Willem-Alexander to become first Dutch king since 1890

PanARMENIAN.Net - Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is to abdicate in favor of her son Prince Willem-Alexander - an event which is being celebrated across the nation, BBC News reports.

Queen Beatrix, 75, will sign the instrument of abdication in Amsterdam after 33 years on the throne.Willem-Alexander, 46, will then become the country's first king since Willem III, who died in 1890.

Huge crowds of orange-clad partygoers are expected to flood the capital, to pay tribute to the popular queen.

Queen Beatrix will relinquish the throne at a short ceremony in the Royal Palace on Tuesday, April 30 morning.

Willem-Alexander will then be sworn at the Nieuwe Kerk, before a joint session of the Dutch parliament. His wife Maxima, a 41-year-old Argentine-born investment banker, will become queen consort.

In the evening, the royal family will take part in a water pageant. The ceremonies will be attended by other invited royals and high-ranking dignitaries, including Britain's Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia of Spain and Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik and his wife.

About a million visitors are also set to pour into Amsterdam, and street parties are planned across the nation.

On Monday, Queen Beatrix thanked the nation, saying the people's devotion had given her the strength to carry on during her 33-year reign. "Without your heart-warming and encouraging displays of affection, the burdens, which certainly have existed, would have weighed heavily," she said.

Paying tribute to her late husband Prince Claus, who died in 2002, she said he had helped modernize the House of Orange. "Perhaps history will bear out that the choice of my partner was my best decision," said the monarch, who is known affectionately as Queen Bea.

She said hereditary authority of itself did not give substance to a contemporary monarchy; rather this was earned through "the will to serve the country".

Willem-Alexander is well-prepared for the task ahead of him and will stand above party and group interests, she said.

Willem-Alexander has already said he wants to "be a king that can bring society together, representative and encouraging in the 21st Century".

Queen Beatrix is the sixth monarch from the House of Orange-Nassau, which has ruled the Netherlands since the early 19th Century. Although she is extremely popular with most Dutch people, her abdication was widely expected and will not provoke a constitutional crisis.