Dutch Queen Beatrix to abdicate Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, a monarch who won widespread admiration for her skill at navigating controversy, announced on Monday evening that she will step down after 33 years on the throne. The 75-year-old queen, the head of the House of Orange-Nassau which has ruled the Netherlands since 1813, said she would abdicate in favour of her son the crown prince Willem-Alexander, 45. The announcement comes 33 years almost to the day since Beatrix's mother Juliana announced her own abdication. It marks a peaceful end to a reign that began in clouds of teargas, as her accession in 1980 in Amsterdam was marred by rioting by squatters and anarchists. Beatrix had earlier faced angry demonstrators at her 1966 marriage to the German Claus von Amsberg, whose membership of the Hitler Youth in his teens offended many Dutch. On her accession, many doubted she could be as popular as her grandmother Wilhelmina, who had become an icon of Dutch nationalism with her radio addresses from exile during the Nazi occupation and had consciously tried to narrow the distance between the crown and the people. In an age of omnipresent media celebrity, Beatrix has taken a different approach. "She has presented herself as a professional, more reserved and distant than her mother," said Paul Schnabel, head of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research. That approach has been largely successful. The royal family faces increasing scrutiny of its finances and its ceremonial role in politics has been recently circumscribed, but few call for its abolition. The Dutch state pays the royal family some €30m per year in salaries and official expenses. The rest of the family's income comes from its substantial private wealth. Beatrix's younger son Friso has spent the past year in a coma in a British hospital after he was caught in an avalanche while skiing in Austria, leading to an outpouring of support for the royal family. Crown prince Willem-Alexander, who trained as a historian, is interested in water management issues and has been closely involved in development aid. His Argentine wife Maxima, born Maxima Zorreguieta, enjoys tremendous popularity, though their liaison was initially controversial due to the family's ties to the former Argentine military regime. The succession raises the issue of what will become of the national monarchist holiday, Queen's Day, celebrated every April 30 on the birthday of Beatrix's mother Juliana. Since the 1960s the holiday has grown into a huge outdoor festival bringing hundreds of thousands of orange-clad visitors to Amsterdam. Beatrix decided to continue the celebration, but it is not clear what form it will take when the country is ruled by a king rather than a queen for the first time since 1890. Beatrix decided to retire in concert with the 200th anniversary of the year in which the Netherlands became a monarchy. Previously the country had been a republic, at first as the United Provinces and later as the Napoleonic-allied Batavian Republic. The monarchy was instituted after the defeat of Napoleonic forces in 1812. This article has been amended since original publication to reflect the fact that Queen Beatrix's grandmother Wilhelmina was queen during the Nazi occupation rather than her mother Juliana. The last king of the Netherlands was William 3rd in 1890, not in the 1940s. And crown prince Willem-Alexander trained as a historian, not as a hydrological engineer.