Talk:Lists of rulers in the Low Countries

Stadholder or Raadspensionaris
A decision was apparently made in this list that the Stadtholders were the rulers of the republic of the Netherlands. The situation was however much more subtle as formally they were appointed by the States General as military leader but not overall ruler. The reaadspensionaris (also appointed by the SG) could claim the rulership as much as the stadholder. This lead to several uncomfortable episodes (execution of Oldebarneveld, Stadholder free eras, lynching of the De Wit brothers etc.). I agree that de facto the stadholders may have been the leaders, but de juro it was the States General. On the other hand if we adopt the de facto ruler as ruler in this list, than we must also conclude that (at least) from Thorbecke onwards the prime ministers were rulers and not the king. Arnoutf (talk) 10:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Fundamental bias (non neutrality) in the article
First of all the term Ruler is never defined. Without that, we do not even know what we are talking about. It seems however that this list only list noble rulers and omits anyone else. That is a rather weird definition of ruler (e.g. Obama or Putin no rulers?)

Let's take for the sake of argument the definition from Wictionary: A person who rules or governs; a person who exercises dominion or controlling power over others.

This definition however raises the second major problem. Since 1848 the Netherlands are under the rule of law, and if anything the prime ministers. Dutch monarchs since 1848 no longer govern and do not fit the definition "ruler". Either all prime ministers should be added, or the monarchs should be removed.

A similar, third, problem is that the Stadtholders are mentioned as ruler, while formally they were appointed by the states general which was the formal ruling body, not the Stadtholders. The raadspensionaris as spokesperson of the States General may have been the closest to prime minister and at times as much governing (and thus ruling) the Netherlands as the Stadtholders.

A fourth problem is that in the absence of nobility apparently the Netherlands were not ruled. Neither Stadtholder free period (when the Raadspensionarissen ruled) mentions any ruler. The Batavian republic was a French vassal state, but was formally not ruled by a French monarch at all. The claim that Napoleon ruled from 1795-1806 is outright bizarre, as in 1795 Napoleon was struggling in France to consolidate his powerbase in the French army. He had neither time, resources, nor authority to claim rulership over France at that time, let alone the Netherlands.

All in all it seems some of the basic assumptions underlying this article seem fundamentally biased. Solution would either involve including a substantial number of civilian rulers, or removal of a large list of noble non-rulers. Arnoutf (talk) 17:51, 17 April 2015 (UTC)


 * If nobody object for the next few weeks I will:


 * (1) Replace stadholder rule between 1581 and 1795 with: "Co rule between states-general and stadtholders"


 * (2) Replace Napoleon (1795-1806) with; "Batavian Republic"


 * (3) Replace Monarchs from 1848 with "Dutch parliament"


 * If you think this is to much, please provide a definition of ruler, and sources that the suggested entries were indeed the main/only ruler at the time mentioned. Arnoutf (talk) 10:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Since nobody objected I have made the changes to the article. In my view it looks much better now Arnoutf (talk) 13:30, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

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Rewrite
I agree with many of the observations you made in in 2015 (above). On 4 February 2023 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists, I pointed out several of the same and other issues I had with this list, which eventually led me to nominate the Category:Rulers as a whole for deletion, later for merging with Category:Political office-holders by role (see Categories for discussion/Log/2023 February 25). Over there, I proposed to have a separate discussion on what to do with List of rulers of the Netherlands (I think its contents should be split out and merged into other existing articles such as List of monarchs of the Netherlands, Count of Holland etc.). However, I have now come to the conclusion that it may in fact be a better idea to connect this article to nl:Lijsten van heersers in de Lage Landen. It suffered from many similar problems of poor definition and scope, but I've rewritten it entirely (justifications are on the talk page), and now it makes sense as "lists of rulers in the Low Countries". (I'm still considering changing heerser to something else, such as staatshoofd). Considering how much duplication there already is with pages like Count of Holland, this may be the only viable solution for this list as well.

I'm going to go ahead and try to fix several issues already per WP:BOLD, as you did in 2015 (and say you may not swiftly respond to queries on your user page), but feel free to jump in at any time for suggestions, questions or objections. Provisionally, I will apply the title "Lists of rulers in the Low Countries", to coincide with nl:Lijsten van heersers in de Lage Landen, pending a better alternative for "rulers". I'd especially like to know whether you prefer the scope to be about "heads of state" or about "monarchs". Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:01, 26 February 2023 (UTC)