(2 of 2)
All but Banished. Irene's decision to support her future husband politically goes against the Dutch requirement that the royal family stay out of politics. It also goes against the grain of most Dutchmen, who all too readily consider the Carlists as somehow linked to the Nazis. The Dutch press tore into Carlos, who reportedly wants Irene to appear at next month's annual rally of the Carlists in Spain; the program calls for her to wear the traditional half military, half nursing uniform of Margarita, a revered Carlist queen, while the Carlist pretender is to circle overhead in a helicopter to greet the crowd. "Carlos didn't give a damn about Juliana's interests," wrote the Amsterdam Alge-meen Handelsblad bluntly, and went on to call Irene "a tool in the hands of Carlos' political movement."
In a letter to Parliament, Dutch Premier Victor Marijnen all but banished Irene. Her words and acts, he said, should no longer be considered the responsibility of the government, the Queen should not attend her wedding, she should no longer use official transport or be guarded by Dutch police, and Netherlands ambassadors abroad should ignore her.
*A split in the Spanish royal family happened in 1833 when King Ferdinand VII died without a son, after changing the law of succession so that his daughter Isabella Maria II could follow him. Ferdinand's younger brother Don Carlos refused to recognize Isabella's right to the throne and led an unsuccessful rebellion; descended from him is a line of chronically unsuccessful Carlist pretenders, including Irene's fiance and his father Prince Xavier de Borbon y Parma. The best present-day claim to the Spanish throne belongs to Don Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, 50, who traces his descent through his father Alfonso XIII, last king of Spain, back to Isabella Maria herself.