a complex structure, composed around a thematic chiasmus: the text is symmetrical, in that verses one and 15 resemble one another in meaning, as do verses two and 14, three and 13, etc., until they converge in the 8th verse, the heart of the song: "Oh David, thou soughtest shelter from King Saul's tyranny. Even so I fled this welter", where the comparison is made not only between the biblical David and William of Orange as a merciful and just leader of the Dutch Revolt, but also between the tyrant King Saul and the Spanish crown, and between the promised land of Israel granted by God to David, and a kingdom granted by God to William. In the first person, as if quoting himself, William speaks about how his disagreement with his king troubles him; he tries to be faithful to his king, but he is above all faithful to his conscience: to serve God and the Dutch people. Therefore, the last two lines of the first stanza indicate that the leader of the Dutch civil war against the Spanish Empire, of which they were part, had no specific quarrel with king Philip II of Spain, but rather with his emissaries in the Low Countries, such as Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba. This may have been because at the time (late 16th century) it was uncommon to doubt publicly the divine right of kings, who were accountable to God alone. In 1581 the Netherlands nevertheless rejected the legitimacy of the king of Spain's rule over it in the Act of Abjuration. "Duytschen" (in English generally translated as "Dutch", "native" or Germanic) in the first stanza is a reference to William's roots; its modern Dutch equivalent, "Duits", exclusively means "German", and it may refer to William's ancestral house (Nassau, Germany) or to the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, including the Netherlands. But most probably it is simply a reference to the broader meaning of the word, which points out William as a "native" of the fatherland, as opposed to the king of Spain, who seldom or never visited the Netherlands. The prince thus states that his roots are Germanic rather than Romance – in spite of his being Prince of Orange as well. Performance History Though only proclaimed the national anthem in 1932, the "Wilhelmus" already had a centuries-old history. It had been sung on many official