Eleanor and Juliana: a right royal transatlantic friendship

FDR was very proud of his Dutch heritage; his family traced its ancestors back to the Netherlands; and Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) visited Queen Juliana in the Netherlands on several occasions. While in many ways, ER was to Americans as ‘Royal’ as Juliana was to the Dutch, both women wished to be considered ‘ordinary’. Drawing on archives at the FDR library in Hyde Park and the RIAS in Middelburg, the Netherlands, this paper looks more closely at the connections between the Dutch Royal Family and the Roosevelts, particularly the transatlantic friendship between ER and Juliana, between the ‘wise aunt’ and ‘eager niece’ to examine the influence the two women might have had on each other and on Dutch–American relations.