What is A Royal Weekend?

A Royal Weekend – this year in Apeldoorn from 10-12 October 2025 – is by no means the first event of this kind ever being organised.

All started probably with a man called Paul Minet, who owned a bookshop in Ticehurst, East Sussex, United Kingdom. He published the magazine Royalty Digest with stories about royal history and books. People interested in royalty and its history, historians, took over the lovely village in the countryside once a year in April since 1994. I attended several weekends between 2008 (?) and 2014 – held in a sports hall of a local primary school – and loved it. I got to see Paul Minet at least once or twice, before he had to close his bookshop and sadly passed away. Luckily, Sue Woolmans and Richard Thornton (who in the meantime passed away also) took over the organisation.

In San Francisco, USA, Arturo Beéche also started with conferences, followed later on with editions in London and The Hague, The Netherlands. These Royal Gatherings were also quite successful, and wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Katrina Warne (London) and Annet Bakker (The Hague, who passed away in 2025). All came to an halt when in February 2020 the covid-19-pandemic broke out.

Wishing to revive the weekends, the publisher of Rosvall Royal Books and the magazine Royalty Digest Quarterly, Ted Rosvall, the Dutch historian and Nassau-expert Bearn Bilker and I, Netty Leistra, decided to organise our own weekend. Our first edition took place in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, from 11-13 October 2024, and turned out to be a success. The second weekend will be held in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, 10-12 October 2025.

What makes these weekends so special, is that it gathers people with a common interest in royal history from all over the world. 2024 we had participants from The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, USA and New Zealand. This year we again have an international group of people. Whether you know everybody or hardly anyone at all, you will always have something to talk about. You get to know and spend time with people with a similar interest, even authors and a few journalists. And learn something about royal historical topics, you probably hadn’t heard about before. You don’t have to be an expert to enjoy these weekends. An interest in royal history and some knowledge is of course essential, but otherwise the conference is pretty low-key and informal. Most of us are over 40, but younger people are more than welcome. You might even find friends for life!

You’re very much welcome to join our weekend in October, and hopefully in the years to come. We’d love to make acquaintance with you.