Could Charles follow Denmark’s Queen Margrethe? King could choose to abdicate in ‘five or ten years’ and ‘pass on’ crown to William and Kate while they are still young, royal experts believe

King Charles could choose to abdicate in the next five to ten years and hand the throne to William and Kate while they are still young because Queen Margrethe’s decision has gone down so well in Denmark, royal experts told MailOnline today.

The Danish monarch, 83, announced in her annual New Year’s Eve speech that she will step down on January 14.

Commentators believe that Margrethe ‘deliberately’ dropped her ‘massive bombshell’ at the right time to secure the future of the Danish Royal Family, and its ‘greatest asset’, Crown Princess Mary amid rumours that Crown Prince Frederik may have had an affair.

Royal biographer Phil Dampier believes that King Charles will be influenced by events in Denmark since New Year’s Eve – especially if it would protect the future of the British Royal Family. Mr Dampier said that the Prince and Princess of Wales are very friendly with Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, and will have been in contact with them this week.

He said: ‘It must make you wonder if in five or ten years’ time King Charles might think about doing the same if his health suffers or he just thinks it is a good time to pass on to William and Kate while they are still young.

‘Our late Queen would never abdicate because of what happened in 1936 when her uncle abdicated and her father came to the throne. But times change’.

He added: ‘William and Kate get on very well with Frederik and Mary and will be among the first to congratulate them. They will be fascinated to see how they get on as King and Queen and it will make them think about their future as well’.

Royal experts told MailOnline that Queen Margrethe acted decisively to end her reign and promote her son Crown Prince Frederik in a ‘shrewd’ bid to save the Danish monarchy and avert the ‘disaster’ of his marriage to Crown Princess Mary crumbling amid rumours of his affair.

Less than a fortnight ago Australian-born Mary was spotted in tears and shared a cryptic post about loneliness just weeks after her husband was pictured on a night out in Madrid with a Mexican socialite, sparking rumours of an alleged affair with Genoveva Casanova.

Mr Dampier, also an expert on European monarchies, told MailOnline: ‘I think Margrethe may have worried that their marriage was in trouble and therefore she had to act.

‘The Queen always thought Mary was a fantastic asset to the royal family and if she thought she might leave it would have been a disaster. She will now hope that Frederik and Mary patch up any differences and work together as the new King and Queen’.

Australian-born Mary is hugely popular with the Danish public, and is often compared to her good friend, Britain’s Princess of Wales.

Mr Dampier said: ‘I never thought the Queen would abdicate and this has come as a total shock to many Danes.

‘I can’t help thinking that it has something to do with the recent rumours about Crown Prince Frederik spending a night with a Mexican socialite.

‘Mary recently spent time home in her native Australia and she arrived with her children but Frederik only joined them after a few days. She appeared tearful at one stage and posted some poignant tweets’.

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said that Queen Margrethe does not wish the Danish monarchy to be viewed as old and out of date.

He said: ‘Queen Margarethe of Denmark is a shrewd operator. She has stunned the nation by announcing she will abdicate in a fortnight in favour of her son Crown Prince Frederick.

‘Recently rumours of an affair with Mexican socialite and actress Genoveva Casanova, illustrated with what appears to be embarrassing photographic evidence which was published last November, have been extremely damaging to the royal family’.

Mr Fitzwilliams said that her age and recent back surgery may also have influenced the decision, but added: ‘She had always previously rejected the idea of abdicating’.

He said: ‘Crown Prince Frederick is 55 and Princess Mary is 51. She may well have calculated that an ageing monarchy was not a good idea, especially if she had reigned for another decade or so. Her instincts are shrewd as the monarchy currently enjoys public support of around 80 per cent which is phenomenal. 

‘She has deliberately dropped a bombshell, which may well be extremely beneficial for the institution which she, born just a week after the Nazi invasion of Denmark, has done so much to preserve and which enjoys such amazing popular support in this egalitarian country’.

The Danish head of state shocked the nation and many royal watchers around the world when she used her annual New Year’s Eve speech to announce live on television that she was stepping down as Queen after 52 years.

Danes have said they feel ‘motherless’ when she leaves the throne – with her eldest son Frederik , nicknamed the ‘Casanova Crown Prince’, and Mary, becoming King and Queen in the coming weeks. 

In her address the 83-year-old said she had taken stock after undergoing back surgery last year and had decided it was it was time ‘to leave the responsibility to the next generation’ – namely her eldest son Crown Prince Frederik.

Speculation is mounting that the decision was made to keep Frederik’s wife of 19 years Princess Mary, who is extremely popular with the public, on side.

Princess Mary, who is set to become the first Australian-born queen in a number of weeks, has won over the Danish public with her dedication to royal duty and her fluency in the language.

A recent poll found 85 per cent of Danes have a positive opinion of the 51-year-old, who met her husband in a packed pub in Sydney 23 years ago and had no idea he was royalty.

Her husband is also similarly popular, having turned his public image around from being a rebel tearaway and party boy during his youth to becoming a ‘woke’ family man.

Since meeting the couple have got married and have four children together, including their oldest son Christian who will take over his father’s role of crown prince on January 14 when Queen Margrethe abdicates.

However, their relationship came under scrutiny last year when Frederik was spotted on a night out with Mexican reality star Genoveva Casanova in October.

While the Royal Household refused to comment on photos of the pair together, Genoveva issued a public statement denying any kind of romantic relationship and called the rumours ‘malicious’.

Frederik has been married to Princess Mary for 19 years, with their relationship often being dubbed a ‘real-life fairytale’.

Mary Donaldson was 28 years old when she met Frederik in the Slip Inn in Sydney 23 years ago.

After the pub encounter, then 32-year-old Fred – who was in Australia to support Denmark’s sailing team at the 2000 Olympics – asked Mary for her phone number and a romance blossomed.

‘The first time we met we shook hands. I didn’t know he was the prince of Denmark. Half an hour later someone came up to me and said, ‘Do you know who these people are’?’ Mary revealed in an interview about meeting the heir to the Danish throne.

They maintained a long-distance relationship for a year, with Frederik making secret trips Down Under before Mary moved to Denmark to study Danish language at Copenhagen’s Studieskolen in 2001.

In early 2003, Frederik’s mother Queen Margrethe publicly acknowledged the relationship and the couple announced their engagement at Amalienborg Castle later that year on October 8.

Between raising her children and appearing at diplomatic events, Mary has worked tirelessly to prove her commitment to charity, becoming a patron of more than 25 international organisations since her marriage to Frederik in 2004.

Patronages include the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe and the United Nations Population Fund, where she supports their work to promote maternal health in more than 150 developing nations.

In 2007, the Princess launched The Mary Foundation, a charity focused on stamping out domestic violence, bullying and loneliness.

Her popularity with the Danish public is mirrored by that of Frederik’s, who has turned his image around in the eyes of Danes as the years have passed.

A lonely and tormented teenager, Frederik resented his parents for neglecting him as they fulfilled their royal obligations.

He sought solace in fast cars and fast living, and was considered a spoiled party prince in the early 1990s.

But that view began to change after he graduated from Aarhus University in 1995, the first Danish royal to complete a university education.

His time at college included a stint at Harvard in the United States, where he was enrolled under the pseudonym Frederik Henriksen.

The fake surname was a nod to his father, French diplomat Henri de Monpezat who became Prince Consort Henrik when he married Margrethe.

But Frederik – who speaks English, French and German – really began to mature into his role during his time training in the three branches of Denmark’s military.

The prince served in the navy’s Frogmen Corps – where he was nicknamed ‘Pingo’ (Penguin) – one of only four of the 300 recruits to pass all of the tests in 1995.

In 2000, he took part in a four-month, 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) ski expedition across Greenland.

His daredevil side has landed him in hospital after sledging and scooter accidents, but his popularity has soared, boosted by the Royal Run, annual fun runs across Denmark he began in 2018.

‘He is a sportsman, he attends concerts and football matches, which makes him even more accessible than his mother,’ royal expert Redder said.

‘I don’t want to lock myself in a fortress. I want to be myself, a human being,’ he once said, insisting he would stick to that even after taking the throne.

He met his wife Mary Donaldson, an Australian lawyer, in a Sydney bar during the 2000 Olympic Games.

They have tried to give their four children as normal an upbringing as possible, sending them mainly to state schools.

Their eldest, Prince Christian, who recently turned 18, was the first Danish royal to go to daycare.

The couple have gradually taken on many royal duties in recent years as the queen entered her eighties, ‘but very slowly and depending on the queen’s health’, said historian Sebastian Olden-Jorgensen.

The couple are ‘modern, woke, lovers of pop music, modern art and sports,’ he added.

They ‘do not represent a potential revolution compared to the queen’, but a careful transition adapting to the times, he said.

In recent months Frederik has been subject to scandalous headlines and rumours alleging an ‘affair’. 

In October photographs emerged showing Frederick enjoying a night out with Mexican socialite Genoveva Casanova in Madrid, sparking rumours about the Danish royal.

Spanish magazine Lecturas reported that, during their night out, Frederik – who is a fourth cousin of King Charles – and Genoveva visited a Pablo Picasso exhibition, walked through El Retiro Park and later went out for dinner.

At around 7pm, Lecturas claimed both Frederik and Genoveva went to her apartment building separately, and both re-emerged at around 9pm, two hours later, both having changed their clothes into evening wear.

In the photos, Genoveva had ditched her chic camel coat with a tie belt in favour of a white shirt, black wide-leg trousers and a black jacket worn on her shoulders.

Meanwhile Frederik appeared to have changed from a navy jacket and brown trousers into a white shirt and dark trousers with a smart dark jacket. Again, they were reported to have emerged from the building separately, but got into the same white car.

The magazine claimed the pair watched a flamenco performance at a Spanish restaurant, El Corral de la Moreria, which finished at midnight.

It also claimed they remained at their table, which had been flanked by two of the Danish Prince’s bodyguards, while other customers left, waiters finished up their shifts and the lights were being switched off.

Lecturas claimed the pair did not emerge from the restaurant until 1am, when they walked out onto the street and got in a car.

In a ‘gesture of courtesy’, Lecturas reports Prince Frederik opened the car door for his dinner companion.

The next day, the magazine claims the heir to the Danish throne was taken to the airport via car where he flew home to Denmark.

Publication of the pictures in Lecturas led the divorcee Mexican socialite to issue a statement ‘categorically’ denying any suggestion the pair are romantically involved, branding it ‘malicious’ and untrue, according to Hola!.

The socialite wrote: ‘I categorically deny the statements that suggest a romantic relationship between Prince Frederik and me.’

She added: ‘Any statement of this type not only completely lacks the truth but also misrepresents the facts in a malicious manner.

‘This is already in the hands of my lawyers, who will take care of the pertinent steps to protect my right to honour, truth and privacy.’