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christening, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, princess, Princess Estelle of Sweden, royal baby, royal family, royals, royalty, sweden
As in Denmark, friends and family of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel of Sweden gathered today in the Royal Chapel at The Royal Palace (creative naming scheme, there, huh?) for Princess Estelle’s christening.
No real surprises came from this christening, as Estelle’s names and title had already been announced, but the question of who Estelle’s godparents would be was of particular interest to me. Victoria has a bit of a status as “the godmother of Europe,” and now that she has a child of her own, it seemed to me like the time was right for a few of Victoria’s friends to return the favor. It appears I was right, as her closest royal friends were named godparents. (It’s apparently customary for the heirs of monarchies to be named godparents to children who are heirs/heiresses apparent/presumptive. Hence four of Victoria’s godchildren stand to inherit monarchies, and two of Estelle’s godfathers stand to inherit monarchies themselves.) The official list of godparents is: Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Prince of Orange; Crown Prince Haakon of Norway; Crown Princess Mary of Denmark*; Victoria’s brother Prince Carl Philip; and Daniel’s sister Anna Westling Söderström.
The Swedish Monarchy has only shared a small handful of pictures for media use, but if you go to the “home page” for Estelle’s christening, down toward the bottom is a slideshow titled, “Livebilder från dopdagen.”** There, you can see many candid shots of the entire ceremony and what looks to be a reception, with the option of seeing them in fullscreen. I have to say, it’s cute that Estelle has already been given a Royal Order of the Seraphim sash… and to see King Carl Gustav be so affectionate with his tiny granddaughter. In addition to her first chivalric order, Estelle already has her own coat of arms, which looks to be based on the royal arms plus the coat of arms of Östergötland, which Estelle is Duchess of.
And of course, a picture is always appropriate.
Photo by Bengt Nyman. (CC BY 2.0)
*I had wondered if Mary might be a godmother, since there was no real dynastic/family reason given for Mary to be among Estelle’s names.
**Kudos to the Swedish Monarchy for forcing me to work on picking up Swedish words and phrases. Their English site doesn’t have as much information as the Swedish site, and so if I wanted any information on today’s “dopdagen” (christening day), I had to work it out for myself. Google Translate is good for entire articles, but for just navigating a site it’s not worth the trouble.
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