Royal families and their members have always played a big role in my life. How did this come about and how my first royal experience fueled another passion.

One June day in 1976, as a four-year-old, I was sitting with my parents at my grandparents’ house, mesmerised by what was going on on TV. It was unusual that we were all together in the living room watching TV during the day. The living room was only used in the evenings, at weekends or on special occasions. Life usually took place in my grandmother’s kitchen.

But an exception was made for Silvia Sommerlath, a young German. For she was marrying the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. A royal wedding like this doesn’t happen every day, and after two world wars started by Germany, German brides weren’t exactly what the European monarchies wanted their subjects to experience. So, it was indeed a special occasion and I was right in the middle of it.

I was particularly impressed by the new queen’s wedding gown and the Cameo-Tiara. I immediately asked my mother to make me a dress like that. Somewhat confused, she asked the family doctor whether I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic and the family should be worried. The doctor calmed down and said something about a phase. Hahaha! If he had known who he was paving the way for and where.

My mother sewed my wedding dress, and I wore it with the same grace as the royal bride. I was then named after her by my family for quite a while: Queen Silvia. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to wear the dress outside, for reasons I still don’t understand, and at some point, I must have simply outgrown it, because it disappeared from my life again and had a revival a few years later as my sister’s snowflake costume.

But it was not to be the last dress I would wear and my passion for dresses will be the subject of another story shortly.
With the wedding in Stockholm, my serious interest in royalty was awakened and although I didn’t know the term at the time, of course, I instantly became a royal watcher.

On royalwatcher.berlin it will be about all facets of nobility and royal houses. You can look forward to fashion and bling-bling, design and architecture, history and current events, animals and landscapes, scandals and love, and of course LGBT-relevant topics. So from now on, have fun with news and stories from royal palaces.