Queen Paola! She was a real beauty.
All the others were pretty, natural and fresh, but Paola was really beautiful and elegant.
I chose Regina's comment because I concur with her.
Let me add, here, the opinion of a man mixed with comments, as I can remember them, from the Media of the 60's and 70's.
Among royalty, there were then three indisputable beauties:
1. Princess Grace of Monaco, who was praised for her cool beauty and astonishing elegance,
2. Paola de Liege or la Princesse de Liege (as the media used to refer her) with star-quality beauty and cosmopolitan aura and chic, and
3. Queen Anne-Marie of Greece who was youthfully beautiful (aged 18 when she married) but not elegant yet (in later years she became extremely elegant).
Comparisons are both unfair and naive. Different people have different qualities and I feel that it pays no justice to anyone to categorize the above six royal personages based on one attribute, particularly beauty, as if in a retrospective beauty pageant.
To start with, you are comparing six royal ladies who differ greatly. Three of them are queens reignant, (ie in their own rights), monarchs that is, and the other three are queen-consorts. The diffrence between the two positions is immense.
Second:
a) immediately upon her marriage, Miss Sylvia Sommerlath became Queen of
Sweden, thus she was never crown princess;
b) Queen Paola was until the death of King Baudouin, Son Altesse Royale, La
Princesse de Liege, (ie HRH the Princess of Liege), thus she was never
crown princess;
c) Queen Sofia, went (technically) from Princess to Queen of Spain. She
was not a Crown Princess for the simple reason that Spain was a Republic
until the death of Dictator F. Franco. Although Franco had chosen Juan
Carlos to become King upon his death, the monarchy came into effect
after his death.
Albeit a princess from a minor, very minor, princely house of the South of Italy and despite the fact that she married "the spare" of the Belgian Throne, Paola de Liege was attracting the reporters and photographers like a magnet. She was
a star of the 60's and a big one.
Sylvia Sommerlath was quite attractive but aged 33, that is, already mature (by the standards of that period) when she got married.
The remaining royal ladies have never been described as being beautiful by historians or journalists or camera-men of their era, but they disposed other very important attributes.
As one member posted, Queen Sofia, for example, has always been extremely spontaneous, candid and charming but not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. The same is also true about QEII, Queen Beatrix, Queen Margrethe. What is true is that as they matured, most of them became very distinguished-looking.