She sure isn’t
Kate Middleton: Sofia Hellqvist, a former reality TV star who once posed naked
with a boa constrictor, has married Carl Philip, the playboy prince of Sweden.
The Swedish royal
family have always been among the most forward-looking of
European nobles.
In Stockholm, it is not unusual to see the next in line to
the throne, Crown Princess Victoria, and her husband, her former personal
trainer, Daniel Wesling, whizzing past on their bikes.
You can often see senior members of the royal family – even
Carl Gustav XVI, aged 69, and his wife, Queen Silvia – in the city’s restaurants
and theatres.
It’s all terribly modern.
But still, the announcement in 2014 that Prince Carl Philip
was to actually go ahead and marry a former glamour
model and reality TV starlet caused a certain amount of
disbelief, even among the oh-so-liberal Swedes.
Especially when it then was
revealed that Sofia Hellqvist had once posed naked with only a boa constrictor
to preserve her modesty for a magazine called Slitz and told an interviewer she had ‘made out’ with Jenna Jameson
after meeting the porn star at a party in LA.
However, the guiding principle of a thousand fairy tales
came true for Hellqvist, 30, on Saturday, when the winsome, gap-toothed beauty
did indeed marry her Prince in a lavish ceremony in Stockholm.
The wedding was attended by senior European royalty,
including Britain’s Prince Edward and Princess Sophie, representing the Queen.
The bride wore white (a dress by Swedish designer Ida
Sjostedt, made from silk crepe, covered with Italian silk organza) and although
the dress was cut high at the back, it didn’t quite reach high enough to hide
the compass-like tattoo which adorns her back, just below the nape of her neck
(although another tat of a winding flower on her upper right arm was lazered
away shortly after she moved in with the Prince in 2011, following their
meeting through mutual friends in a nightclub).
“No regrets.
Experience shapes a person. I think everything will be alright.”
Another rock ‘n’ roll note was sounded at the ceremony when
Swedish singer Salem Al Fakir performed Coldplay's hit "Fix You,"
followed by aSwedish-language
version of Rihanna's "Umbrella."
Although an impression of serene indifference has been
maintained across the establishment, the truth is that this marriage represents
a huge gamble for the Swedish royal dynasty.
The Queen is known to be especially concerned that her son,
well-known in Swedish society for his playboy lifestyle (he once went on a
drunken ramble around central Stockholm in an alien mask) has wagered the
Swedish royal family’s reputation in pursuit of only his own ends.
The Swedish royal family have traditionally been among the
less popular monarchs in Europe.
They are not particularly
expensive on a per capita basis, but they are also not
perceived to add a great deal to the country’s international brand appeal or
status, as the British Royals undoubtedly do, hence their hard-earned attempts
to identify with their subjects through a strategy of visible ‘just-like-us’
prudence, and their habit of publicly eschewing the trappings of wealth
(witness the bicycles).
From day one, Sofia has represented a unique challenge and
opportunity for the Swedish royal family’s PR team.
As unpopular as she is with the older guard, the delicate
art of spinning her ‘naughtiness’ represents, as it does for the British royal
family with Prince Harry,
a definite moment of possibility. Sofia—or the Duchess of Varmland as she will
henceforth be known—is an opportunity for the extended royal family to create
an authentic point of reference that connects with the next generation of
Swedes.
Millennials will
not only shrug their shoulders at the notion of a young woman making some money
for herself by appearing in a moderately saucy reality TV show (in one scene on
the show, “Paradise Island”, Sofia was filmed topless receiving a back and butt
massage), many of them would applaud the ambition--and salute the subsequent
iconoclasm implicit in the marriage between reality TV star and third-in-line
to the throne.
Sofia gets this, and has never seen any reason to attempt to
deny her past, which has also included less controversial stints as a yoga
teacher (when she was living in New York) and accountant.
"A lot has been written over the years, not only
following our engagement," Sofia said in a documentary entitled “A Year
with the Royal Family”.
"For me it's pretty boring, it happened ten years ago
and I've moved on with my life. But no regrets. Experience shapes a person…I
think everything will be alright."
There are many in the upper echelons of Swedish society who
will be fervently praying this week that the new Duchess of Varmland is correct
in that assumption.
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