‘We were both so happy’: Book reveals new details of Mary and Frederik’s romance
Incredible new insights into the early dating days of the future King and Queen of Denmark have been revealed in a revealing book translated into English for the first time.
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When Frederik fell nervously to one knee in Rome, the Crown Prince pleaded with his future Queen: “You can’t say no, you mustn’t say no, you have to say yes.”
The whirlwind romance that started as a Sydney fling became a lifetime commitment in a medieval Italian chapel where Mary said “Yes”.
“After he’d done it I was laughing like a shy girl, and we were both so happy,” Princess Mary recalled of the 2003 proposal.
The touching moment was revealed in a Danish-language book translated into English for the first time, providing new details into the clandestine romance of the Australian advertising executive and the heir to the throne.
Shortly before the summer proposal, Crown Prince Frederik had written to John Dalgleish Donaldson in Hobart asking permission
Something was awry when Frederik took Mary on an excursion to the Italian capital. She could tell he was “oddly preoccupied, that there was something afoot”.
“He wanted to go to a particular viewing spot, and when we got to the place where I think he’d planned to do it, suddenly there was a whole throng of people around us. Instead we wandered around, reached this new spot high up, then went back down through some very small alleys,” she said.
“It was nearly dark, and then suddenly in one of the turns in the alley, there was this teeny little old church. Frederik wanted to stop there, and then … well, that was where he proposed.”
Sitting for interviews for the 2018 biography, Under the Beam: A Portrait of Crown Prince Frederik, the future King and Queen filled in the previously little-known period between their first dates in Sydney and when they walked down the aisle in Denmark.
GREAT GUY, BUT ‘IS HE GAY’?
After Mary’s first date with “a great guy” ended with one glaring problem, her best friend Amber Petty asked the burning question: “Is he gay?”
The private phone conversation was revealed by biographer Jens Anderson, who detailed how the budding relationship played out after the initial meeting a the Slip Inn in Sydney.
“I remember Mary calling me and saying she’d met a lovely person, and I knew that from her, even an offhand remark like that must mean that someone had really caught her interest,” recalled Ms Petty, a friend who had worked as a receptionist at the same advertising company as Mary.
“I can clearly remember Mary saying, ‘There’s just one problem …”
“My first thought was, ‘Is he married? Or is he gay?’ And that was when she said, ‘I’ve found out he’s Crown Prince of Denmark.’ My reaction was like, “Oh … OH! There were definitely going to be complications.”
FRED WAS A ‘NERVOUS SCHOOLBOY’
Frederik was “taken” with Mary in a “slightly awkward and shy way” that reminded Ms Petty of a “schoolboy crush”.
The couple met as often as they could over that first weekend. They snatched a stroll through Sydney’s botanical gardens and caught the ferry to Manly Beach, where they swam and hung out at cafes.
They ate sushi for dinner and partied along with the rest of the city in a jubilant Olympic mood.
On their last date, they ambled along the coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Bronte and met Ms Petty for dinner in Potts Point.
“My first impression was that he seemed really taken with her in a slightly awkward and shy way …,” she said.
“It reminded me of a schoolboy crush. Normally you’d expect it to be your friend who was embarrassed and nervous in those sort of circumstances, but I sensed it more clearly in Frederik.”
‘HE KNOCKED ME OF MY FEET’
Mary couldn’t get her head around the idea that the person she had just met would one day be the King of Denmark.
A tarot card reader once predicted she would meet a worldly man and become famous on the world stage. Was this it?
“He really knocked me off my feet, this lovely man who also seemed lovely on the inside — positive and humorous, experienced and well-travelled,” she said in the book.
“He was in every respect the worldly man the tarot woman had spoken about.
“I’d always told myself, just in fun, that I’d love to find a man who could dance, ride a horse, speak several languages, be a good swimmer and wear nice shoes.
“He had the whole package … yeah, he was the real deal,” she said.
FROM FLING TO A RING
A day before Prince Frederik hurriedly returned to Denmark to be with his dying grandmother, Queen Ingrid, he “made all sorts of promises” to Mary.
“I think she thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was an Olympics fling, I’ll never see him again’, he said.
“I was certain that this was something really, really good for me, and that she and I could go a long way together.”
The couple remained in contact through emails and long phone calls discussing her love for music Robbie Williams and Led Zeppelin. They would send letters, and Frederik would write poetry.
When Mary moved to Paris to give their relationship a chance, Frederik meticulously planned their meet-ups to avoid press attention.
SECRETLY SNEAKING INTO DENMARK
For their first New Year in Denmark, Mary flew to Hamburg where was picked up by the prince’s close friend Jeppe Handwerk, a former member of the Danish Frogman Corps.
“I felt a bit weird, sneaking into the country like that, but at that point, I still didn’t quite realise how good the press was with all that stuff,” she recalled.
“So we drove from Hamburg and up through Jutland, and somewhere in the dark — it was just snowing and snowing — we stopped in a lay-by, and suddenly Frederik was there.
“I just jumped across into his car, and together we drove up to the house at Birkelse, where we saw in the New Year with a whole group of his friends,” said Mary.
‘HE LOOKS INSANELY HANDSOME’
The next day they returned to Copenhagen for the official celebrations. After settling into Amalienborg, Frederik changed into his full dress uniform ahead of his state duties.
“I think I was lying on the sofa watching TV, and then suddenly the sitting-room door opened and he was standing there in full regalia, my God, -I thought,’ Argh, he looks insanely handsome, wow!’”
At the Yellow Palace on Amaliegade — the neoclassical mansion beside Amalienborg — a frenzied operation was underway to background check Frederik’s new girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth Donaldson.
MEETING THE (ROYAL) FAMILY
Mary was the first girlfriend to meet Frederik’s mother, Queen Margrethe II. In spring 2002, more than a year before the marriage proposal, Frederik invited the two together for tea.
A panicked Mary asked him to teach her how to curtsy. But as Queen Margrethe remembers the meeting at Christian VIII’s Palace, there was no hint of Mary’s nerves.
“I went over to the apartment and met her for the first time, and I was very, very happy,” Queen Margrethe said.
“I thought, too, that my mother would have felt she was exactly the right choice.
“She really had such a … genuine nature … a sweet and a good and sensible character, and a bearing. And she wasn’t shaking like a leaf at having to meet this frightful queen and mother.”
‘HE COULD GET ALL KINDS OF WOMEN’
The couple’s engagement was announced at a press conference at Fredensborg Palace on 8 October 2003 and they wed at Copenhagen Cathedral on May 14 2004.
But in those early days, Mary could never understand what Frederik saw in her.
“I mean, he could get, you know, all kinds of women, and he probably had plenty to choose from …” she said.
“I also thought it was so unfair I’d met someone who lived overseas, and as far away as Denmark.
“In the first instance, it was solely about the geographical distance.
“That he would be king one day — I couldn’t get my head round that at all. It seemed even more distant and unreal than Denmark,” she said.
Twenty-four years from their first meeting, the boy with a crush and his smitten quarry will be crowned HM King Frederik X and HM Queen Mary.
Originally published as ‘We were both so happy’: Book reveals new details of Mary and Frederik’s romance
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