Things I didn't know #5

Did you know the national anthem of the Netherlands is an acrostic? There are 15 verses, so don't tune in if they reach the World Cup final.

Taking the first letter of each verse in turn, you get Willem Van Nassov, an old spelling of William of Nassau, which is not in the Bahamas in this case but refers to - as we Brits would say - William of Orange. Nassau is where William was born in Germany.

The English translation of the first verse:

William of Nassau, am I, of German blood;

True to the fatherland, I remain till death.

A prince of Orange, I am, free and fearless.

The King of Spain I have always honoured.

When he was 11, William inherited the Principality of Orange so presumably it's the Low Countries to which "fatherland" refers rather than Germany. The bit about Spain is a bit disingenuous, since he led a Dutch revolt against the Spanish, starting in 1568 and lasting for eighty years until ending with the Treaty of Westphalia (no, I don't know where that is). Sadly William didn't last many of those years. He, a Protestant, was shot dead by a "Catholic zealot" (according to ChatGPT) in 1584, who earned himself a bounty of 25,000 crowns from Philip II of Spain.

So William was a polyglot but a hero to the modern day Dutch. Good job we don't have any foreign blood in our own UK royal family🤣