For as long as I can remember, the Dutch one guilder coin has borne a picture of the queen on one side, the national crest on the other and, on its edge, the legend God Be With Us. I've always seen that as an affirmation of the Netherlands as a Christian nation that puts its trust in the Lord and attempts to do the decent thing at all times. Not that, in this, the Netherlands has always been successful. Throughout our history we Dutch have often done things that could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as 'decent'. Descendants of slaves, inhabitants of our former colonies; they will all tell you stories of brutality that will make your hair stand on end. Nor, when pressed for an answer, will this country's trading partners around the world be particularly unanimous in their praise of the Dutch business ethic. 'The sun rises for free' is an old saying here, indicating that just about everything else has a price. So why God should be with us, to the possible exclusion of someone else, I'm not sure.

But then, you can write just about anything you like on a coin, it isn't as if you could be prosecuted under the terms of some divine trades description act. One of the cheekiest examples of hijacking the Supreme Being for earthly propaganda purposes came from the late Spanish dictator and blood-letter Francisco Franco, who had himself described on the peseta coins of his day as 'leader of Spain by the grace of God'. Strange to think, so many years later, that 'Caudillo de Espana por la Gracia de Dios' was the first Spanish sentence I ever knew. If I am not mistaken, English kings and queens also have the tendency to attribute their exalted place in the earthly scheme of things to personal intervention from Up High, rather than to a history of robbery and conquest, or –as is the case nowadays- inherited, unearned wealth.

The Dutch royals? Idem ditto. Today's lot are as harmless and heart-melting as a basketful of puppies, but that's because their amassed wealth is now passed down from this generation to the next and grows automatically because of those fine inventions: compound interest and real estate. And, of course, their business expenses are paid by their adoring subjects. In older days, whenever the bottom of the money chest became visible once more, and the claret stock was down to ten hogsheads, any king worth his salt would mount his steed and raise an army of good, loyal men to squeeze some tithe out of the peasants or go to war to rustle up a bit of booty. At what exact point these kings turned from vicious thieves into noblemen with personal endorsements from the Almighty I cannot say. But today the transformation is complete. The sins of the fathers are forgotten, the descendants are now invariably born with 'Certified Nobility Grade A' stamped on their left thigh.

You can understand, of course, that nothing, but nothing, must be allowed to spoil the illusion, to tarnish the patina of goodness and worth that glitters so brightly in the sun, blinding us to any royal fault or flaw. And that's why, earlier this week, here in the Netherlands, there hove into ignominious view the figure of Jorge Zorreguieta, minister of Agriculture in the heinous junta, led by Jorge Videla, that ruled Argentina from 1976 until 1981. Although a civilian, he is believed to have endorsed the policies of the junta (well, he would have had to, wouldn't he) and is, therefore, tainted by its crimes even if he himself never pulled a trigger or made a leftwing student disappear.

Problem is, Jorge is also the father of Maxima, a comely lass and currently the bookies' favourite to one day become Queen-consort of the Netherlands. For this to happen she will first have to marry the man in whose bosom she arouses stormy passions: Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. (I use the word 'bosom' in a 'pars pro toto' context, you understand.)

So what do you think? Cheers all round, best suits being sent to the dry cleaners and photographs in Hello! magazine of the happy parents of bride and groom getting to know each other while clam-baking on a beach in the Caribbean? Not a bit of it. Instead, we're having one of our broad national debates here in Holland. Already the full gamut of popular opinion has come to the fore, from 'let's all rejoice and be happy and not worry about pop Zorreguieta's past misdemeanours' all the way to 'Pop Zorreguieta is a heinous war criminal who should be put in jail and unless his daughter publicly dissociates herself from him and his crimes she's not fit to marry our prince'. The Dutch daily De Volkskrant on Friday reported that a former Dutch Ambassador to Unesco is planning to file charges against Jorge Zorreguieta, in the hope that an international arrest warrant can be issued, to be followed by a formal trial. You can almost hear Pinochet, in neighbouring Chile, thinking 'Hm. Where were the Dutch when half the world was clamouring for my head?' True, but Pinochet never threatened to become an in-law of the Dutch royals.

Between 1946 and 1950, Dutch forces cruelly, and ultimately unsuccessfully, tried to quell Indonesian independence aspirations. In the course of this 'policing action' many Indonesians were tortured, summarily executed or brutally murdered by the Dutch. It's estimated that, in southern Celebes alone, up to 3,000 people died, but the overall death toll in the archipelago must be many times higher. The action took place under the aegis of the government in The Hague which included, as its most elevated member, Her Majesty the Queen. Until 1948 this was Queen Wilhelmina (Willem-Alexander's great-grandmother), later it was Queen Juliana (the prince's grandmother). I leave it up to you to decide whether this is in any way relevant.

Reactions or comments, send us an e-mail.