Jordan’s crown prince cements status with glitzy wedding to Saudi architect
Jordan’s monarchy has cemented the role of its 28-year-old crown prince with a wedding attended by global royalty, including Britain’s Prince and Princess of Wales, in a glittering show seeking to buttress the succession and move on from a painful family scandal.
Crown Prince Hussein married Rajwa Alseif, a 29-year-old Saudi architect linked to her own country’s ruling dynasty, on Thursday afternoon in a match seen as boosting Amman’s rocky relationship with its more powerful and oil-rich neighbour.
Seats at the banquet tables were reserved for international celebrities and monarchs, as well as other political figures including the US first lady, Jill Biden.
The attendance of Prince William and Catherine had been kept secret and was only confirmed by Jordanian state media a few hours before the event.
A relatively intimate ceremony was held at the Zahran Palace in Amman, the location of King Abdullah II’s marriage in 1993 to Queen Rania, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. Decades earlier, Abdullah’s father, the late King Hussein, married his second wife, the British citizen Antoinette Gardiner, in the same gardens.
Hussein, a graduate of the Sandhurst military academy in the UK, wore military attire and sat next to his father before Rajwa arrived in a vintage RollsRoyce, dressed in a white gown and diamond tiara.
Abdullah, 61, has been on the throne since 1999 and has long groomed his US-educated eldest son to succeed him. In the days leading up to the marriage, savvy and frenzied use of social media by the palace promoted the all-smiling family preparing for the big day. The palace introduced a wedding hashtag (#Celebrating Al Hussein) and shops in Jordan had been selling royal regalia for weeks.
The country of 11 million people is ostensibly a parliamentary monarchy, but the king holds political powers, including as supreme leader of the armed forces. Western allies overlook democratic issues in Jordan, which is seen as a loyal island of stability in a changing Middle East.
The royal family is normally watertight in its squeaky-clean public image, but in 2021 the king’s half-brother, Prince Hamzah, was accused of conspiring to unseat Abdullah with the help of an unidentified foreign government.
The king, one of the world’s longest-serving current monarchs, said the act of sedition was the “most painful” ordeal of his reign. Hamzah, whom Abdullah ousted as heir in 2004 in favour of his son, was taken into custody and signed a pledge of support.
The political analyst Amer Sabaileh said of Thursday’s wedding: “It’s not just a marriage, it’s the presentation of the future king of Jordan. The issue of the crown prince has been closed.”
The glitz of the wedding contrasts with years of tough economic times for Jordanians, but posters of the couple have been hung on buildings across the country and huge screens were set up for people to watch the occasion.
After the ceremony, the couple travelled through the capital – accompanied by a royal motorcade of red Land Rovers – to the Al Husseiniya Palace, for a reception, dancing and state banquet.