ABC Reports: The Abdication of the Grand Duchess of Wisconsin

Grand Duchess Amalie of Wisconsin will abdicate on 24 June, ending a reign of thirty-one years and passing the Grand Duchy to her son, His Grand Ducal Highness Wolfgang, Prince of Madison.

She announced it herself this morning, standing at the bar of the Landtag and reading the instrument aloud in a chamber that had not been told what it was about to hear. The reading took under four minutes. She then answered no questions, because none were asked.

“The work I undertook is done, and what follows belongs to my son,” the instrument records.

Her Grand Ducal Highness Amalie, Grand Duchess of Wisconsin, acceded in 1997 at the age of thirty-two. She is sixty-three. Her son was born the following year and has held the title of Prince of Madison since childhood.

The Premier was told some weeks ago. So were the presiding officer of the Landtag, the Governor-General, on behalf of the Crown in right of America, and the reigning house in Munich, which was informed as a courtesy and has no standing in the matter.

The Landtag is not required to do anything. The abdication operates of itself on the day named in the instrument. The chamber will pass a resolution of acknowledgement, as it has done at every ducal succession since the Settlement, and the resolution carries no legal force and is understood by everyone to carry none.

The Premier’s response, delivered from the floor within the hour, was warm and contained a sentence that has since been read more than once. The Ministry, the Premier said, would have been glad of more time. It was not a criticism, and it was not quite anything else either.

In Wisconsin the announcement has been received calmly, which outside Wisconsin is being reported as the story. The Grand Duchess is well liked, has been well liked for three decades, and the general view in the parishes and the county towns appears to be that she has judged it correctly and that it is hers to judge.

Objection, where it exists, has come from beyond the Grand Duchy: from commentators in other polities for whom a hereditary office is a duty a holder does not put down, and for whom an abdication conducted this calmly is more unsettling than one conducted in crisis. None of that argument is being had here.

The Grand Duchess will hold the office until midsummer. Nothing changes until 24 June, and the Grand Duchy’s business continues as scheduled, which appears to be the point.

Wisconsin has a new Grand Duke, and it took him about ninety seconds to become one.

His Grand Ducal Highness Wolfgang, Grand Duke of Wisconsin, swore the oath before the Landtag at ten this morning, in Wisconsindeutsch first and then in English, and was Grand Duke from the moment the German ended.

The German came first because it always has. The oath’s wording is fixed by the Grand Ducal Settlement and no council touches it, and it is spoken in the ceremonial high register, Das Hochwisconsinsche, which keeps the four cases the rest of the language gave up generations ago. Most people in the chamber will not use a genitive again this year. Des Landtages was audible from the public gallery.

Then he read it again in English, which took slightly less time, and the presiding officer recorded that the oath had been taken.

Her Grand Ducal Highness Amalie watched from the floor of the chamber, six feet from where she had read her abdication in March. She retains the style of Grand Duchess and holds no office and no precedence, and was seated accordingly, among people rather than ahead of them. She did not speak, and was not asked to.

The Grand Duke’s first address ran to under two minutes. He thanked his mother, said that the Grand Duchy had been well governed for thirty-one years and that this was her doing, and said almost nothing about himself. The single sentence anyone will remember is that he intends to be worth the trouble, which got the only laugh of the morning and was probably meant to.

A service of thanksgiving followed at noon, with the Catholic and Lutheran clergy of the Grand Duchy taking part together, as they have at every accession since the Settlement and as they do at nothing else all year.

The Governor-General attended for the Crown in right of America. Grand Duke Olav of Minnesota came down from Saint Paul, twenty-five years into his own reign and by some distance the most experienced person in the room. Munich sent a representative of the reigning house, received with courtesy and seated without prominence, which is the arrangement the two houses have kept for a hundred and eighty years. Heads of other polities attended in numbers that surprised the Grand Duchy and did not seem to surprise anybody else.

By two in the afternoon the chamber was empty and the Landtag’s ordinary business was listed for Tuesday.

Wolfgang is thirty. His mother acceded at thirty-two and reigned for thirty-one years, and if he does the same he will be Grand Duke of Wisconsin until the 2060s. Nobody said that aloud today. Everybody in the gallery worked it out.