A royal pain

Zorreguieta had virtually no chance of further reforming Willem-Alexander or helping him to breed a future heir to the throne if she did not take extraordinary steps to distance herself from her parents. "Disappearances, torture and killing have left great scars on the society in Argentina," Zorreguieta told her future countrymen at her first public appearance at The Hague in March. "I renounce the regime. I have learned about the importance of democracy and human rights." She also learned Dutch, became a naturalized citizen of her adopted land and told her parents she'd rather not have them at her wedding later this year. The extraordinarily popular Queen Beatrix also came to Zorreguieta's public defense in order to save the planned marriage.

For Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby, fiancie to Norway's strapping Crown Prince Haakon, the issue was the father of her 3-year-old child -- the man had been convicted of cocaine possession. Haakon and Hoiby, a Gwyneth Paltrow clone, have been celebrated in spreads in the glossy society fanzine "Hello!" But the media had a field day with reports of her previous boyfriend's drug history and her own penchant for frequenting house parties where drugs were exchanged freely. Though the prince and Hoiby were engaged last December and got married last weekend, the scrutiny was embarrassing for the couple, and for the royal family. In a twisted bit of irony, the same media that ran through Hoiby's past with a fine-toothed comb feted the couple's August wedding with double-truck spreads in magazines and four-hour television coverage.

Until Prince Edward met Sophie Rhys-Jones, all tabloid bets were that he was gay. "I am not gay," Edward famously told London's Daily Mirror newspaper following reports that he had had a "touching" relationship with the male lead of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. But apparently Rhys-Jones wasn't good enough for the British press either. The 36-year-old countess' reputation was stained when she made disparaging remarks about the royal family and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in an effort to secure business from a News of the World reporter who had disguised himself as a posh Arab sheik.

Tapes of her conversation were eventually released and dubbed "Sophiegate." Most embarrassingly, in an effort to circumvent publication of the tapes, Rhys-Jones agreed to an interview with the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, in which she offered, unsolicited, "My Edward is not gay." After another publication printed portions of the tape's contents, the News of the World went ahead with full publication -- an embarrassment for the palace, Prince Edward and Rhys-Jones, who at the time was working in public relations.

Then there's the unfortunate matchmaking that can break a prince or a princess. The textbook example was the supposed fairy tale marriage between Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. In Charles' marital failure, biographer Penny Junor, author of the bestselling "Charles: Victim or Villain," sees a link to the classic problem of modern crown princes. "There is no doubt that the Prince of Wales was put in an impossible position, and I suspect that his son William will find life even tougher. The intrusion of media means that any kind of normal courtship with a girl is out of the question. If Charles was seen with a girl, she immediately found herself on the front page of every newspaper, and if he was seen with her two or three times, they would dig up friends, long-lost cousins, nannies, old boyfriends, anyone with the faintest connection to interview about her. This sent the right sort of girls running, and attracted the wrong sort of girls." (Girls, perhaps, like Koo Stark. Did ever an heir foul up more than Charles' younger brother Andrew when he struck up a relationship with Stark, who starred in such soft-core skin flicks as "The Awakening of Emily," which featured the 17-year-old in a lesbian shower scene?) "And because the media is so much more brazen today than it was when Charles was William's age, it will be infinitely worse for him," Junor says.

At the same time, today's princes may be paving the way for William. Good luck finding a suitable virgin his age in the U.K. as his father was forced to do. Ironically, the recent royal eruptions in Holland and Norway, where the princes were publicly humiliated but were ultimately successful in convincing their compatriots to stand behind their choice of fiancies, may make life easier for the next generation of royals like Prince William. Concludes Royalty's Bob Houston: "The straitjacket on many of the men has loosened and will loosen considerably."

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