Dutch Royals In Wiki Scandal

When it was announced last week that WikiScanner, a software program that tracks updates to Wikipedia via IP addresses, had gone online I remembered wondering who exactly it might catch. Actually, for the sake of full disclosure, I was actually wondering whether or not I would get a blog post out of it. My own earliest list of potential culprits included the White House, Microsoft, and Donald Trump.

So while politicians and corporate stooges alike actually have been called out on their rewriting of certain pages, I would have never dreamt that a royal would fall into this trap. (Royalty, in case you hadn't already guessed, is my catnip.)

That's exactly what happened, though; Prince Johan Friso of Holland - second son of Queen Beatrix - and his wife Princess Mabel were busted doing a little tidying up of her past recently. In their own defense the Prince did say he was only trying to correct the public's erroneous impression of his wife: namely that she was once the gunmoll of a druglord, then lied to the Prime Minister about it so she could be a Princess.

To be fair, rather than blaming it on a press secretary, they did 'fess up to doing it themselves. Which has me thinking they must still be in contact with the Princess' ex-boyfriend*, because what were they smoking anyway? Royalty are trained to avoid scandal from birth; what, they can't send a secretary to an Internet cafe to make whatever edits they need? No, they do it themselves on a computer inside the Palace.

Still, at least they owned up when caught. Turns out both chivalry and responsibility (both presumed dead for years) are alive and kicking.

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*^{: They're not. He died in 1991. I just liked the joke so I left it in.}