Grand Duke Henri Announces Abdication

From experience, the events over recent decades in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Japan and Denmark got a big ho-hum from the general American public and media. Basically an “oh by the way” aside in the news as a bumper before going to commercial, or a brief segment in the few minutes per hour block of “world” news you get on a slow day.

And that’s without counting on how many Americans can know Luxembourg from Limburg or Liechtenstein. Or will be asking why is the Grand Duke grand and could there also be an Awesome Duke or a So-So Duke.

(* Usual topics for “world” news for USA: Middle East; war elsewhere where we may be directly or indirectly interested; China doing something that affects our interests; event elsewhere that may cause refugees to head this way; mass casualty event in the hundreds OR where an American may have been involved; British Royal Family shenanigans.)

Based on the royals of The Netherlands, it also helps if the younger female members of the family are blonde and good looking. How photogenic is Princess Stephanie?

She has a Carrie Fisher-esque look about her.

What, no bagel-buns?!?

:rofl:

Bah dah dah BING! :grinning:

Every American knows the Grand Duke’s job is to go from house to house looking for a woman whose foot fits the glass slipper.

We have always been at war with Sweden.

Henri and Stephanie are a fine looking couple. I saw the video of their wedding on YouTube. One thing is the man who walked her up the aisle was her older brother, she was the youngest of eight kids. When the couple, before the vows, greeted a very elderly man I realized this was her father. He was in his early sixties when she was born.

Henri is Stephanie’s father-in-law. She’s married to his son Guillaume.

I couldn’t find a facepalm smiley, of course you are right. I’m an idiot.

They’re :man_facepalming: and :woman_facepalming: as you prefer. That’s :man_facepalming: and :woman_facepalming: respectively.

As with all our smileys, they’re each available in 6 shades.

They should immediately declare war on America, so that they can lose, and qualify for Marshall Aid.

Americans don’t care about Luxembourg because they don’t know anything about it. They couldn’t point to it on a map and I doubt they could even spell it correctly. I don’t think it’s ever mentioned in public schools unless in a history class on WWII.

Plus, we’re not all that interested in monarchies, (except for the UK of course, since we used to be part of that one). I only know about Luxembourg because I’ve traveled to Belgium, and because my father was in the Army unit that did clean-up after the Battle of the Bulge, before continuing its march into Germany.

There’s also a gender-neutral facepalm:

:person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:

If that matches the poster’s identity or philosophy better.

TIL. Thank you. I had not picked up on those. Turns out there are 33 of them.

Although they seem to be kinda inconsistent on which classic yellow-circle faces are included as “person_something” and which are not.

Did anybody else misread the title as Grand Duke Henri Announces Abduction.
Because planning your own kidnapping? Man, that is some serious boredom.

:musical_score: There must be 50 ways to leave your castle. :musical_note:

Also, we have a thread for that:

Someone has been reading “The Mouse That Roared” The books were better than the movie.

He’s no egomaniac. He was planning someone else’s kidnapping.