Prince Hans-Adam and Prince Alois are all related, but very distantly indeed. 

Interestingly, Princess Sophie – who was born into a Bavarian aristocratic family – can trace her relatives directly back to Scotland’s Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose descendants have a hypothetical claim to the crown: which makes Sophie second in line to become the Jacobite Queen of England and Scotland – although her uncle, who is first in line, has described the claim as purely “hypothetical”. 

Luxembourg

Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa are attending the coronation, and have a special connection to the UK. 

Henri’s mother, Grand Duchess Charlotte, fled Luxembourg after the German invasion in WWII and was exiled to London for two years. She broadcast messages over the BBC and became a symbol of her country’s resistance during the war.

The Grand Duke and King Charles III were both related to Britain’s King George II and Queen Caroline, who ruled in the mid-1700s.  

Monaco

The Monégasque Royal Family will be represented at the coronation by Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene.

The House of Grimaldi has ruled the tiny Mediterranean principality for 700 years, and during the 20th century became a symbol of glittering, modern European royalty when Prince Albert’s father married Hollywood star Grace Kelly after meeting at the Cannes Film Festival. But tragedy struck when Princess Grace died in a car crash in 1982.

Like the Danish Crown Prince and Princess, Monaco’s Albert and Charlene met at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, where she was a swimmer representing South Africa. 

Netherlands

The Dutch royal family have traditionally been close to their British counterparts, and this is why King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will be attending the coronation. 

Princess Catharina-Amalia, and Princess Beatrix, the former queen who abdicated in favour of her son in 2013, represented the Netherlands at a Buckingham Palace reception with King Charles on the eve of the coronation. 

The Dutch king and Charles’s are sixth cousins – Willem-Alexander is a descendant of Princess Carolina, the daughter of King William IV; while Charles is also related to Princess Carolina through his great-grandmother Queen Mary. 

Norway

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit will represent King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway. 

It will be the royal couple’s second visit to the UK recently, as they were hosted by the Prince and Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace in March.

The Norwegian royals are especially close with the British royals. 

Queen Elizabeth II and King Harald were second cousins, sharing the same great-grandparents – King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra – who were the father and mother of Norway’s own Queen Maud.

When Norway was occupied by Germany in 1940, King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav (the current king’s grandfather and father) were forced to flee the country and live in exile in London. “This brought the two branches of the family even closer together,” the Norwegian royal household said in a recent statement.

When she was young, Queen Elizabeth II used to call King Haakon “Uncle Charles” and according to the Norwegian royal family, “Uncle Charles” was the Queen’s favourite uncle – and she named Prince Charles after King Haakon.

Noway was the first country outside the Commonwealth that Queen Elizabeth paid a state visit to, in 1955, and she visited three times in total, as the guest of three generations of Norwegian kings.

Since King Harald and Queen Sonja were crowned in 1991, they have paid an annual visit to the United Kingdom to visit their British relatives in the royal family. 

Spain

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain are attending the coronation, and controversially they might not be the only Spanish royals in attendance. 

Both of Felipe’s parents, ex-King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth in 2022, but did so separately as they are estranged following a number of controversies and revelations of extra-marital affairs Juan Carlos was involved in over the years.

Spanish media are reporting that Juan Carlos and Sofia have not been invited to the coronation in an _official_capacity but that leaves the door open for them to be invited in a personal capacity since there have been close relationships between the House of Windsor and the House of Borbón over the decades. 

King Felipe was a third cousin to Queen Elizabeth’s – and affectionately called her “Auntie Lilibet” – while his father King Juan Carlos is the great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria (King Charles is the great-great-great-grandson of Victoria.)

Sweden

Despite recovering from heart surgery, King Carl XVI Gustaf is in London to attend the coronation, alongside his daughter, Crown Princess Victoria rather than his wife Queen Silvia. 

The Swedish king is celebrating his Golden Jubilee this year. 

The House of Bernadotte is one of Europe’s grandest royal families, and also among the most closely related to the British royals.

So how are the two great European houses, Sweden and Britain, related, and what about links to other Scandinavian royalty?

In the simplest terms, King Carl XVI Gustaf’s great-great-grandmother is Queen Victoria, who is also King Charles’s great-great-great-grandmother. (In more complicated terms, the Swedish King is also related on his mother’s side to Queen Victoria’s eighth son Prince Leopold).

And across the region, King Carl XVI Gustav is the cousin of Queen Margrethe of Denmark as they both have the same grandfather; while the Swedish monarch is second cousin to King Harald V of Norway, because Harald’s mother was born a Swedish princess. 

Which other European royals will be at the coronation?

Margareta of Romania, known as the Custodian of the Crown of Romania, and her husband Prince Radu, have confirmed their attendance, and were at a reception at Buckingham Palace on the eve of the coronation.   

Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia is the heir to a royal dynasty that was last in power in 1945. He was born in London during WWII and christened at Westminster Abbey with King George IV and then-Princess Elizabeth as his godparents. He is expected to be at the coronation with his wife Crown Princess Katherine.

Bulgaria’s ex-king and former prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha will also be attending. 

Three members of the German aristocracy will be in London for King Charles’s coronation as well, but how are they related to the British royal family? 

Hereditary Prince Bernhard of Baden’s grandmother was the late Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh’s sister.

Prince Heinrich Donatus of Hesse is related to Queen Victoria and also a distant cousin of Prince Philip. 

Prince Philipp of Hohenlohe-Langenburg was a grand-nephew of Prince Philip, and Britain’s Princess Anne is his godmother.

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Charles III coronation open to all faiths

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King Charles III hopes his coronation will serve to bridge the religious and cultural divides in diverse Britain.

Rabbi Nicky Liss won’t be watching King Charles III’s coronation. He’ll be doing something he considers more important: praying for the monarch on the Jewish sabbath.

On Saturday, he will join rabbis across Britain in reading a prayer in English and Hebrew that gives thanks for the new king in the name of the “one God who created us all”.

Liss, the rabbi of Highgate Synagogue in north London, said British Jews appreciated Charles’ pledge to promote the co-existence of all faiths and his record of supporting a multifaith society during his long apprenticeship as heir to the throne.

“When he says he wants to be a defender of faiths, that means the world because our history hasn’t always been so simple and we haven’t always lived freely; we haven’t been able to practise our religion,” Liss told The Associated Press. “But knowing that King Charles acts this way and speaks this way is tremendously comforting.”

At a time when religion is fueling tensions around the world — from Hindu nationalists in India to Jewish settlers in the West Bank and fundamentalist Christians in the United States — Charles is trying to bridge the differences between the faith groups that make up Britain’s increasingly diverse society.

Achieving that goal is critical to the new king’s efforts to show that the monarchy, a 1,000-year-old institution with Christian roots, can still represent the people of modern, multicultural Britain.

Supreme governor

But Charles, the supreme governor of the Church of England, faces a very different country than the one that adoringly celebrated his mother’s coronation in 1953.

Seventy years ago, more than 80% of the people of England were Christian, and the mass migration that would change the face of the nation was just beginning. That figure has now dropped below half, with 37% saying they have no religion, 6.5% calling themselves Muslim and 1.7% Hindu, according to the latest census figures. The change is even more pronounced in London, where more than a quarter of the population have a non-Christian faith.

Charles recognized that change long before he became king last September.

Defender of faith

As far back as the 1990s, Charles suggested that he would like to be known as “the defender of faith,” a small but hugely symbolic change from the monarch’s traditional title of “defender of the faith,” meaning Christianity. It’s an important distinction for a man who believes in the healing power of yoga and once called Islam “one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity.”

The king’s commitment to diversity will be on display at his coronation, when religious leaders representing the Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh traditions will for the first time play an active role in the ceremonies.

“I have always thought of Britain as a ‘community of communities,”’ Charles told faith leaders in September.

“That has led me to understand that the Sovereign has an additional duty — less formally recognized but to be no less diligently discharged. It is the duty to protect the diversity of our country, including by protecting the space for faith itself and its practice through the religions, cultures, traditions and beliefs to which our hearts and minds direct us as individuals.”

That’s not an easy task in a country where religious and cultural differences sometimes boil over.

Just last summer, Muslim and Hindu youths clashed in the city of Leicester. The main opposition Labour Party has struggled to rid itself of antisemitism, and the government’s counterterrorism strategy has been criticised for focusing on Muslims. Then there are the sectarian differences that still separate Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Head of state

Such tensions underscore the crucial need for Britain to have a head of state who personally works to promote inclusivity, said Farhan Nizami, director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

Charles has been the centre’s patron for 30 years, lending his stature to Nizami’s effort to build an academic hub for studying all facets of the Islamic world, including history, science and literature, as well as religion. During those years, the centre moved from a nondescript wooden structure to a complex that has its own library, conference facilities and a mosque complete with dome and minaret.

“It is very important that we have a king who has been consistently committed to (inclusivity),” Nizami said. “It is so relevant in the modern age, with all the mobility, with the difference and diversity that exists, that the head of this state should bring people together, both by example and action.”

Those actions are sometimes small. But they resonate with people like Balwinder Shukra, who saw the king a few months ago when he officially opened the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, in Luton, an ethnically diverse city of almost 300,000 north of London.

Shukra, 65, paused from patting out flatbreads known as chapatis for the communal meal the gurdwara serves to all comers, adjusted her floral shawl, and expressed her admiration for Charles’ decision to sit on the floor with other members of the congregation.

Referring to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book, Shukra said that “all the people (are) equal.” It “doesn’t matter” if you are king, she added.

Some British newspapers have suggested that Charles’ desire to include other faiths in the coronation faced resistance from the Church of England, and one conservative religious commentator recently warned that a multi faith ceremony could weaken the “kingly roots” of the monarchy.

But George Gross, who studies the link between religion and monarchy, dismissed these concerns.

The crowning of monarchs

The crowning of monarchs is a tradition that stretches back to the ancient Egyptians and Romans, so there is nothing intrinsically Christian about it, said Gross, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London. In addition, all of the central religious elements of the service will be conducted by Church of England clergy.

Representatives of other faiths have already been present at other major public events in Britain, such as the Remembrance Day services.

“These things are not unusual in more contemporary settings,” he said “So I think of it the other way: Were there not to be other representatives, it would seem very odd.”

Charles’ commitment to a multifaith society is also a symbol of the progress that’s been made in ending a rift in the Christian tradition that began in 1534, when Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and declared himself head of the Church of England.

That split ushered in hundreds of years of tensions between Catholics and Anglicans that finally faded during the queen’s reign, said Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic clergyman in England. Nichols will be in the Abbey when Charles is crowned on Saturday.

“I get lots of privileges,” he said cheerfully. “But this will be one of the greatest, I think, to play a part in the coronation of the monarch.”

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