Princess Mary to become Queen of Denmark after abdication
Denmark will soon have a new Australian-born Queen after the surprise abdication of Queen Margrethe in favour of her son Frederik.
Denmark will soon have a New Australian-born Queen.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark announced during her traditional New Year’s Eve televised address Sunday that she would abdicate on January 14, making way for her son, Crown Prince Frederik, who is married to Hobart-born Crown Princess Mary.
Citing her age and health issues, the Queen made the announcement during her traditional New Year’s Eve speech broadcast on Danish television.
“In two weeks time I have been Queen of Denmark for 52 years,” she said. That length of time would take its time on anyone, she added. “One cannot undertake as much as one managed in the past...
“On 14th January, 2024 — 52 years after I succeeded my beloved father — I will step down as Queen of Denmark. I will hand over the throne to my son Crown Prince Frederik.”
Queen Margrethe is the longest serving monarch in Danish history and took over after her father King Frederik IX in 1972.
Queen Margrethe made the decision to abdicate after having back surgery in early 2023, she revealed.
“The surgery naturally gave rise to thinking about the future — whether the time had come to leave the responsibility to the next generation,” she added.
‘Epitome of Denmark’
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen offered praises to the Queen.
“On behalf of the entire population, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Her Majesty The Queen for her lifelong dedication and tireless efforts for the Kingdom,” she said in a statement.
“Queen Margrethe is the epitome of Denmark and throughout the years has put words and feelings into who we are as a people and as a nation.”
Aussie-born Queen
Born Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, Princess Mary met Prince Frederik at Sydney pub the Slip Inn 23 years ago during the Sydney Olympics.
Then a commerce and law student working as an advertising executive, Mary didn’t know he was a prince when they met.
”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?’,” she said in a 2015 interview, New Idea reported.
But she had an idea that he was someone “special”.
“Something clicked. It wasn’t the fireworks in the sky or anything like that but there was a sense of excitement.”
Prince Frederik, who was in Australia to barrack for Denmark’s sailing team, asked Mary for her phone number and their love soon blossomed.
They endured a long-distance relationship before Mary made the decision to move to Denmark and quickly learned Danish, but still maintains an Australian accent.
The couple was married on 14 May 2004 in Copenhagen and honeymooned in Africa.
They have four children including Prince Christian Valdemar Henri John, Princess Isabella Henrietta Ingrid Margrethe, Prince Vincent Frederik Minik Alexander and Princess Josephine Sophia Ivalo Mathilda.
Denmark’s ‘woke’ and popular future king
A rebellious teen turned “woke” family man, Denmark’s future king Crown Prince Frederik is the embodiment of the country’s relaxed, liberal monarchy.
Passionate about the environment, he has discreetly imposed himself in the shadow of his hugely popular mother, Queen Margrethe II, championing Denmark and its drive to find solutions to the climate crisis.
“When the time comes, I will guide the ship,” he said in a speech celebrating his chain-smoking mother’s half century on the throne in 2022.
“I will follow you, as you followed your father” in leading the thousand-year-old institution, Prince Frederik added.
But this measured assurance is a far cry from his younger self. “He was not strictly speaking a rebel, but as a child and young man, he was very uncomfortable with the media attention and the knowledge that he was going to be king,” said Gitte Redder, an expert on the Danish royal family.
He only “gained confidence in his mid-20s,” she told AFP.
Lonely and tormented
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.
Complementing the queen
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.
Frederik has said that he sees himself complementing his mother, a polymath who is an accomplished writer and artist.
“You paint, I exercise. You dig for buried objects from the past, I buried my head in order not to be recognised during my time in the armed forces. You are a master of words. I am sometimes at a loss for them,” he joked during the queen’s jubilee celebrations.
- with AFP
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