Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden
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Crown Princess of Sweden Duchess of Västergötland
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Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden (Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée Bernadotte), born July 14, 1977, Duchess of Västergötland, is the heir apparent to the Swedish throne. She is the eldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, and belongs to the House of Bernadotte. She is the only female heir-apparent in the world (though there are several females who are heirs-apparent of an heir-apparent) and is usually styled HRH The Crown Princess. She is currently 189th in the Line of Succession to the British Throne through her father who is a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
Her given names honour various relatives, including her great-great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria; her great-aunt Queen Ingrid of Denmark; her maternal grandmother, Alice Sommerlath, and her ancestor Désirée Clary, the queen of Charles XIV John and a former fiancée of Napoleon Bonaparte.
She was christened at Storkyrkan on 27 September 1977. Her godparents are King Harald V of Norway, Ralf Sommerlath, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and Princess Désirée, Baroness Silfverschiöld.
Education
Victoria attended a state elementary school and a private gymnasium (secondary school) in Stockholm, graduating in 1996. Afterward, she studied for a year at Université Catholique de l'Ouest at Angers in France, and for two years at Yale University in the United States. She has also spent considerable time studying and following the work of the Swedish government at the local, national and EU levels, as well as familiarizing herself with the Swedish economy.In addition to her studies, Victoria has worked as a trainee at the United Nations in New York and at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, DC. She has also programme with the SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency), and interned at the Swedish Trade Council in Berlin and Paris. Victoria also studied forestry and agriculture.
Change in Status
She was created crown princess and heir apparent on January 1, 1980, by the 1979 Successionsordningen. This constitutional reform meant that the throne would be inherited by the eldest child without regard to sex; Sweden was the first country to adopt absolute primogeniture. This not only made Victoria the first heiress-apparent to the Swedish throne, but it also made her the first female in the line of succession at all. The constitutional change was apparently not supported by the King, who favored his son as heir-apparent (a view the King still has). Prior to this constitutional change, the heir to the throne was her younger brother, the then-Crown Prince Carl Philip; he is now second in line to the throne, and was given the title of Duke of Wermelandia. (The two siblings essentially swapped positions in the succession.) She also has a younger sister, Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Helsingia and Gestricia.
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