Dutch prince consort being buried in ancestral tomb

Prince Claus, the German-born husband of The Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix who charmed his adopted country with his irreverent wit, was being buried today with royal honours.

Claus’ remains were carried by horse-drawn hearse from the North End Palace in The Hague to the family tomb in the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church, in the medieval city of Delft.

Hundreds of people watched from the sides of the procession route, standing in sombre respect behind an honour guard of 6,000 soldiers, wearing black armbands, lining the five mile route.

Claus died on October 6 aged 76 of pneumonia and Parkinson’s disease, but he had been ill for a decade.

Kings, queens and princes from the houses of Europe, Japan and Jordan convened in The Netherlands - most of them for the second time this year, following the wedding last February of Crown Prince Willem Alexander to an Argentine investment banker, Maxima Zorreguieta.

The crown prince and his two brothers accompanied the funeral cortege from The Hague in a separate carriage, while the queen waited to join the last leg of the procession as it entered Delft.

A coachman in a three-cornered hat and golden knee-length britches guided the six Friesian horses pulling the royal hearse the bore Claus’ flag-draped casket, which was open to view from both sides.

Claus, an aristocrat and a junior diplomat for West Germany, met then-Crown Princess Beatrix on the ski slopes of Switzerland and carried on a mostly secret year-long romance.

They were married in 1966 in Amsterdam, in a ceremony greeted by demonstrations and smoke bombs by Dutchmen protesting the liaison with Germany just 20 years after the end of the wartime occupation of the Netherlands and Claus’ own background in the Hitler Youth and the German army.

But Claus won over the Dutch with his devotion to his family, his gentle sense of humour, and his involvement in Third World causes. Ultimately, he become one of the more popular members of a royal family which had a drab and colourless image.

Claus’ remains join those of 43 other members of the House of Orange, beginning with the dynasty’s founder known as William the Silent, who was assassinated in 1584.