Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II is preparing to hand over the throne to her son, a former “party prince,” after announcing her sudden abdication on live TV.
The world’s only reigning queen and Europe’s longest-serving monarch, she addressed the nation on New Year’s Eve, marking 52 years since she became queen on the death of her father Frederick IX. He announced his resignation on the 14th.
The throne will go to her 55-year-old son, Crown Prince Frederic, but Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that he was once a “rebellious teenager” but is now “a ‘woke’ member of the family.” “A man” and a champion of Denmark’s “efforts to find solutions.” climate crisis.” His Australian-born wife, Crown Princess Mary, will become queen when he ascends the throne.
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As a “lonely and tormented” young man in the early 1990s, Frederic “sought solace in fast cars and a simple life and was considered a spoiled party prince,” AFP news agency said.
“Strictly speaking, he was not a traitor,” Danish royal expert Gitte Redder said. “But as a child and a young man, he was very uncomfortable with the media attention and his knowledge that he was going to be king.”
But public perception of Frederick changed after he graduated from Aarhus University with a master’s degree in political science in 1995 after spending a year at Harvard University, becoming the first Danish royal to complete a university education. It started to change.
He then joined the Danish Navy, serving in the Frogman Corps, and was one of only four recruits out of 300 to pass its rigorous examination. According to the Daily Mail, he earned the nickname “Pingo” after his wetsuit filled with water during a scuba diving course and he was “forced to waddle like a penguin”.
His wife of 19 years, Princess Mary, grew up on the island of Tasmania and was working as a lawyer when they met in a Sydney bar in 2000 during the Olympics. Mary, who was a commercial law student and working as an advertising executive at the time, reportedly didn’t know she was a member of the royal family.
“The first time we met, we shook hands,” she once told an interviewer, “I didn’t know he was the Prince of Denmark. Half an hour later, someone came up to me and said, ‘These people are… Do you know who he is?” “?”
Her journey from “commoner” to the Danish throne has been compared to that of the Princess of Wales, with some describing them as “royal sisters”, the Telegraph reported.
Frederick and Mary are extremely popular in Denmark, with a recent Danish Radio poll showing them with approval ratings of 84% and 85% respectively, on par with Queen Margrethe.
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In a televised address on New Year’s Eve, the 82-year-old monarch said he had decided to step down from the throne after a “period of reflection” following back surgery in 2023.
Margrethe said the surgery “made me think about the future” and “whether it is time to hand over the responsibility to the next generation.”
He was a popular figure in Denmark, and most Danes expected the chain-smoking royal to remain on the throne until his death. “She is to us what Queen Elizabeth is to you,” Danish journalist Tin Götje told the BBC.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen thanked Margrethe for her “lifelong dedication and tireless efforts to the Kingdom.”
“Many of us don’t know other regents,” Frederiksen said. “Queen Margrethe is the epitome of Denmark and she has given us, as a people and a nation, her words and emotions over the years.”
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Martin Krasnik told Danish newspaper Weekendavisen that this was “an abdication that could only happen in Denmark”. Margrethe’s New Year’s Eve speech was “personal and perfectly balanced”, without “drama or unnecessary pathos”.
But her abdication, which came as a complete surprise to the Nordic nation, could be part of a “calculated strategy” to save her son and future king’s marriage, the Telegraph suggests did.
Frédéric has been “haunted” by recent rumors of an affair after he was photographed in Madrid with Mexican socialite Genoveva Casanova. Spanish magazine Lecturas published a photo of the two allegedly visiting a Picasso exhibition and having an intimate dinner together, as well as a photo of Frederik leaving Casanova’s apartment the next morning. The royal family has not commented on the report.
However, some have speculated that Queen Margrethe may have stepped down to avoid a “Prince Charles situation”.
Commentators say Margrethe did not want to avoid the fate of Frederick, the British king who took the throne at the age of 73, after Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022 at the age of 96. It suggests that.