Dutch Prince Johan Friso married his scandal-touched fiancee Mabel Wisse Smit without the permission of the government on Saturday and in doing so gave up his right to succeed to the throne.
Johan Friso, second son of Queen Beatrix, chose to marry Wisse Smit despite failing to win government approval after the couple acknowledged she had a more involved relationship with a murdered mobster than she had originally said.
Shortly after their engagement a year ago, Wisse Smit issued a statement saying she had known Dutch mobster Klaas Bruinsma for a few months when she was a student, but had broken with him when she learned of “the practices he engaged in.”
But her relationship with Bruinsma, who was shot dead in a gangland killing in 1991, was back under the spotlight in October when one of his former bodyguards said the pair had been lovers.
The human rights activist conceded later to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende she had had a closer relationship with Bruinsma and maintained contact with him for at least another 18 months. But she denied any business or romantic involvement.
Few of Europe’s royal houses sent representatives to the wedding celebrations on Saturday but among VIPs were Norway’s King Harald, billionaire philanthropist George Soros and the prime minister, whose concerns about Wisse Smit forced Johan Friso to chose between love or the throne.
Celebrations scaled back
Just a few hundred people greeted the couple as they emerged from a civil ceremony at Delft city hall as festivities were kept to a more modest scale than at the wedding of Crown Prince Willem Alexander to Argentine Maxima Zorreguieta in 2002.
“People are very disturbed by what happened and all the commotion with ’Mabelgate’ as we call it here in Holland,” said one woman, explaining thin crowds. “She is not really popular.”
Johan Friso and his bride, both 35, are no strangers to controversy. Two years ago the government issued an official statement to refute rumors Friso, then second in line to the throne, was a homosexual.
Wisse Smit, an economics and political science graduate, was once a close friend of former Bosnian foreign minister and U.N. ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey, who was arrested in New York in 2003 for allegedly stealing $2.5 million from his government.
Crown Prince Willem Alexander, heir to the Dutch crown, sparked a storm when he proposed to Maxima, whose father served in Argentina’s military junta. Queen Beatrix’s own marriage in the 1960s to German-born Claus, who fought briefly in World War Two, triggered riots.
