Neal Stephenson’s new book Termination Shock features both RDS and the Netherlands’ Royal House of Orange extensively.
Speaking of which, the House of Orange has a fascinating history:
Sitting on the Rhône river near Avignon in southern France, the small Principality of Orange (1163–1713) has had a disproportionate part to play in world affairs. In 1544 by historical accident it became ruled by the same man as was the northern French county of Nassau, and that line went on to establish the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau when the Netherlands successfully revolted from the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty in the Eighty Years’ War 1568–1648.
In 1685 the Catholic James II succeeded Charles II to the English throne and the mainly Protestant English feared he would attempt to mandate Catholicism in England again, and would also take Catholic France’s side against the League of Augsburg an anti-French, mainly Protestant coalition of the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Spain and several German states).
The then Dutch ruler William III of Orange had married Mary Stuart, who was his cousin and the daughter of James, Duke of York (who soon became the above- mentioned James II), and so was in the line of succession for the English throne if James was excluded for any reason, and as an added bonus was Protestant. To the English this made him an attractive alternative to his uncle and father-in-law James II, as they were sick of being ruled by Catholic monarchs and of the wars, external and civil, that this had caused. In 1688 prominent English Protestants invited William to invade England while France was busy elsewhere and he duly did so. There was no significant opposition and he was crowned King William III (and William II of Scotland) at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689.
Like all other English monarchs of the period he had to deal with the Irish Question; as a Protestant of good standing his answer naturally involved siding with his co-religionists there against the Irish Catholics under James II, whom he resoundingly defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The grateful Irish Protestants proclaimed themselves to be Orangemen, as they still refer to themselves today.
William III died childless so the House of Orange’s tenure on the English throne began and ended with him – it passed to his wife’s sister [Queen] Anne – but the Dutch branch continues unbroken to the present day.
The finest quality tea brought to Europe by the Dutch East India company was bai hao “white tip”, referring to the white still-curled young leaves used to make it; on European tongues bai hao was corrupted to Pekoe. When presented to the Dutch royal family they granted it a royal warrant to be known as Orange after their royal house, and so it became Orange Pekoe tea.
When Dutch settlers colonised South Africa they named the Orange River after their royal house, and in 1837 when they founded the Orange Free State. Some of the fiercest fighting in the second Boer War (1899–1902) occurred there, as two armies loyal to descendants of the same royal house fought it out in a region named after that very same royal house.
None of these world-shaking events had anything more to do with the tiny Province of Orange, which was finally absorbed into France in 1713 and is part of the département of Vaucluse today.