House of Orange: Things you didn't know about The Netherlands' royal family

Everyone in the Netherlands, and quite a few people in the world, know the members of the Dutch royal family. Sometimes we think we have a personal connection with them; especially when they are so excitedly cheering at the Olympic Games.

At other times, they seem to be from a different planet. We dó have some quirky facts about the House of Orange at our disposal, however. Take a look at the following great photos and read new things about the Dutch royals.

Did you know that the Dutch royal family is one of the most expensive in the world? Every year, the royal family costs Dutch taxpayers approximately 40 million euros (45 million USD, 34 million GBP), per RTL News. That is more than any other country spends annually on their royal family.

To compare: Spain spends about 21 million euros annually on the royal family. That's a little more than half of what the Dutch family costs, while the population of Spain is three times as large as that of The Netherlands.

Even the British pale in comparison to what the Netherlands' royals cost. One way to reach a number comparable to that of the Dutch taxpayers' contribution, is to look at the British tax-paid Sovereign Grant to the royal family.

In the year 2022-23, it was 85 million pounds or 101 million euros. That's an absolute higher number - 2.5 times as much as the Dutch - but per citizen (77 million in Britain), it is less than what the 18 million Dutch spend on their royals.

The royal couple has a fervent football rivalry going on in their palace in The Hague. Apart from the fact that Máxima is Argentinian - a country that clashed several times with the Clockwork Orange - they also cheer on different local teams.

According to the newspaper AD, King Willem-Alexander is a supporter of Ajax Amsterdam, while Queen Máxima prefers the culturally diametrically opposed Rotterdam club of Feyenoord.

In 2016, Princess Amalia secretly took part in a horse riding competition. She used a pseudonym, the newspaper The Limburger claimed. No press representatives were present because they had no clue at the time.

Of course, she didn't arrive in the golden carriage, as in this photo!

Because they wanted to make the experience as normal as possible for Amalia, the King and Queen did not announce their visit to the competition. In fact, Màxima and Willem-Alexander were just sitting in the audience eating sausages, without anyone realizing who they were.

At the time of Willem-Alexander's 'secret' sports activity, the media were on to him. He participated in a legendary, 125-mile skating competition on natural ice. Many participants did not finish this heroic race, but he did!

The family tree lines of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Elizabeth meet through his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Jan Willem Friso. This makes Willem-Alexander officially the 899th in the line of succession to the British throne, Dutch broadcaster NOS reports.

Image: Patrick van Katwijk / RVD

Although the Dutch often informally call King Willem-Alexander 'Willem' or 'Willy', at his birth, he was named 'Willem-Alexander Claus George Ferdinand Prince of Orange, Prince of the Netherlands, Prince of Orange-Nassau, Squire of Amsberg'. However, this full name is not commonly used.

The three sisters in the Dutch family have all gone to the highest levels of secondary school in The Netherlands and abroad. Amalia, Alexia, and Ariane are an exceptionally smart generation of Oranges.

The gifted Amalia skipped a grade in primary school. In high school, she chose Chinese as a minor. Besides the Dutch and English she's had to master, Amalia also learned fluent Spanish while 'in hiding' in Madrid for a year during a terrorist threat.

Read more about the princess in hiding

The Dutch family has several ties with the southern country. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima met in 1999 in the Spanish city of Seville, RTL-Boulevard recalls.

Their first meeting took place during the Feria de Abril, the April Festivities held annually in Seville. Sometimes, the couple goes back to the Spanish city to remember their first days there.

The king's mother, Beatrix, has a hairstyle that was most common in the 70s and 80s, but she never changed it. It's comparable to that of the late Margaret Thatcher.

Bea's striking hairstyle became so iconic that it got its own entry in the dictionary. The word 'Beatrixkapsel' (Beatrix-hairstyle) was included in the official Dutch dictionary in 2005.

For those with a larger shoe size who may have difficulty finding nice shoes, it may be reassuring to know that Máxima (left) also wears shoe size 42. However, as the magazine Beau Monde adds, getting any shoe she wants in that size is probably not a problem for her.

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