Marriage
On 2 February 2002, he married Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti (born 17 May 1971) at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. Máxima is an Argentine woman of Spanish and Italian ancestry who prior to their marriage worked as an investment banker in New York City. The marriage triggered significant controversy due to the bride's father's prior role in the Argentinian military dictatorship.
The prince is a direct descendant of Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, eldest daughter of British King George II. However, under the British Act of Settlement, Prince Willem-Alexander forfeited his (distant) succession rights to the throne of the United Kingdom, because he married a Roman Catholic.
Read more about this topic: Willem-Alexander, Prince Of Orange
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“We lovd, and we lovd, as long as we could,
Till our love was lovd out in us both;
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
Twas pleasure first made it an oath.”
—John Dryden (16311700)
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)