The House of Orange-Nassau has done the unthinkable: they have won two World Cups in a single day. Not for football, you understand, but for hockey and speed skating, sports the British supposedly invented but now excel at only when we are not watching. The Dutch royal family, led by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima, were there to bask in the glory, their smiles as wide as the polders. Meanwhile, the British monarchy, still reeling from a year of family dramas and rising republicanism, looked on with the sort of stiff upper lip that conceals a grinding of teeth.
Let us be clear. The Dutch are not a rival empire. They are a small country of cheese merchants and tulip farmers, a nation that once traded Manhattan for nutmeg. And yet here they are, sporting victories like a victor from the Golden Age, while our own royals are seen only at charity galas and remembrances of things past. The contrast is not merely athletic. It is cultural. It is a reminder that while Britain is trapped in a cycle of nostalgia and decline, the Netherlands has adapted to the modern world without losing its sense of identity.
The British monarchy, God save it, is now little more than a soap opera wrapped in ermine. The Dutch, by contrast, manage to be both popular and relevant. They cycle to work. They celebrate victories without the overbearing pomp that makes our own ceremonies feel like funerals for a living tradition. The Queen of the Netherlands wears a coat of many colours, not a crown that weighs heavy with the memory of empire.
What, then, does this double victory portend? Perhaps it is nothing more than a statistical blip. But I suspect it is a sign of something deeper: the slow, quiet decline of British exceptionalism and the rise of a more practical, less self-absorbed Northern European model. The Dutch do not need to lecture the world on values; they simply shows them by winning fair and square. The British, meanwhile, still live in the shadow of 1966, or 1815, or 1066. We are a nation of history, which is a kind way of saying we are a nation of has-beens.
Let the Dutch have their day. They have earned it. But let us not pretend that this is not a humiliation for a monarchy that once ruled the waves and now rules only the airwaves of celebrity gossip. If I were the Prince of Wales, I would be sharpening my skates. But then again, perhaps that is the problem: we have all become too sedentary, too comfortable, too fond of our own myths. The Dutch have no such luxury. They have to fight for their land against the sea. We simply have to fight for our relevance against our own history.
In the end, this is not about hockey or speed skating. It is about the soul of a nation and the crown that sits upon its head. The British monarchy must look to the Dutch example: a monarchy that is modest, active, and beloved because it serves, not because it insists. Otherwise, we will be left with only two World Cups: one for football in 1966, and one for humiliation in 2024.