 His nickname was "Wiwill".At his birth, he held the third position in the line of succession to the Dutch throne and the seventeenth position in the line of succession to the British throne.A month afterwards on 7 October 1840, his great-grandfather, the reigning King William I of the Netherlands, abdicated the throne due to the disappointment over the recent Treaty of London, which recognized the independence of Belgium (previously provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands), and the intention of marrying a Roman Catholic and Belgian noblewoman, Henrietta d'Oultremont.