Enlarge imageBy Paul Gallagher
DELFT, Netherlands (Reuters) - The Netherlands has paid its last respects to former Queen Juliana as a horse-drawn hearse carried her body to a church vault in Delft where 16th century dynastic founder William of Orange is buried.
Princess Juliana, who died this month at the age of 94, saw the Netherlands emerge from post-war gloom into an era of peace and prosperity during her 1948-80 reign when it let go of its colonies, its economy revived and the welfare state blossomed.
Pall bearers carried her coffin, draped in the blue, white and red Dutch flag, out of Noordeinde Palace in The Hague to a hearse that carried her body along a 13-km (nine-mile) route to be interred in the Nieuwe Kerk church in the central town of Delft, famous for its porcelain, picturesque canals and squares.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Mourners from more than a dozen royal families -- including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain and Britain’s Prince Philip -- were to attend her funeral.
Queen Beatrix, who took over the throne when her mother abdicated in 1980, and Crown Prince Willem Alexander will be among the many mourners from the House of Orange-Nassau.
Thousands lined the streets to see the hearse pass by on a bright spring day, with some 6,000 Dutch soldiers forming a guard of honour. Juliana, who favoured informality over protocol, was widely-known as the "people’s Queen".
She won popularity by striving to make the royals less aloof, broke with convention by shopping at her local supermarket, sent her children to state school and reportedly preferred to be addressed as "Madam" rather than "Your Majesty."
"I think she was a Queen who was very liked by the people. She was the right Queen for the right time," said Petra Graafland, a 53-year-old local government worker from Delft, waiting outside the church for the cortege to arrive.
The bicycling monarch gained a reputation as a Cold War peace campaigner dedicated to visiting children, the sick and elderly. She also retained close ties with former colonies Indonesia and Surinam after they gained independence.
Juliana’s funeral procession and service were being shown live on television in a country where the popularity of the Royal House of Orange-Nassau was cemented during World War Two when it became a symbol of resistance to German occupation in exile.
An opinion poll last year showed 81 percent support for the Dutch monarchy. Juliana’s birthday on April 30 remained a public holiday with huge street parties even after she abdicated.
During three decades of her reign, the Netherlands developed a reputation for tolerance, underlined in later years by the country’s acceptance of prostitution, the open sale of cannabis and the acceptance of euthanasia and gay marriage.
