Magnificent, Engaging, or Remote

Abstract

Whenever a royal carriage rattled past the guards in Gustaf Adolf Square in Stockholm, the sentry shouted ‘At arms!’ and drumrolls sounded, male passers-by took off their hats and bowed, and women ‘curtsied as deep as at a cour reception at the palace’. As the carriage and its outriders disappeared, the square resumed its normal pace, ‘but not for long, as the same ceremony was repeated on its return, or when some other royal lady, or the king himself, was driven or went past’. A critic of the monarchy in 1846 wrote that members of the royal family hardly ever showed themselves on the streets of Stockholm without royal pomp. This irritated the journalist in question beyond belief, but there were plenty who were certain that people appreciated it, or like one courtier could write that Queen Dowager Desirée, despite not knowing any Swedish, ‘is loved, because she is benevolent, shows herself constantly to the people in theatres, public festivities, and driving through the streets, and keeps the old royal pomp, all things the Swedes demand of their Royals’. In the 1820s, an English diplomat in Stockholm noted how the royal family preserved their remote and exalted status more than many other courts: ‘The character of the Copenhagen society is quite different from that at Stockholm. The Royal Family go about like other people’.