Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands
Willem-Alexander has been King of the Netherlands since April 2013, the first male monarch there since 1890 after three successive queens. Born in Utrecht in 1967, the eldest son of Beatrix, he was educated in the Netherlands and at Atlantic College in Wales, and read history at Leiden, writing a thesis on the Dutch response to the French decision to leave NATO's integrated command. He served in the navy, and has a private pilot's licence; he flew as a volunteer co-pilot on KLM flights for over twenty years, largely unrecognised because passengers rarely see the flight deck, and has said the anonymity was restful. He specialised in water management, a subject of some importance in a country largely below sea level, and chaired the UN Secretary-General's advisory board on water and sanitation from 2006 to 2013. He married Máxima Zorreguieta, an Argentine investment banker, in 2002. The engagement was controversial because her father had been a minister in the military junta responsible for the disappearance of thousands; parliament approved the marriage on condition he did not attend the wedding. He succeeded on his mother's abdication in 2013, which is the Dutch practice rather than a crisis; his grandmother and great-grandmother had done the same. The Dutch monarchy is ceremonial, and its remaining formal role in government formation was removed in 2012, shortly before he acceded. He apologised in 2022 for the royal house's role in slavery, and in 2020 for Dutch violence in Indonesia during the independence war. He and Máxima have three daughters, and Catharina-Amalia is heir under a succession that has been gender-neutral since 1983.
- Lived: 1967 CE – ?
- Nationality: Dutch
- Roles: king, head_of_state
