After Queen Elizabeth passed away in September 2022, there was only one remaining queen. Queen Margrethe of Denmark has been on her throne since 1972, and she has announced that she will abdicate her throne in favor of her son after a 52-year reign. Crown Prince Frederick, effective January 14th.
(Image source: Getty Images)
In addition to not having a single reigning queen in the world, at least for now, Denmark’s story is multi-layered and perhaps not as simple as it seems. There is a clear tendency to invoke Margrethe’s age, rightly or wrongly, or indifferently. Since she is 83 years old, many initially thought her abdication was simply to retire and live out the rest of her days without the pressures of her throne. But as Queen Elizabeth herself demonstrated (she was 96 years old at the time of her death, and she was still reigning), monarchs usually don’t do such things. Abdication is usually only done when something serious is going on. Monarchs understand that once they ascend to the throne, it is generally for life. Margrethe became the first Danish king to abdicate in more than 500 years. people She reportedly said she intended to rule for life, repeating comments earlier made by her third cousin, Queen Elizabeth, who said the same thing (and kept her promise) in her 21st birthday speech in 1947. I was hinting.
Here’s a potential reason: Margrethe’s successor, her eldest son Frédéric, was announced as recently as November by Mexican-born socialite Geneveva Casanova (which sounds just like the name). ) and Rose Hanbury had just been embroiled in her own scandal. (From the movie) They were photographed together during a private trip to Madrid, Spain. Mr Casanova has denied the allegations of an affair with Mr Frédéric, and Mr Frédéric and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, have expressed solidarity since the rumors began.
(Image source: Getty Images)
But then Margrethe shocked the world by revealing in a New Year’s Eve speech that she would step down as sovereign after just two weeks, although this may have been done to save Frederick and Mary’s marriage. be. “The Queen may have taken this action because she was afraid that her marriage would fall apart and the royal family would lose Mary,” said Davidson, a longtime author who has covered the Danish royal family for 20 years. Royal critic Phil Dampier says: telegraph paper. (Mary is to Denmark what Princess Kate is to England; she is fashionable and well-liked. Mary also bears some physical resemblance to Kate.) The Queen has always regarded Mary as her greatest asset. I’ve seen it. It seems entirely coincidental that she would make this unexpected announcement just months after allegations of infidelity with the Crown Prince surfaced. In two weeks, the prince and princess will be appearing together as king and queen, and they’ll have to deal with that. The Queen may think she can save her marriage by making up for their differences. ”
Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik days after the scandal broke
(Image source: Getty Images)
In early December, shortly after rumors of Frederick’s relationship with Casanova broke, Mary and her husband traveled to their native Australia to visit family before Christmas. She traveled with her two of her four children.
Like Queen Elizabeth, Queen Margrethe is the longest-reigning monarch in the country’s history, making her decision to abdicate on January 14 particularly meaningful. This day commemorates the day she ascended the throne in 1972 at the age of 31 following the sudden death of her queen. The story of her father Frederick IX is very similar to Queen Elizabeth’s. In her speech, Margrethe said her 52-year reign “will leave its mark on everyone and even on me.” “The more time passes, the more I get sick. I can’t take on as much as I did in the past. I had major back surgery in February of this year. Please take care of me. Everything went well, thanks to the talented medical staff we had. Inevitably, this operation prompted us to think about the future, whether now is the right time to hand over responsibility to the next generation. We decided now was the right time.”
We also know that Prince Christian, Frederick and Mary’s eldest son and heir to the throne, only turned 18 last October, and could be ready to step into his new role as adult and heir apparent. , may be influencing her decisions.
(Image source: Getty Images)
Mr Dampier said the Queen’s announcement “came completely out of the blue”. I think many Danes are quite shocked by this. Margrethe herself said as recently as 2016 that she had no intention of abdicating, saying at the time: That’s what my father and my predecessors did. And so is my view. ” hit daily mailshe once claimed. [abdicating] Unless you get hopelessly ill. ”
(Image source: Getty Images)
Margrethe, per Tatler, a reported habit of smoking as many as 60 cigarettes a day, earning her the nickname “Queen of the Ashtrays.” (This habit stopped after her back surgery.) The paper writes that she is credited with “popularizing the Danish monarchy.” times She writes, “Through a combination of humor, modernization, and enlightened public engagement, we have reshaped the monarchy for a time when it has become less instinctively pious.” Tatler Margrethe calls her the original multi-hyphenation queen: endlessly interesting. Margrethe said she speaks five languages and oversaw her design of costumes and sets for the Netflix drama. Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction“While guiding the people with a quiet and dignified presence,” the newspaper reported. In 2022, Margrethe and the Danish royal family made headlines for stripping the children of her second son, Prince Joachim, of their royal titles. She is gorgeous and once helped illustrate the Danish edition. Lord of the Ring She is an accomplished painter in both watercolors and acrylics (after sending the idea to author J.R.R. Tolkien in a fan letter), studied at the London School of Economics, and is famous for wearing brightly colored raincoats. is known.
(Image source: Getty Images)
(Image source: Getty Images)
After first meeting in 2000 at a bar in Sydney, Australia, where Frederic was visiting for the Summer Olympics, Frederic and Mary got engaged in 2003 and will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this year. Often likened to a “real-life fairy tale,” Mary Donaldson, then an advertising executive, had no idea who “Fred” was when they passed each other at a slip-in on her fateful day. Ta. If Mary becomes queen, she will be the first Australian-born queen in history.
With Margrethe’s abdication, the world will no longer have a queen born into the royal family, but that won’t last long. Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain are all believed to have female heirs, so the future of the royal family is clearly female.