yes, I live in The Hague, seat of Dutch Government, and not until some twitter contact suggested I should pay some attention to the Throne from which our Queen Beatrix traditionally addresses both houses of Parliament, the House of Representatives (or Second Chamber) and the Senate in Joint Session in a Speech from The Throne to open a new Parliamentary year and to highlight the Government’s agenda for the new Parliamentary year on the third Tuesday of September, I realized my omission.
When one looks at the photo one would immediately say, as the Guardian does, “It looks like the Queen is camouflaged”. That triggered a question, because I believed the upholstery of the throne being reddish rather than blueish or blackish with a golden print.
Some searching on the web proved me right: The following photo proves the upholstery was reddish at least in 1988 (and also in 1996 I found out).
A photo by Jan van den Berg of the entire throne
dates from July 2011…from afar the upholstery seems a bit reddish.
My conclusion is I’ll have to have a look myself;-)
The Dutch name for the day of The Speech from The Throne is “Prinsjesdag” or Day of the Princes.
The armrest upholstery is red in the first picture – seems some strange trick of the light is at work – or something more sinister! Has someone photoshopped the backrest upholstery, in order to mock a monarch? Surely not.
We had a picture of the Queen Mother on one of our wooden chairs – not in a Christine Keeler style, very regal and as decent as an aristo can be.
To me the armrests don’t seem to be upholstered at all. Just fabric covering a wooden armrests….
Moreover the patterns seem to differ in the 3 photo’s