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The Swedish royal family (Swedish : Svenska kungafamiljen) since 1818 has consisted of members of the Swedish Royal House of Bernadotte, closely related to the King of Sweden. Today those who are recognized by the government are entitled to royal titles and styles (manner of address), and perform official engagements and ceremonial duties of state. The extended family of the King (Swedish : Sveriges kungliga familj) consists of other close relatives who are not royal and thus do not represent the country officially.
A Swedish royal family, as closely related to a head of state, has been able to be identified as existent from as early as the 10th century A.D., with more precise detail added during the two or three centuries that followed. An exceptional case is that of Saint Bridget (1303–1373) who outside of Sweden became known as the Princess of Nericia , [1] a title which appears to have been a noble, rather than a royal one, since she was not the daughter of a king. Historically confirmed monarchs are listed officially by the Swedish Royal Court.
Until the 1620s Swedish provinces were granted as territorial appanages to royal princes which, as dukes thereof, they governed semi-autonomously. Beginning during the reign of Gustav III, and as codified in § 34 of the 1772 Instrument of Government, provincial dukedoms have existed in the royal family as nominal non-hereditary titles only, without any inherent property ownership or trust attached to them; although several members of the royal family have maintained a special public connection to, and sometimes a secondary residence in, "his or her duchy".
The son of a Swedish king has usually held the princely title as a royal dynast (such as Prince Bertil, Duke of Halland), but on a rare occasion also as a rank of nobility (such as Fursten Prince Frederick William of Hessenstein), or as a courtesy title for an ex-dynast (such as Prins Oscar Bernadotte).
The Swedish Royal Court lists the following persons as members of the Royal House (Kungl. Huset):
The Royal Court lists the following persons additionally as members of the Royal Family (Kungl. Familjen): [3]
King Gustaf VI Adolf | Crown Princess Margareta | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Prince Gustaf Adolf | Princess Sibylla | Marianne Bernadotte** | Sigvard Bernadotte | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Princess Margaretha** | Princess Birgitta | Princess Désirée** | Princess Christina** | Tord Magnuson | King Carl XVI Gustaf * | Queen Silvia* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Prince Daniel* | The Crown Princess* | Prince Carl Philip* | Princess Sofia* | Christopher O'Neill | Princess Madeleine* | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Princess Estelle* | Prince Oscar* | Prince Alexander** | Prince Gabriel** | Prince Julian** | Princess Leonore** | Prince Nicolas** | Princess Adrienne** | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
*Member of the Royal House (Kungl. Huset) [3]
**Member of the Royal Family (Kungl. Familjen) [3]
Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, Duchess of Västergötland is the heir apparent to the Swedish throne, as the eldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf. If she ascends to the throne as expected, she would be Sweden’s fourth queen regnant and the first since 1720. Her inheritance is secured by Sweden's 1980 Act of Succession, the first law in Western Europe to adopt royal absolute primogeniture.
Carl XVI Gustaf is King of Sweden.
The House of Bernadotte is the royal family of Sweden, founded there in 1818 by King Charles XIV John of Sweden. It was also the royal family of Norway between 1818 and 1905. Its founder was born in Pau in southern France as Jean Bernadotte. Bernadotte, who had been made a General of Division and Minister of War for his service in the French Army during the French Revolution, and Marshal of the French Empire and Prince of Ponte Corvo under Napoleon, was adopted by the elderly King Charles XIII of Sweden, who had no other heir and whose Holstein-Gottorp branch of the House of Oldenburg thus was soon to be extinct on the Swedish throne. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is a direct descendant of Charles XIV John.
Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, was a Princess of Sweden by marriage to Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland.
The Count of Wisborg is a title of nobility granted by the Monarch of Luxembourg to some male-members of the Swedish royal family, including their spouses and descendants. Since 1892, the title has been borne by the male-line descendants of four Princes of Sweden who married without the consent of the King of Sweden, thereby losing their right of succession to the throne for themselves and their descendants, and had their royal titles prohibited.
Princess Margaretha of Sweden was a member of the Swedish Royal Family by birth and the Danish Royal Family by marriage. She was the elder sister of Crown Princess Märtha of Norway and Queen Astrid of the Belgians.
Duchies in Sweden have been allotted since the 13th century to powerful Swedes, almost always to princes of Sweden and wives of the latter. From the beginning these duchies were often centers of regional power, where their dukes and duchesses had considerable executive authority of their own, under the central power of their kings or queens regnant. Since the reign of King Gustav III the titles have practically been nominal, with which their bearers only rarely have enjoyed any ducal authority, though often maintaining specially selected leisure residences in their provinces and some limited measure of cultural attachment to them.
The line of succession to the Swedish throne is determined by the Act of Succession, originally approved jointly by the Riksdag of the Estates assembled in Örebro and King Charles XIII in 1810.
A royal family order or royal family decoration is a decoration conferred by the head of a royal family to their female relations. Such a decoration is considered more of a personal memento than a state decoration, although it may be worn during official state occasions.
Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was a member of the Swedish royal family and the mother of the current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf.
Kungliga begravningsplatsen, known in English as the Royal Cemetery, was first used in 1922 and has been the only official burial place of the Swedish royal family since 1950, succeeding Riddarholmen Church as such. It takes up all of the small island of Karlsborg in the bay of Brunnsviken. The cemetery is part of the popular Haga Park in Solna, Sweden.
Queen Victoria, the British monarch from 1837 to 1901, and Prince Albert had 9 children, 42 grandchildren, and 87 great-grandchildren. Victoria was called the "grandmother of Europe".
Danderyd Hospital is a teaching hospital in Danderyd Municipality in northern Greater Stockholm opened in 1922. Until 1964 it was called Centrallasarettet i Stocksund.
The wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling took place on 19 June 2010 in Stockholm Cathedral. It had been described as "Europe's biggest royal wedding since the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981". Westling thereby acquired Victoria's ducal title, becoming a Swedish prince and Duke of Västergötland. In time for the wedding, a joint monogram of their initials was created.
The wedding of Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland, and the British-born American financier Christopher O'Neill took place in Stockholm on 8 June 2013.
The wedding of Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland, and Sofia Hellqvist took place on 13 June 2015 at Slottskyrkan, Stockholm.
A royal christening gown is an item of baptismal clothing used by a royal family at family christenings. Among those presently using such a gown are the royal families of the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. In most of these families, the tradition goes back over a century: as of 2019, the Swedish gown has been in service for 113 years, the Dutch gown for 139 years, and the Danish gown for 149 years; the current British gown has been in use since 2008. The Spanish gown has been in use for 81 years.
The wedding of Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, and Silvia Sommerlath took place on Friday, 19 June 1976 at Storkyrkan. Carl XVI Gustaf had been king of Sweden since 1973 and Sommerlath was a German-born translator. The couple had met at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich and became engaged in 1976.
The Golden Jubilee of Carl XVI Gustaf was celebrated in 2023 in the Kingdom of Sweden, to mark the 50th anniversary of the accession of King Carl XVI Gustaf on 15 September 1973. He is the first Swedish monarch to celebrate a Golden Jubilee. The 500th anniversary of Sweden's regained independence, through the election of King Gustav I, was also marked during the Jubilee year.