Tuesday 29 September began with sunshine on the cobblestones of the old town and ended with diamonds under the chandeliers of the Grand Ducal Palace. In between, Luxembourg gave Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and his wife Suzanne Innes-Stubb the full courtly playbook – wreaths, handshakes, crowds and, finally, a white-tie state banquet.
The day started at the Grand Ducal Palace, where Grand Duke Guillaume and Grand Duchess Stephanie received the presidential couple in full state-visit ceremony. The red carpet was out, the guard was in place, and the tone was set: this was the first incoming state visit of a reign that has recently marked a year on Luxembourg’s throne – and Luxembourg intended to make it count.
From there, the program split neatly in two. President Stubb headed for the solemn part of the day, laying a wreath at Luxembourg’s National Monument of Solidarity – the country’s memorial to the victims of the Second World War and a fixture of every state visit. He then sat down for a round of political meetings: first with Claude Wiseler, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, then with Prime Minister Luc Frieden, and finally with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel. The message was unmistakable. This visit was about substance as much as ceremony, with European security and bilateral cooperation at the top of the agenda.
While the men talked politics, the women took culture. Grand Duchess Stephanie and Mrs Innes-Stubb spent the morning at the National Museum of Archaeology, History and Art – the MNAHA – touring its collections in what has become a much-loved tradition of state visits: the spouses’ program, equal parts diplomacy and discovery. The Grand Duchess is no stranger to causes close to home either, having recently thrown her support behind families in need at the Pro Familia Foundation.
By afternoon, the two couples were back together. Both attended an academic session at Luxembourg City Hall, then stepped out to greet the well-wishers gathered on Place Guillaume II. There is something about Luxembourgers and their Grand Ducal family; even on a working Tuesday, a respectable crowd turned out, flags in hand, to cheer the two couples. The President, visibly enjoying himself, worked the rope line with the ease of a man who has campaigned for a living.
The day’s most quietly significant engagement came later. The two ladies, accompanied by Equality Minister Yuriko Backes, visited the National Centre for Victims of Violence – the CNVV. State visits are often judged by their banquets, but the engagements that say most about a country’s values are usually the smaller ones. A joint visit to a center supporting victims of violence, with the equality minister in tow, was Luxembourg making a point about the causes it wants associated with its name.
And then, the banquet. The white-tie state dinner at the Grand Ducal Palace on Tuesday evening was the glittering centerpiece of day one, and Grand Duchess Stephanie rose to the occasion in spectacular fashion. She wore a brand-new azalea-red gown by Safiyaa, paired with one of the family’s most storied jewels: Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte’s Sapphire Necklace Tiara, finished with the Nassau Diamond Bracelets. It was a fashion moment with a message – a new gown for a new reign, worn with the heirlooms of the old one. European capitals do this kind of full-honors welcome better than anyone – Paris gave King Abdullah II and Queen Rania a similarly warm reception from the Macrons – but Luxembourg’s version has a charm all its own.
State banquets follow a ritual as old as diplomacy itself: the toasts, the orders, the careful seating plan that says who matters to whom. On Tuesday night, all of it played out beneath the palace chandeliers as the two couples – and the two countries – toasted a relationship that the Court says is opening a new chapter.
Day one set the bar high: ceremony in the morning, politics at midday, culture in the afternoon and diamonds at night. If the rest of the visit kept to the same standard – and by all accounts, day two at the University of Luxembourg did – then this first state visit of the new reign will be remembered as the moment Guillaume V’s Luxembourg announced itself to Europe.
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