Queen Wilhelmina's oldest half brother Wiwill wanted to marry countess Mathilde van Limburg-Stirum. She belonged to the nobility and in the letters of his mother there is a mentioning of him getting engaged to an English lady Diana Beauclerck.
Sophie had wanted him to marry one of Victoria's daughters (Alice or Helena) and others at court hoped for Alexandra of Denmark who ended up marrying the Prince of Wales.
Willem III would not consent to the marriage of his oldest son to countess Mathilde and there has always been speculation that he refused his consent not on the base of her not being royal but that he was not sure if he himself might be her biological father.
Queen Anna Pavlovna was a Russian grand duchess and had very high expectations of her children when they married. That is also how she raised them. After the death of his first wife her oldest son did consider marrying his mistress but the courtiers managed to persuade him to look for a more suitable bride. He proposed to Thyra of Denmark and was turned down. Than he wanted to marry princess Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. She was the youngest daughter of his sister and her husband who was the first cousin of Willem and his sister Sophie. Soon afterwards he was introduced to the Waldeck girls and preferred to marry one of them. Elisabeth did not want to marry her uncle so declined and Emma ended up marrying a man 40 years older than her.
Elisabeth of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach married a Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin so when her aunt Queen Emma was looking for a husband for the young Queen Wilhelmina Elisabeth suggested one of her husband's younger half brothers.
Emma as a princess from a smaller German state was very aware of status and raised Wilhelmina that way. So both ladies thought the marriage of Marie of Wurtemberg to a prince of Wied not up to scratch. When some wanted a British husband for Wilhelmina only the Teck-brothers were available and at the right age. As their paternal line was morganatic they would never have had a chance. The Boer war where the Dutch supported the opposing party ended any chance of a British match.
The fact that Bernhard had been born a morganaut was not a legal issue. Him being German and not of first rank was why he was never put on any list of potential husbands for crown princess Juliana. In the end he himself decided to go after her and married her.
Claus being only of low German nobility was never an issue. Though the marriage of princess Margriet to a Dutch commoner was by some parts of the court and the Royal Family seen as undesirable. Even Beatrix is said to have been on that side but she has changed her mind on the issue and later learned to value the marriage of Margriet and Pieter and what it brought to the family.
Not one of Juliana's 14 grandchildren has married a noble or a Royal and if one of the six grandchildren of Beatrix in line of succession would want to marry a fellow royal it would have to be a love match.
I know that the fact that Claus von Amsberg was a german, "only" 20 years after WW2 was an obstacle to his marriage to Pss Beatrix.
Was his lower birth ever a handicap ?
That's because times have changed, and the royal houses -- both reigning and non-reigning -- have all lowered their marital standards. But before World War I, the Dutch were known to uphold one of the highest: even mediatized houses (e.g. Wied) had difficulty in getting accepted for intermarriage with the house of Orange.
Even if he had been King already, Willem-Alexander would have had to ask permission from parliament (after the government would have initiated a bill). So not even a King of The Netherlands can do as he pleases.
Now it is unlikely that the Dutch parliament would have withheld their approval of the bill, especially not on the grounds of Maxima being a non-noble woman.
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