From captain to Queen Azalea

In the Azalea Festival's 55-year history, it's safe to say its queens have been looked at, pointed at and waved at. Maybe even, in a sophomoric moment, laughed at.

Our best guess is that none has ever been shot at. Until this year, that is.

Meet Capt. Mariola Kasemier, a Royal Netherlands army officer and the festival's first active-duty queen.

For her reign, she will assume a crown that has historically adorned the heads of the daughters of politicians, military officers and diplomats.

During her career, Kasemier has commanded a medical platoon that deployed to Bosnia and helped develop new procedures for her army's medical units.

In 2007, she deployed to Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, with a provisional reconstruction team, where she helped build police stations, provide water, build mosques and work with the local government to improve security.

It was there that she came under fire. She goes into more detail about this during a sly little eight-minute film on the festival's Web site, which also plays up the unavoidable contrasts between Dutch windmills and combat helicopters, bicycle rides

and amphibious assault landings, tulip fields and battlefields.

Kasemier's brief deployment to Norfolk is expected to be much less harrowing. She'll represent The Netherlands, which holds most-favored-nation status this year, and walk the normal queenly gauntlet.

There will be speeches, a flag raising, a symposium, school visits, receptions, a coronation, a parade and a ball. There will also be a tour of Norfolk Naval Station.

Kasemier, 26, described her Afghanistan service as "an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life."

Ditto for being the Azalea Queen, we hope.

Long live the queen.

(Just keep your head down, Your Highness.)

Matthew Jones, (757) 446-2949, matthew.jones@pilotonline.com