Princess Amalia's terrifying ordeal
Ainhoa profiles the Dutch royal getting her life back on track after stalker hell
As if being a teenager weren't hard enough, imagine being the victim of targeted attacks and even threats on your life. This is what Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands, better known as Princess Amalia, has had to endure in the past few years.
She faced her first threats aged 17, when she received messages on Instagram of a "violent, sexual and frightening nature", from a resident of Zwolle city and a man simply named as Wouter G. in court. According to the prosecutor, he told Amalia he would find her on King's Day and that there would be "no escape". He also claimed he was saving up to buy a gun and threatened to kill one of her friends. The man, a paranoid schizophrenic, was later arrested and detained in a psychiatric unit and given a prison sentence, plus mandatory treatment.
You may be wondering why Amalia and her terrifying ordeal is the subject of today's newsletter, but the young princess is due to step into the spotlight later this week when she takes part in her first royal state visit.
For context and for those who may not know much about the Dutch princess, she's been keeping a fairly low profile since autumn 2022 when she started university, but had to quit her student accommodation shortly after, when it became clear that her safety had become a major security risk. More on that later.
Royal milestone
On Wednesday, Amalia will join her parents King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima in welcoming their friends King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain to the Netherlands.
The Dutch and Spanish royals have always been tight, with Argentinian-born Maxima raising Amalia and her two younger daughters Princesses Alexia and Ariane to be bilingual. This is a good engagement to ease the future Dutch queen into, royal journalist Annemarie de Kunder of RTL Boulevard told me when I spoke to her on the phone last week.
"It's Amalia's first state visit so it is a big milestone. And we weren't expecting her to attend. But Felipe and Letizia are good friends with Willem-Alexander and Maxima. Amalia also speaks Spanish.
"It's a fairly casual way of introducing her to a state visit, to see how everything works, what the protocol is, and I think this is a very good one for her to start with, because she's going to be attending these for the rest of her life."
