Skvaller om H.K.H. Prinsessan Sofia

THE RACY ROYAL FAMILY


Glamour model Sofia Hellqvist is the latest squeeze of Prince Carl Philip of Sweden

Monday August 16,2010
By Anna Pukas


THE PRESS must surely be a comfort to the Queen sometimes. If she occasionally reflects on the not-always- decorous behaviour of her family, she need only open a newspaper to see that others in her position have it as bad, if not worse.

Consider the plight of her third cousin Carl Gustaf XVI of Sweden. This summer should have been one long celebration for the Swedish people and their popular monarch. His heir, Crown Princess Victoria, 33, married her long-term boyfriend. Touchingly, the young couple chose her parents’ 34th wedding anniversary, June 19, for their wedding day. The two weeks between Sweden’s national day on June 6 and the day of the wedding were designated a period of official festivities.

There was also to be another wedding later this year, of Victoria’s 28-year-old sister Princess Madeleine to her teenage sweetheart. All fairytale stuff – and just as insubstantial. Victoria’s husband, the new Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland (to give him his full nomenclature) was born plain Daniel Westling and until fairly recently earned his living as a personal trainer. In fact, he was her personal trainer. A fitness instructor as next royal consort has taken some swallowing.

And yes, Princess Madeleine was engaged to good-looking lawyer Jonas Bergstrom – until he had a one-night stand with a Norwegian handball player named Tora Uppstrom Berg, who promptly kissed and told all to a magazine.

Still, at least all is well with Prince Carl Philip, the king’s only son, isn’t it? Alas, no. The handsome 31-year-old has ended a 10-year relationship with PR girl and eminently suitable royal bride Emma Pernald and taken up with Sofia Hellqvist, a glamour model with an interesting CV, She has appeared in a leading Swedish men’s magazine, and on Paradise Hotel, a Swedish reality TV show featuring boozy rows and sex orgies. The most memorable published photograph of her shows her wearing tiny bikini bottoms and an artfully-draped python in place of a bikini top.

SEARCH for:


The shenanigans of their young royals have proved too much even for the famously broad-minded Swedes. Princess Victoria’s fairy-tale wedding was overshadowed by protests at the 20 million krona, (£1.7m) cost, half of which came from the taxpayers of Sweden and the newlyweds have been criticised for accepting the loan of a yacht, ranch and private jet from a Swedish billionaire.

P rince Carl Philip has been branded an irresponsible playboy by a press and public that would dearly like him to get back together with his much more appropriate ex. Meanwhile his father is accused of using royal influence to block publication of more raunchy photographs of Sofia Hellqvist, though the royal family’s spokesman denies the claim.

Whatever else the king and his wife, Queen Silvia, feel about all this, it has almost certainly occurred to them that if ever there were an argument against royals marrying commoners, surely their children are it. Carl Gustaf’s grandfather, King Gustaf VI was a firm believer in royals only marrying royals – so much so that three of his granddaughters (sisters of the present king) had to renounce their royal titles when they married commoners, and his son (uncle to the present king)waited 30 years until Gustaf’s death before marrying his Welsh lover Lilian Davies. However, Carl Gustaf is hardly in a position to complain about his children’s choices of partner because he married a commoner too.

Queen Silvia, 66, was born plain Silvia Sommerlath, the daughter of a German businessman and his Brazilian wife. She met Carl Gustaf at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where she was working as a hostess and translator. Fluent in six languages, she had previously worked as an air stewardess. Her marriage to the handsome young Swedish king in 1976 started a new craze in Sweden for brown-eyed brunettes.

Sweden became the first country to pass laws enabling a first-born daughter to succeed to the throne even if a son is born subsequently, as happened with Carl Gustaf and Silvia. Victoria, their eldest, has grown up knowing that her entitlement to the Swedish crown cannot be challenged.

She has had her problems, though. She is dyslexic, like her father, was anorexic in her teens and 20s and has been refreshingly open about both afflictions. She met Daniel Westling in 2002 when after a spell in an American clinic she decided to take up exercise. Three years her senior and the son of a civil servant and post office worker from a small town 90 miles north of Stockholm, he is widely credited with helping restore Victoria to health. Her parents, however, were horrified.

“For years, the king kept hoping they would split up,” says Johan Lindwall, royal correspondent of Sweden’s Expressen newspaper. “Daniel wore jeans and trainers and lacked social polish. But it became obvious that if Victoria couldn’t have Daniel, she didn’t want anyone else. There was a very real danger that she would end up not having children, which would threaten the entire monarchy and so finally her father had to give in.” After he established his own company with three gyms, the Swedes took to calling him a businessman rather than a personal trainer. Nevertheless, he has been compelled to take his wife’s surname, Bernadotte, upon marriage.

The king and queen have been left horrified all over again by the growing seriousness of their son’s year-long relationship with Sofia Hellqvist. Meanwhile though Princess Madeleine, is the innocent party in her broken engagement, she has been humiliated in the most public manner.

All very worrying for the king and queen of Sweden – but perhaps some small comfort to our own Queen.