ROYALTY The Allure Endures

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impeccable Dutch within two years (Bernhard still has a marked German accent) and keeping his wife's temper in check. He and Beatrix have become closely associated with the country's New Left movement, leaving some people worried that the House of Orange may turn pink if Beatrix—who with Claus receives $583,000 annually—succeeds to the throne. The princess and her husband have three sons; the eldest, Willem-Alexander, 9, is the first male in direct line of succession since William III (1849-90). Thus the House of Orange, whatever its shade, seems likely to keep on maintaining.

THE ONLY BELGIAN

Monarchy in Belgium is no symbol. It is the vital element that holds together a society as potentially self-destructive as Northern Ireland or Lebanon. Presiding over a rancorous mesalliance of Flemish and French-speaking Walloon citizens, King Baudouin, at 45, reigns with the adroit feudside manner that earned Belgium's first King, his great-great-grandfather Leopold I, the sobriquet, "Monsieur Gently Does It." Though his political role is strictly circumscribed by a British-style constitution, the King alone, in a government crisis, can pick the man to assemble a new regime. With slight exaggeration, Baudouin is called "the only Belgian."

Baudouin's life, like his twice-invaded nation's, has been shadowed by tragedy. In 1940, when the Crown Prince was just nine years old, he was held with his father Leopold III by the occupying Germans. While their compatriots fought on from England, the King remained quiescent—or, as many Belgians suspected, acquiescent—in German custody. The issue of Leopold's honor was close to tearing Belgium apart in 1951, when the King abdicated in favor of Baudouin, a prince sans reproche.

The new King came boldly to grips with responsibilities far beyond Belgium's tidy borders. In the late 1950s, the Congo was erupting in the first great explosion of African nationalism. Though the colony had been a rich family fief, Baudouin in 1959 stunned his nation by calling for eventual recognition of an independent Congo. The King is honored in the rechristened Republic of Zaïre, whose President Mobutu Sese Seko sometimes shares his problems with his royal colleague in Brussels. "My biggest difficulty," Mobutu once confided to Baudouin, "is preventing my tribes from tearing each other apart." "Same problem," nodded Baudouin, "as mine."

The King's unswerving solemnity was softened by his marriage in 1960 to Fabiola de Mora y Aragon, a willowy Spanish aristocrat. They are not big spenders, though Baudouin has old money from the Congo in addition to his government stipend of $2.4 million. A balletomane, Baudouin also observes more distant stars as an impassioned private astronomer, while Fabiola writes books for other people's children; they have none of their own. Heir to the throne is Baudouin's younger brother Prince Albert, 41, whose Italian-born wife, Princess Paola, strikes younger Belgians as the liveliest attraction since Waterloo. The royal house should last as long as Belgium does.

SOLID IN STOCKHOLM

Sweden's Carl XVI Gustaf, the West's youngest reigning monarch (he will be 30 this week), has to learn royalty's new role in a state that has become a republic in all but name