ROYAL NEWS: AUGUST 2000

Last updated: September 1st, 2000.

August 2nd
Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian antiquities official, has called for a new effort to solve the mystery of how pharaoh Tutanchamon died. Dutch researchers believe the young pharaoh suffered from a disease, which left large fatty deposits on his hips. But the Egyptian said a power struggle over succession, not obesity, was most likely to blame for his death. Egyptian scientist Nasry Iskander wants to see if DNA analysis of tissue material might help solve the mystery.

August 4th
Queen Mother Elizabeth of Great Britain celebrated her 100th birthday.

The whole princely family of Monaco was present at the yearly traditional Red Cross Gala in Monaco. About 950 people, many of them well known, paid hundreds of dollars a person to attend the dinner and the dance at the Salle des Etoiles at Monaco's Sporting-Club.

The Royal Palace in Oslo, Norway is open for public tours for the first time since 1920. Even before the summer tours began on June 25th, all 26.000 tickets had been sold for the season that runs through the middle of August. The newly restored, 158-room palace overlooks Oslo's main street.

August 7th
The court of justice in Berlin, Germany, announced they dismissed an objection of Prince Ernst August of Hannover against a decision of the court of justice in Magdeburg. Some months ago that court decided that the Prince doesn't get back the Hanoverian family property in Sachsen-Anhalt that was expropriated after 1945. The former property exists among others of two castles, a monastery and 10.000 hectares of arable land.

Little Count Richard von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth, son of Count Jefferson-Friedrich and Princess Alexandra zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, took his first footsteps. And he is only 11 months old!

August 8th
An inquiry among 500 waiters by the Italian magazine Ristorante shows an interesting result. The waiters think the table manners of rich and prominent people are worse than the table manners of factory-workers. They pick their noses, put their elbows on the table and are very noisy. Many nobles are stingy. Happily there are some exceptions: the Duchess of York is a very respected guest.

Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark started his training as a pilot.

August 9th
Rahim, son of the Aga Khan - who is the spiritual and worldly leader of the Ishmaelites, has to deliver up his driving license. The police forced him to stop speeding on his motorcycle after a pursue through Hamburg, Germany. He drove 160 km an hour where only 100 km an hour is permitted.

August 10th
Even Prince Laurent of Belgium showed up on the list of Belgian paedophiles the Luxembourg journalist Jean Nicolas wanted to publish on the Internet. Yesterday the court of justice in Namur, Belgium, banned the publishing of the list in the magazine L'Investigateur and on the Internet. The magazines were already on their way to the subscribers and now the Postal Services try to stop the sending. Inquiries showed that most people on the list have nothing to do with child abuse. The list was based on the "tell tales line" that was set up at the start of the Dutroux-affair.

August 11th
Last Thursday King Mswati III of Swaziland (32) wed his fiancée Senteni Masango (18) at a traditional Kuteka ceremony witnessed by members of the two families at the Ludzidzini Royal Palace. Senteni Masango is the King’s seventh wife. He didn’t attend the wedding ceremony himself. The bride is named Inkhosikati (princess) La Masango now. The wedding comes weeks before the annual Reed Dance, a traditional pageant at which the King customarily picks a new bride from a bevy of bare-breasted maidens that dance for him. The King selected his newest wife at last year’s reed dance. Next to his seven wives the King still has one fiancée, Angel Dlamini. He appears to follow the footsteps of his father, King Sobhuza II, who had over 70 official wives when he died in 1982. Senteni Masango was the centre of an uproar this year when a Swaziland newspaper revealed that she had been kicked out of two schools for absence and indiscipline.

In 1963 the Duke of Argyll used four photos to get a divorce. On one of the photos, taken in 1956, his wife had oral sex with a man without a head. The Duke stated his wife had 88 lovers among them even members of the government and of the Royal Family of Great Britain. It was now revealed by the British TV-transmitter Channel 4 that the man without head was the actor Douglas Fairbanks jr.

Charles James Spencer-Churchill Marquess of Blandford has been cleared of stealing two pairs of sunglasses and a stick of deodorant from the London shop Harvey Nichols. The jury took just an hour to return its verdict. The Marquess said he simply forgot to pay as he was thinking of his coming vacation. The Marquess is an ex-drug addict and has 21 previous convictions, including theft and assaulting a policeman. His father disinherited him from the Blenheim Palace estate in 1994.

A newspaper on Barbados says voters will soon decide if the nation will drop Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain as the head of state and become a republic.

August 12th
Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece and his wife Maria have become the proud parents of a son. The boy, who was named Achileas-Andreas, was born at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City, USA.

Organisers of the Olympic Games of Sydney have come under fire from monarchists for including an attack on Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain in their official programme. It carries an essay by ardent republican writer Robert Hughes which calls the decision to keep the Queen as head of state "ludicrous". The article has prominent billing on the cover of the souvenir programme, which has gone on sale nationwide. Monarchists say it must be withdrawn.

August 13th
The Sunday Telegraph reports that Imran Khan will disclose this week that the late Princess of Wales asked him to act as 'marriage broker' with heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan in May 1997, when she visited him and his wife Jemima Goldsmith (a good friend of the Princess) in Pakistan. Imran Khan says that Diana had been involved with Dr. Khan for two years and that she had wanted to marry him. He thinks her relationship with Dodi Al Fayed was just a summer romance, possibly a calculated tactic to make Dr. Khan jealous and persuade him to marry her. Imran Khan said that before the fatal car crash, he had planned to fly to London to talk with Dr. Khan. The documentary in which Imran Khan tells this will be shown tomorrow on Channel 5 television in Great Britain at 8pm.

August 14th
The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the last tsar of Russia, Nikolaj II, and his family. The unanimous decision was made at a Bishop's council meeting in Moscow. The family was shot dead by a Bolshevik firing squad in the night from 16 to 17 July, 1918, in Yekaterinburg.

August 15th
The Princess Royal celebrated her 50th birthday. She is expected to mark the milestone privately with her family. Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is to host a reception at Windsor Castle on November 30th as an appreciation of her daughter's work.

August 16th
At the National Feastday in Liechtenstein yesterday as usual the Liechtenstein princely family invited the Liechtenstein people to the castle grounds. It was announced that prince Alois and his wife Sophie expect their fourth child.

Prince Richard zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and his wife Princess Benedikte of Denmark announced the engagement of their son Gustav with Elvire, daughter of Hervé Pasté de Rochefort and Hélène Rodocanachi. Elvire Pasté de Rochefort was born in Paris on March 13th, 1968. Gustav and Elvire both work in London. The marriage will take place in Paris in the Spring of 2001.

Princess Nathalie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, sister of Gustav, is preparing for the Olympic Games in Sydney next month. She is reserve for the national Danish equestrian team.

On September 15th the Wartburg near Eisenach, Germany, will be placed on the list of world cultural heritage of the Unesco. The castle is an eminent monument from the feudal period in middle Europe.

Belgian Wendy van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vande Kerckhove (she is a singer/sex symbol), gave birth to a son named Clement this morning at the Henri Serruys Hospital in Oostende, Belgium. She choose for an underwater birth. The father is unknown, but one of the possibilities mentioned is one of her good friends, Prince Laurent of Belgium.

August 17th
Prince William of Great Britain has proved himself to be one of the most academically successful members of the Royal Family. He gained an A-grade in Geography, a B in History and a C in Biology at his A-level exams at Eton. After one year relaxing amongst others in Australia, the prince will start a four-year MA (Honours) course in the history of arts at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in the autumn of 2001.

August 18th
On August 14th Prince Hashem of Jordan graduated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. His mother Queen Noor, King Abdullah II and Queen Rania, Crown Prince Hamzah, Princess Raiyah and Princess Iman attended the graduation.

August 20th
The Russian Orthodox Church has canonised Tsar Nikolaj II of Russia and his family at the Christ-Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. Grand Duchess Marija Vladimirovna, her son Grand Duke Georgi Michailovich and her mother Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna attended the ceremony.

The holy right hand of King Stefan I of Hungary was brought from the Basilica of St Stefan to the building of parliament in Budapest. About 25.000 people were watching the short journey through the city. It was one of the highlights during the commemoration of the first millennium of Hungary. It is 1000 years ago that King Stefan I brought the Christian faith to Hungary. He reigned the country between 1000 and 1038.

August 22nd
House Doorn in the Netherlands, where German Emperor Wilhelm II spent the last 20 years of his life in exile, is forced to close its doors in January 2001. The Dutch government stops subsidizing House Doorn that has been a very interesting museum for years. The government thinks the museum is not special enough and has not much to do with the Netherlands. I have visited the museum once and thought it was very interesting and it is really terrible that it has to close its doors.

The rebuilding of the City Palace in Potsdam, Germany, should start in 2004, a local newspaper says. The hope is that many people donate money to cover the very expensive project.

Collins Dictionaries have published the results of a poll of people most likely to make a mark in the new Millennium. The list is lead by Prince William of Great Britain. He is seen as a star of the future. On the list were further present and future celebrities, like little baby Leo Blair, who even beat his father, the present British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

August 23rd
In the south of Bulgaria archaeologists found parts of a palace that probably belonged to a Thracian King. The building that once had three floors is from the 5th or 4th century BC. The parts were found under a medieval castle near the village of Perperek, about 300 kilometres south east of Sofia. Earlier archaeologists probably found the grave of a Thracian leader from the 5th century BC near Starosel, about 150 kilometres east of Sofia. The Thracians were people who lived in the south of present Bulgaria around that time.

Experts found lavatories and jails under a tower at the edge of the Taj Mahal in India. The tower was built after 1631 by the Mogul Shah Jahan for his most beloved wife. The lavatories and jails most likely were used for the convicts that built the Taj Mahal.

August 25th
At Berleburg Castle Prince Gustav zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg presented his fiancée Elvire Pasté de Rochefort.

August 26th
Mohamed Al-Fayed says he will disclose new information about the car accident that killed Princess Diana of Wales and his son Dodi. He has pledged to speak out on the eve of the third anniversary of their deaths.

August 27th
Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece and his wife Maria showed their newborn son Achileas-Andreas. The little prince was born on August 12th.

August 29th
Egypt's highest appeals court is to hear the Egyptian princesses Ferial, Fawzia and Fadia, the daughters of the late King Farouk of Egypt. They have to tell their argue for ownership of the presidential palace and some land.

August 30th
24 Musea in the Netherlands, like Palace Het Loo, have protested against the stopping of the governmental subsidy to Huis Doorn that endangers the survival of the museum.

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands has invited several Dutch artists to sing on the Queen's Day concert in 2001. She wants to bring an homage to the Dutch chanson.

In a videotape at a Washington press conference Mohamed al-Fayed told he is taking legal action against the US government to obtain "secret" documents about the deaths of Princess Diana of Wales and his son Dodi. He said the files are kept secret at the request of the British secret services. He again repeated his claim that the couple were murdered in 1997.

There was a small fire on board of the Jumbo VI, the yacht of Prince Bernhard sr. of the Netherlands, which has its berth in the Italian seaside place Porto Ercole at the moment. The prince was not on board when the fire broke out.

August 31st
American Intelligence bodies have denied that they spied on Princess Diana of Wales. Any suggestions that the CIA has any information on her death is totally unfounded.

Crowds of people have made their way to Kensington Palace in London to commemorate the death of Princess Diana of Wales. Mourners, some of whom had camped out overnight, have placed flowers and candles at the Palace's gates to mark the third anniversary of her death.


Royal News: July 2000. Last updated: August 3rd, 2000.