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Swedish royal family

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The Swedish Royal Family in 1905.

The Swedish Royal Family since 1818 consists of a number of persons in the Swedish Royal House of Bernadotte, closely related to the King of Sweden. They are entitled to royal titles and style (manner of address), and some perform official engagements and ceremonial duties of state. The extended family of the King consists of other close relatives who are not royal.

Prior to 1818, the Swedish Royal Family was the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the Oldenburg dynasty which ruled Sweden from 1457 to 1521 (then intermittently) and from 1751 until 1818. That dynasty's last legal pretender to the Swedish throne was Prince Gustav of Wasa (1799-1877) whose only son Lewis predeceased him in infancy in 1832.

History

A Swedish royal family has been able to be identified as existent from as early as the 10th century A.D., but with more precise detail only being able to be added during the two or three centuries that followed. Historically confirmed monarchs are listed officially by the Swedish Royal Court.

Until the 1620s Swedish provinces were granted as territorial appanages to royal princes which, as dukes thereof, they governed semi-autonomously. Since then, these provincial dukedoms exist in the royal family only nominally, albeit each prince and princess traditionally maintains a special public connection to, and sometimes a secondary residence in, "his or her duchy".

The sons of Swedish kings have held the princely title as a rank of nobility (e.g. Fredrik Vilhelm, Furste av Hessenstein), or as a courtesy title for an ex-dynast (e.g. Prins Oscar Bernadotte) or, most often, as a royal dynast (e.g. HRH Prince Bertil of Sweden, Duke of Halland).

Current members

According to the Swedish Government, the Royal Family includes the following:

Extended family

Not official members of the Royal Family but considered part of the Swedish Royal Court:

The above additional sisters of the King remain princesses by title, but are no longer referred to as Princess of Sweden, nor styled Royal Highness. This resulted from their marriages to non-royal persons, which were not considered constitutionally appropriate dynastic alliances at that time and so were not approved by their grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf (for Margaretha and Désirée) or by their brother (for Christina). For similar marriages, several male relatives in the House of Bernadotte had given up their places in the line of succession to the Swedish throne and all royal titles (see Bernadotte af Wisborg). Since women were not entitled to succeed to the throne prior to 1979, the three sisters were allowed to keep the prefix "Princess" as an honorific.

Prince consort

On 24 February 2009, the Swedish royal court announced that Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden would marry commoner Daniel Westling.[1] Sweden has practiced gender-blind primogeniture by law since 1979 (SFS 1979:932. This means that Victoria's is the first case in which the heiress apparent, or indeed any Swedish princess who is in the line of succession to the Swedish throne (since women only acquired that right in 1979), is to marry. Thus, some questions arose after the announcement as to how the Crown Princess's husband would be known after the wedding.

When Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden married Silvia Sommerlath in 1976, he discontinued the established norm that Swedish princes must marry royalty in order to keep the right to inherit the throne and their royal titles. But men, royal or not, had only twice before, in the 13th and 17th centuries, obtained new title or rank as the spouse of a Swedish princess, and even the queens regnant left no clear precedent. (One of them was a king's widow, one unmarried and the latest abdicated so her consort could be king.) In Westling's case, the Swedes are now treading on new ground.

The Swedish court announced that upon his marriage to Princess Victoria, who is Duchess of Västergötland (Westrogothland), Westling would receive the titles of "Prince Daniel" and "Duke of Västergötland". This corresponds in form to the style used by previous Swedish princes, including Victoria's younger brother Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland, i.e. Prince + Given name + Duke of Somewhere. The novelty was that Westling's elevation occurred in conjunction with marriage, so his ducal title refers to the same province as Victoria's (which also is something new for men). Daniel Westling was also accorded the style of Royal Highness (HRH), to which Victoria is already entitled, and the full title "Prince of Sweden".

See also

References

  1. ^ "Engagement between Crown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling" (Press release). Royal Court of Sweden. 24 February 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2010.

External links

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