January Meme: My Favourite Post Enlightenment Scandinavian Princess

[selenak]

As unfortunately I am not very well informed about Scandinavian princesses post Enlightenment (and only about a few pre-Enlightenment), I have to default to the one I do know something about, which is the current Queen of Sweden, Silvia, nee Sommerlath. Not so much because she hails from Heidelberg but because I met her, twice, both times on charity occasions, and she impressed me by not making the same speech (with just a few different local allusions) on said occasions but making a different speech, with both speeches being poignant and full of facts, not vague phrases. Now this may all be to the credit of her speech writer - I'm assuming she has one, though I don't know -, but she still was the one delivering those speeches, largely free style, looking into the audience, and later answering questions from said audience, which largedy consisted of representatives of other charity organisations, so they asked questions like "how do you deal with issue x", or "and what if in country y the government tries to do such and such", not paparazzi stuff.

Silvia founded the World Childhood Foundation, with a focus on child victims of sexual abuse, and that was the reason she spoke on the two occasions I participated in, and her work for it has been steady ever since its foundation, not just cutting ribbons but actual work, and therefore I found myself respecting and liking her.

(Incidentally, the reason why she's Queen of Sweden is because she worked as an interpreter and hostess at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, which brings us back to the subject of my entry two posts ago.)

The other days