I get that the title is a little cumbersome, but I couldn’t think of a better way to word it. The British royals seem to get a lot of the headlines, but according to this article, the heir to the Spanish throne might soon be a popular figure. I myself don’t know much about them or others, so I figured I’d ask some of the smartest, hippest people around who might have firsthand knowledge (or gossip) about them. I’m only thinking of the monarchs who seem to be mostly ceremonial.
nevermind, mis-read the OP.
Point of clarification: are you asking non-US dopers their opinions of their own nation’s monarchy? Otherwise the restriction makes no sense.
For me, only the King of the Netherlands as I drank with him once almost 40 years ago at a bar in Den Helder when he was a young naval cadet and I was a young junior officer in the RCN. At the time he was a great guy to shoot the breeze with, and quite modest.
Yes, sorry. I figured they would have the most connection and knowledge of the royals.
I live in Luxembourg. We have the Grand Ducal family. They are ceremonial figures atop a constitutional monarchy and have no meaningful power.
Nevertheless, they get a decent amount of gossip coverage in the local press.
I personally don’t pay attention to it.
I’m in the UK, don’t pay any attention to our own royal idiots, never mind anyone else’s.
I’m not concerned with the gossip side of it - and I’d be surprised if anyone who is that interested in what the tabloids and launderette magazines gossip about would be here in the first place.
As for the official business, we don’t actually seem to get much news coverage day to day, beyond the big ceremonial occasions, which have now settled back into the regular annual round (next big occasions Remembrance Day and the State Opening of Parliament). The bits we have seen of visits hither and yon suggest the style is a bit more relaxed and chatty, and I notice the core royal family seem to appear in non-news TV programmes with “good cause” connections rather often, which used not to be the case.
More than that, I can only say there’s no public sign yet of Charles being the fussy interventionist on potentially controversial issues that he was rumoured to want to be.
I am a US Doper so sorry about the reply, but as far as I’m concerned the celebrities who are mostly famous for being famous (like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, or whoever I’m not hip enough to think of) are basically American royalty. I don’t pay attention to them, but clearly many people do, or they wouldn’t be celebrities.
Ah, but are they expected to open and unveil things, show an interest in all the different things people want them to be seen to see, and generally making the people they’re talking to feel important and appreciated?
(AFAIK the other European monarchies have the same sort of rounds of visits and discussions)
As a child I was a voracious reader and struggled to acquire enough books to meet my needs so I would read anything I could get my hands on. I read a lot of gossip magazines as a kid.
Due to this I’m pretty familiar with the Australian gossip media favorites of the 80s and 90s - and in royalty terms that means the UK royals and the Monaco royals.
There’s also an Australian princess - Mary Donaldson married into the Danish royal family and that family has had a lot of coverage here since the early 2000s.
The Japanese royal family had a short run of gossip mag headlines when they were going through their succession crisis, when the emperor’s only child was a daughter and ineligible to inherit the throne. Then his brother had a son and they dropped from the headlines.
I remember some minor “scandal” about the Norwegian royals - the prince marrying a single mother but I think the angle was that she had studied in Australia for a while, years before she met him.
Mostly the other Royal families fly under the radar.
This. If you were to ask me who the heir to the throne is, it would be a guess. Honestly.
j
At the time he was still Crown Prince --but the family was pretty much stuck for a proper continuation including eligible side branches, until his younger brother produced a son.
Well, there’s the King of Spain’s brothers-in-law and his dad the King-emeritus, but that’s just vulgar money-grabbing, there’s no glamour in it.
They all have their periodic local issues, few if any of which have substantive constitutional/governmental significance, and blow over in time.
I live in Sweden, and though I don’t follow the news much I do enjoy living in a country with a royal family. Princess Estelle is delightfully cute, and her mother, Victoria, is next in line for the throne. It will be kind of cool when we have our own “Victorian Era” someday.
Although I don’t know any of the gossip, there have apparently been a few scandals over the years. But besides that, I like the idea of what royalty represents: the long-time stability guiding the country and preserving traditions and ideals. Politicians come and go every few years, but the royals influence the direction of the country on a generational basis.
(Now whether the Swedish royal family lives up to those expectations I don’t know; I have a tendency to romanticise things too much!)
I have a high suspicion that Brit Dopers possibly aren’t entirely terribly representative of the views of the wider British public about this sort of thing, going by the excessive coverage the Royals get in the tabloid press and magazines like Hello. But suffice to say, there’s obviously an interest in celebrity here just like there is in the US, and the royals certainly out rank the likes of Paris Hilton in the interests stake.
I don’t think we get hardly any coverage of other royal families, unless they’re rocking up to one of our royal occasions.
Otherwise, I’m not entirely clear what the OP is looking for.
The brother produced a son? Man, the royals are different, aren’t they?
I am from Spain and mutatis mutandis agree 100%. Royalty, aristocracy, privileges, birthrights and so on: I only care to abolish as many as possible as soon as feasible.
So basically a civilized version of Kim Jong Un? I pass.
It’s always fun to see how the tabloids are ‘watching the Royals’. The Express does it best.
So today, once they get past the pesky Israel/Palestinian conflict which they obviously feel forced to report on, it’s straight down to Royal tacks, including a (probably permanent) royal pull out section on the homepage. I guess in the US, this box would be ‘celebrity gossip’.
There are others?! 
I guess that answers your question. LOL