From Prince Pilsner to King Willem IV. From a small blond-haired lad to self-assured authority on water management. A wild twenty-something to loving father of three girls. The photo book, Willem-Alexander, kijk een koning (Willem-Alexander, see a king), which comes out this week, is peppered with commentary texts and gives a complete picture of the crown prince’s life. Its ups and downs.

Those who compiled the book had to make a choice from around 100,000 photos. The Prince of Orange is without doubt the most photographed man alive in the Netherlands. Mirjam Bekker-Stoop of the ANP news agency: “You see him grow literally and figuratively.”

Drooping shoulders
Take Willem-Alexander’s fist secondary school day at the Lyceum in the small town of Baarn. You see what it must have been like to be in the crown prince’s shoes. The 12-year-old walks shyly across the playground, with drooping shoulders. Being stared at by the other children. There he is! Tradition has it that some teachers took great pleasure in making sure everyone could hear when they sent him out of class.

Cor de Horde, former editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Vorsten (Monarchs) writes about the early years: “The family was plagued by the father’s bouts of depression and by the rapidly increasing ‘perversity’ of the eldest son. […] It can be called a minor miracle that Willem-Alexander has turned out all right.”

Smoking prince
Ms Bekker-Stoop says the prince is an emotional man. “You can see the joy on his face. And sometimes the irritation. Grief. Take the photograph of them skating on Queen’s Day. It’s probably [his wife, Princess] Máxima’s first time. You see the fear in her eyes. A totally natural looking photo of someone taking his girl skating for the first time.”

But there are other photographs. We see the prince smoking, and a merry prince with a bottle of beer in his hand and the wreck of a Ford Sierra after Willem-Alexander had lost control of the wheel.

‘Intellectually limited’
Communication advisor and critic of the royal family Charles Huijskens goes one more. Máxima is said to have been following a golden tip when she borrowed money to travel to Madrid in order to bump into the prince ‘by chance’. Willem-Alexander’s intellectual capacities are described as limited. The way he behaves is said to be considered spoiled and headstrong among political circles in The Hague.

The image of Willem-Alexander changes when he throws himself into his role as water management guru. The prince appears both serious and passionate. In the book, Lucas Reijnders, IBED professor at the University of Amsterdam, describes how the prince has concretely improved people’s living environment. Professor Reijnders writes that “it’s interesting to note that the crown prince’s water management activities haven’t as yet been controversial”. The development work done by Willem-Alexander’s father, Prince Claus, was regularly the cause of critical questions being asked by politicians in The Hague.

Modern man
The last prince the reader is shown is the family man. Just like his own father, who did the cooking at the weekend, Willem-Alexander tries his best to ensure his family enjoys as normal a life as possible. Margriet van der Linden, editor-in-chief of the feminist magazine Opzij: “I see a modern man who has things in balance. A today’s man, 40-something, who carried his three daughters round with him in baby slings. […] His marriage and family are the basis of his life and therefore the foundation of the monarchy. That seems to be something that Willem-Alexander has made a conscious choice for.”

We’ll have to wait for the moment Queen Beatrix (72) abdicates and is succeeded by her eldest son. The photo-documentary of his life up to that point is now ready.

Or as the book’s forward puts it: “If anything presents a good picture of Willem-Alexander’s upbringing, education, orientation and public performance, it’s the many images in the ANP archives. It would be a sin to keep these to ourselves and not to share them with a broader public”.