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Forebears. It was not always that way. Wilhelmina's forebears were a tough collection of fighting men. While they were still nominally under Spanish rule and before the British ran them off the sea (1654), they conquered an Empire in America and Asia in the same military manner as did the British and French. As late as 100 years ago Wilhelmina's grandfather, William II, fought a brief war to try to regain Belgium. The unification of the 29 German States into one big neighboring empire headed by Prussia made the practical Dutch finally realize that a nation of only a few million could no longer play big-time grabby politics in a world of giant neighbors. It was under Wilhelmina that The Netherlands became a "satisfied nation," settled down and hung up its sword like Switzerland and the Scandinavian States.
Princess. Queen Wilhelmina is the11th of her line to govern The Netherlands.
The House of Nassau can trace its origin to 800, its members settling in the Lowlands from Germany in 1400. The Orange-Nassau line barely missed dying out with Wilhelmina's father, William III. William's first wife and two sons died one after the other. At 62 he married the 20-year-old Princess Emma, of Waldeck-Pyrmont, a small German State. Of that marriage the sole issue was Wilhelmina, born August 31, 1880. Repeal of the Salic Law forbidding female rulers allowed her to succeed to the throne.
Princess Wilhelmina's life was mostly work and little play. At ten her father died and she became Queen, with her able mother acting as Regent. On her first appearance on the balcony of the Royal Palace at Amsterdam she is said to have asked: "Mama, do all these people belong to me?" Queen Emma answered: "No, my child, it is you who belong to all these people." Her preparation by private tutors for queenship was guided by this principle. At 18, in 1898, she was crowned in the New Church at Amsterdam, swearing to support the Constitution and uphold the liberties of the people.
As a measure of the personal independence she was to demand, the young Queen refused point-blank to allow her Prime Minister to write her first public speech.
One year later she began her peace and neutrality offensive by offering her sprawling palace at The Hague for the First International Peace Conference, at which many of the present conventions governing war, the rights of neutrals, the principles of arbitration were first laid down.
Private Life. Two years after her coronation Wilhelmina married a dashing young lieutenant of the Prussian Guards, Henry Wladimir Albert Ernst, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Prince Henry was fond of meeting up with sea captains and artists, and led a hard life playing second fiddle for 33 years in a severely formal and moral court. The Queen was far from happily married, and the Prince was far from popular with the strict Dutch. Wilhelmina came very near dying from a miscarriage. Her only child, Juliana, the present Heir to the Throne, was born in 1909. The Prince Consort died in 1934.