Princess Margriet | |||||
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Princess Margriet in 2015
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Born |
Ottawa Civic Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (Extraterritorial) |
19 January 1943 ||||
Spouse | Pieter van Vollenhoven (m. 1967) | ||||
Issue |
Prince Maurits Prince Bernhard Prince Pieter-Christiaan Prince Floris |
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House | Orange-Nassau | ||||
Father | Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld | ||||
Mother | Juliana of the Netherlands | ||||
Religion | Protestant Church in the Netherlands |
Full name | |
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Margriet Francisca |
Princess Margriet of the Netherlands (Margriet Francisca; born 19 January 1943) is the third daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. As an aunt of the reigning monarch, King Willem-Alexander, she is a member of the Dutch Royal House and currently eighth and last in the line of succession to the throne.
Princess Margriet has often represented the monarch at official or semi-official events. Some of these functions have taken her back to Canada, the country where she was born de facto, and to events organised by the Dutch merchant navy of which she is a patron.
The Princess was born in the Ottawa Civic Hospital,Ottawa, Ontario, to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Her mother was heir presumptive to Queen Wilhelmina.
The Dutch family had been living in Canada since June 1940 after the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany. The maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital in which Princess Margriet was born was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government. Making the maternity ward outside of the Canadian domain caused it to be unaffiliated with any jurisdiction and technically international territory. This was done to ensure that the newborn would derive her citizenship from her mother only, thus making her solely Dutch, which could have been very important if the child had been male, and as such, the heir of Princess Juliana. It is a common misconception that the Canadian government declared the maternity ward to be Dutch territory. Since Dutch nationality law is based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis it was not necessary to make the ward Dutch territory for the Princess to become a Dutch citizen. Since Canada followed the rule of jus soli, it was necessary for Canada to disclaim the territory temporarily so that the child would not become a Canadian citizen.