Princess Margarita and Tjalling Ten Cate married at an estate near Maarsbergen in central Holland, on Saturday 3 May, 2008. Members of the royal family and friends attended the low-key civil ceremony.
Queen Beatrix was present too, in contrast to Margarita’s first marriage to Mr. Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn in the French town of Auch in 2001, when the queen and Margarita’s father, the Duke of Parma, were among the many absentees.
At the time of posting no details of the wedding were known, with Dutch media respecting the Princess’ wish for privacy. Margarita had hoped to keep the date and place of her second wedding a secret, planning to release one picture only some time afterwards. That plan was thwarted and on Friday she had a posse of photographers stalking her.
Margarita, 35, and Tjalling Ten Cate, 32, made their engagement public on 19 February. That their relationship met with royal approval was evident two weeks earlier, when they appeared with the rest of the Dutch royals at the joint birthday party in Amsterdam for Queen Beatrix, 70, and Princess Margriet, 65.
Queen Beatrix previously had disapproved of Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn, Margarita’s first husband. The pair felt rightfully slighted by the family, and when pleas for acceptance and consideration fell on deaf ears, went public with their grievances. In a series of interviews with Dutch weekly HP/De Tijd Margarita and Edwin did more than spill the beans on the House of Orange and the Bourbon de Parme family.
Their accusations were rejected by Queen Beatrix at a special press conference in Santiago de Chile ("this is not the Margarita I know and love") and they even lead to a spectacular special debate in parliament, with Edwin and Margarita seated in the public gallery.
The pair claimed that Edwin was spied on, and that the secret service had checked his credentials, illegally sharing their information with Margarita’s father and with her grandfather, the late Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Government ministers had to apologise to the couple after they first denied any wrong doing and than found out that the secret service, as the express orders of the Queen’s Cabinet, had indeed check on Edwin.
Margarita and Edwin, who lived in a castle in the south of France, legally separated in 2006, two years after Margarta’s lawyer announce her intention to do so. By 2005 the Princess had been welcomed back in the royal family, while Edwin said he would write and publish at least two books about the royal family which so brutally rejected him.
Margarita and her new husband, who studied law at the prestigious Leiden University and who works for the Netherlands central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, expect their first child in August.
© RB
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