Laurentien of the Netherlands

William I (1772 to 1843) was the first King of the Netherlands and the founder of the Dutch monarchy. Born in The Hague as the son of William V, the last stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, he fought against the French invasion of 1795 and then spent nearly two decades in exile in Britain and Prussia. He returned in 1813 as sovereign prince and was proclaimed king in 1815, ruling Luxembourg as grand duke at the same time. Nicknamed the Merchant King for the canals, shipping lines and industry he financed, he lost the southern provinces in the Belgian Revolution of 1830 and abdicated in 1840 in favour of his son William II. With his wife and first cousin Wilhelmina of Prussia he was the ancestor of every Dutch monarch since.

William II (1792 to 1849) was King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1840 until his death. Born in The Hague and educated in Berlin and at Oxford, he made his name as a soldier, serving under Wellington in Spain and commanding Dutch and Belgian troops at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, where he was wounded. As Prince of Orange he tried and failed to hold the southern provinces during the Belgian Revolution of 1830. Succeeding his father William I in 1840, he is remembered above all for accepting in 1848 the liberal constitution drafted by Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, which moved real power to parliament and shaped the modern Dutch monarchy. He married Anna Pavlovna of Russia, a sister of two tsars.

Prince Frederick of the Netherlands (1797 to 1881) was the second son of King William I and Wilhelmina of Prussia and a career soldier in both Dutch and Prussian service. Born in Berlin during his family's exile, he rose to field marshal, commanded the Dutch forces in the Ten Days' Campaign against Belgium in 1831 and was for decades the senior military figure of the young kingdom. He served as Grand Master of Dutch freemasonry for more than sixty years and was a well known patron of charities, schools and the arts. In 1825 he married Princess Louise of Prussia. A younger brother of King William II, he died at Wassenaar in 1881.

William III (1817 to 1890) was King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1849 until his death. Born in Brussels to King William II and Anna Pavlovna of Russia, he resented the constitutional limits his father had accepted in 1848 and clashed repeatedly with his ministers across a long reign in which slavery was abolished in the Dutch colonies, the railways spread and the country industrialised. His attempt to sell Luxembourg to France touched off the international crisis of 1867. After his first wife Sophie of Wurttemberg and all three of their sons had died, he married Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1879, and their only child Wilhelmina succeeded him in 1890.

Princess Sophie of the Netherlands (1824 to 1897) was the only surviving daughter of King William II and Anna Pavlovna of Russia and a sister of King William III. Born in The Hague, she married Carl Alexander, the future Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, in 1842 and spent the rest of her life in Germany as his consort. She was a serious patron of music and scholarship in a Weimar still living on its literary reputation, and when Goethe's last grandson left the poet's papers to her she founded the Goethe Archive there in 1885, the institution that grew into the Goethe and Schiller Archive. She died in Weimar in 1897.

Wilhelmina (1880 to 1962) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 to 1948 and the longest reigning Dutch monarch. The only child of King William III and Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, she came to the throne at the age of ten under her mother's regency and was inaugurated in her own right in 1898. She held the Netherlands to neutrality through the First World War and made the monarchy a byword for stubborn independence. When Germany invaded in May 1940 she escaped to London, where she led the government in exile and spoke to the occupied country over Radio Oranje, becoming the voice of Dutch resistance. She returned in 1945, abdicated in favour of her daughter Juliana in 1948 and died at Het Loo in 1962.

Juliana (1909 to 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 to 1980. The only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry, she studied at Leiden University and married Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld in 1937. She spent the Second World War with her young daughters in Canada, where her third daughter Margriet was born, and came home to a country that had grown used to thinking of her as one of its own. Her reign took in Indonesian independence, the North Sea flood of 1953, when her visits to the drowned villages were long remembered, and the social upheavals of the 1960s. Informal and warm in manner, she was known as the citizen queen. She abdicated in favour of her daughter Beatrix in 1980 and died at Soestdijk Palace in 2004.

Beatrix (born 1938) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 until her abdication in 2013. The eldest daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, she was born at Soestdijk Palace, spent the war years as a child with her family in Canada and read law at Leiden University. Her marriage in 1966 to the German diplomat Claus von Amsberg drew angry protests in Amsterdam, yet the couple became genuinely loved, and she was the mother of King Willem-Alexander, Prince Friso and Prince Constantijn. As queen she was known for an exacting command of her state papers and a formal, hard working style that steadied the monarchy for three decades. She handed the throne to her eldest son on 30 April 2013 and still carries out public duties as Princess Beatrix.

Princess Irene of the Netherlands (born 1939) is the second daughter of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard and a younger sister of Princess Beatrix. Born at Soestdijk Palace, she set off a constitutional storm in 1964 when her conversion to Roman Catholicism and her marriage to Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, the Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne, went ahead without the approval of parliament, costing her her place in the line of succession. She spent years at her husband's side in Spanish politics before the marriage ended in 1981. Since then she has worked as a writer and campaigner on nature and the human relationship with it, founding the NatuurCollege foundation in 1995.

Willem-Alexander (born 1967) has been King of the Netherlands since 30 April 2013, when his mother Beatrix abdicated in his favour, making him the first Dutch king in more than a century. The eldest son of Beatrix and Prince Claus, he was born in Utrecht, read history at Leiden University and trained with the Royal Netherlands Navy and Air Force, keeping up his flying ever since. Before his accession he chaired the United Nations Secretary-General's advisory board on water and sanitation, a subject he still works on. He married the Argentine born Maxima Zorreguieta in Amsterdam in 2002; their eldest daughter, Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange, is heir to the throne.

Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau (1968 to 2013) was the second son of Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus and a younger brother of King Willem-Alexander. Born in Utrecht, he trained as an aerospace engineer and also studied economics, then built a career in business and finance largely out of the public eye, keeping an interest in engineering and energy throughout his working life. When he married Mabel Wisse Smit in 2004 the government declined to ask parliament to consent to the marriage, so he gave up his place in the line of succession and took the title Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau. The couple had two daughters. He died in The Hague in 2013 at the age of forty-four.