Prince Pieter-Christiaan is the third son of Princess Margriet (younger sister of Princess Beatrix) and Pieter van Vollenhoven, and hence, the first cousin of the current monarch, King Willem-Alexander.
His Highness Prince Pieter-Christiaan Michiel of Orange-Nassau, van Vollenhoven was born on 22nd March 1972 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Pieter-Christiaan has two older brothers, Princes Maurits and Bernhard, and one younger, Prince Floris.
He and his three brothers grew up on the estate near Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn where he went to the local primary and high schools.
After graduating, he completed his conscripted service in the Royal Military and Border Police; he completed his service in 1992 but is still on the reserve list as a Lt-Colonel. Following his service, he took and passed courses for an LLM Degree at Utrecht University.
He then came to London and worked for a company that was a joint project between ABN-Amro and NMRothschilds before undertaking an MBA at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, beginning in autumn 2003. After passing the course, he worked in Amsterdam for a brief time, before working for the Operations Department of the Royal Military and Border Police in The Hague between 2004 and 2009.
He is currently Chairman of MilanOPS, a company which works on combining the supply chain with modern cloud technology, and also holds positions with the Dutch Association of Security Professionals and Tardis Research.
It was while working in London that he met his wife to be, Anita van Eijk. Born in Switzerland of Dutch parents, Anita worked in the marketing departments of both Bloomberg’s and later the auction house Christie’s in London. They married on 25 August 2005 in a civil ceremony at the Het Loo Palace followed by a religious ceremony two days later at Oude Jeroenskerk in Noordwijk.
Prince Pieter-Christiaan did have an outside chance of succession to the Dutch throne and so, in theory, should have sought the permission of Parliament. As he didn’t, he lost his position in the line of succession.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe couple has two children: Emma van Vollenhoven (born November 2006) and Pieter van Vollenhoven (born November 2008). Both children, like their cousins, were christened in Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn. The family currently still resides in Noordwijk.
The Prince undertakes some royal duties on behalf of the King and was made a Knight of the Order of Saint John in the Netherlands in 2010.
