Prince William of Orange

Coming saturday we will be celebrating our bicentenary birthday party as a Kingdom, but before blipping about those events lets focus on this.

This is a statue of Prince William of Orange (24 April 1533 – 10 July 1584) also referred to as 'Father of the Fatherlands'.

He was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Year war and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces - now the Netherlands - in 1648. The Spanish king declared him an outlaw in 1580 after which he was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard in Delft four years later (1584).

This was seen as the first political assassination with handguns from close range ever in history. See my earlier blip.

Nice detail:
The statue you are now looking at was placed in 1848 and used to face our Houses of Parliament, but - for some strange reason - was turned 90 degrees heading east when the square was renovated a decade ago almost turning his back on the parliament nowadays ;-)