Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden
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Her Royal Highness Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, Duchess of Westrogothia (Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée Bernadotte) (born July 14, 1977), is the heir apparent to the crown of Sweden. She is the eldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and his wife, Queen Silvia.
Her given names honor various relatives, including her great-great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria; her great-aunt Queen Ingrid of Denmark; her maternal grandmother, Alice Sommerlath, and her ancestor Désirée Clary, the queen of Karl XIV Johan of Sweden and a former fiancée of Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Education
Victoria attended a state elementary school and a private gymnasium (secondary school) in Stockholm, graduating in 1996. Afterward, she has studied for a year at Université Catholique de l'Ouest in Angers in France, and for two years at Yale University in the United States. She has also spent considerable time studying and following the work of the Swedish government at the local, national and EU levels, as well as familiarizing herself with the Swedish economy.
In addition to her studies, Victoria has worked as a trainee at the United Nations in New York and at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, DC, and she has also visited three week introduction to a Swedish Defence Forces course that aims to prepare its participants for international missions. Victoria has also studied conflict solving and international peacekeeping, completed an educational programme with the SIDA, Swedish International Development Agency, interned at the Swedish Trade Council in Berlin and Paris, and studied forestry and agriculture.
Change in Status
She was created crown princess and heir apparent on January 1, 1980, by the 1979 Successionsordningen. This constitutional reform meant that the throne would be inherited by the eldest child without regard to sex; Sweden was the first country to adopt cognatic primogeniture. This not only made Victoria the first heiress-apparent to the Swedish throne, but it also made her the first female in the line of succession at all.
Prior to this constitutional change, the heir to the throne was her younger brother, Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Wermelandia; he is now second in line to the throne. She also has a younger sister, Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Helsingia and Gestricia.
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Royal Duties
The Crown Princess has made many official trips abroad as a representative of Sweden. Her first major, official visit on her own was to Japan in the autumn of 2001, where she promoted Swedish design. In 2002 she paid official visits to Kosovo, and in 2003 to Cairo and the United States. In the beginning of 2004, she paid an official visit to Saudi Arabia, as a part of a large official business delegation from Sweden. One of the most recent official trips she has done on her own was to Hungary in October 2004, where she opened an exhibition. Her recent official visit to Australia was to promote Swedish design. In June of 2005, she visited the historic sights of Istanbul.
Marriage Speculation
Though the Crown Princess has long refused to discuss her private life, she frequently has been the object of press speculation regarding purported romances. Since 2002, she has been linked to Daniel Westling, a personal trainer and gym owner. When news about her relationship with Westling first broke, the Crown Princess said, "We're good friends, but I'm not going to say any more." However, in an interview on Sweden's TV4 in 2004, she did say that much of the criticism directed at Westling for being unsophisticated and uneducated was unfair. "I understand that there is speculation but sometimes there must be fairness too," she said. Later that year, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reported that the couple intended to announce their engagement in early 2005 and marry this summer but no such announcements have been made.
During her April 2005 visit to the World Exposition Aichi in Tokyo, the Crown Princess was interviewed by Mikio Yikuma, a reporter with the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Yikuma brought up the subject of royals marrying commoners, to which the princess responded, "I think the general idea of Swedes is that it's the modern way to marry someone that you love, not necessarily where she or he comes from." Though she did not mention Westling by name, the Crown Princess did admit, "There is someone in my life" but that marriage was not on her mind. The interview was conducted at the Swedish embassy in Tokyo and published in Yomiuri Shimbun on April 18, 2005.
Anorexia
In 1997, the Crown Princess brought public attention in Sweden to anorexia by admitting that she had an eating disorder and was receiving treatment. The condition was officially announced by a palace spokesperson after the Crown Princess's increasingly thin frame had become a subject of gossip in newspapers and magazines. A year after the condition was revealed, the recovering princess said in an interview, "I feel very good now, but everyone went through a really difficult period."
See also
| Preceded by: — | Line of succession to the Swedish throne | Succeeded by: HRH Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Wermelandia |
External links
- The Royal Court of Sweden: Crown Princess Victoria (http://www.royalcourt.se/theroyalfamily/crownprincessvictoria.4.53abbbfd7ffdfa677fff24564.html)de:Kronprinzessin Viktoria
ja:ヴィクトリア王女 (スウェーデン) nl:Kroonprinses Victoria van Zweden no:Victoria av Sverige sv:Kronprinsessan Victoria