On a crisp Copenhagen morning, Amalienborg has the same air of royal and stately permanence it must have had two-and-a-quarter centuries ago, when Christian VII became the first of Denmark’s rulers to make it his home.
The palace’s four identical mansions gaze serenely at each other across the square. A tidy crowd watches the changing of the guard. In the museum, an exhibition of Queen Margrethe’s substantial jewellery collection marks her 50 happy years on the throne.
All is well, it might seem, in the House of Glücksborg. But behind the polished classical facades, Denmark’s hugely popular royal family has been plunged into what experts describe as its most serious – and unforeseen – crisis in decades after Margrethe stripped the royal titles from her youngest son’s children.
“It’s revealed a side of the family no one had ever seen,” said Helle Jørgensen, 66, a retired schoolteacher visiting the royal museum. “They don’t actually seem able to talk to each other. The announcement was one thing; what came after seems worse.”
Stepping out of his office on nearby Amaliegade for a cigarette, Søren Nygard said he supported – or at least, understood – the decision that unleashed the drama. “But what it set in motion … It looks the British royal family isn’t the only one with issues.”
Last week, in a statement as forthright as it was unexpected, the 82-year-old queen announced that from 1 January four of her eight grandchildren – the sons and daughter of her younger son, Prince Joachim, 53 – would no longer be able to use the titles prince and princess.
Instead, Henrik, 13, and Athena, 10, Joachim’s children with his second wife, Marie, as well as Nikolai, 23, and Felix, 20, from his first marriage to Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, were to become counts and countesses, and would be addressed as excellencies, Margrethe said.
Her intention was to “create the framework” for the four grandchildren “to be able to shape their own lives, without being limited by the special considerations and duties that a formal affiliation with the Royal House of Denmark involves”.
The decision was long-considered and “in line with similar adjustments” by other royal houses, Margrethe said, a nod to recently slimmed-down monarchies in countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands where royals lower down the line of succession have lost their HRH titles or been dropped from civil lists.
The four children of Margrethe’s elder son and heir, Crown Prince Frederik, 54, and his wife, Mary, will retain their royal titles (although following another cost-cutting decision in 2016, when they come of age only the eldest, 16-year-old Christian, who is second in line to the throne, will be getting any money).
While its logic may have been consistent, however, the palace plainly did not count on the reaction of an emotional Prince Joachim. He complained to Danish reporters in Paris, where he has been Denmark’s defence attaché since 2020, that the children “don’t understand” and had been “mistreated”.
They “don’t know which leg to stand on”, Joachim said. “Why should their identity be removed? Why must they be punished in this way?” Marie, his French-born wife, said their youngest was now being bullied at school. Alexandra, his first wife, said she was “shocked”; Nikolai, their eldest son, professed “bewilderment”.
Joachim also alleged, tellingly, that he had been informed of the decision by a senior court official, rather than his mother, only five days earlier. He claimed he had been warned in May his children risked being stripped of their titles when they turned 25, but had asked for time to come back with a proposal of his own.
And he said that he had “unfortunately” not spoken to the queen or his elder brother Frederik, since the announcement, adding: “That’s also family – or whatever one could call it.” For her part, Marie described the couple’s relationship with the crown prince and his wife as “complicated”.
The crown prince himself has not commented, but his outspoken Australian-born wife, Mary, came out strongly for the queen. “Change can be difficult and can really hurt,” she declared. “But this doesn’t mean that the decision is not the right one.”
The sudden outbreak of unsuspected royal hostilities and – even more unusual – their unseemly public airing have shocked many Danes, regardless of whether or not they approve the queen’s decision (polls suggest up to three-quarters do).
“It actually is a very real crisis,” said Trine Villemann, author of two books about the royal family. “It has shattered people’s image of the queen, and of the family. There may have been questions of protocol, but she is a mother and a grandmother – couldn’t she just have picked up the phone and said, look, we have to sort this out?”
Margrethe, affectionately nicknamed Daisy, has earned “huge respect” during her half-century on the throne, Villemann said, for her strong sense of duty and unquestioning acceptance of the royals’ role: she has repeatedly said she will never abdicate but would “stay on the throne till I drop”.
A talented artist, fluent in five languages, she has also worked as a costume and set designer with the Royal Danish Ballet and Theatre, illustrated books including a Danish edition of Lord of the Rings, exhibited paintings in Denmark and abroad, and translated authors such as Simone de Beauvoir.
With the queen’s personal approval ratings invariably over 80% and support for the monarchy not much different, few had suspected trouble could be brewing. Danes have, however, long known the importance Margrethe attaches to court titles.
For decades until his death in 2018, the queen’s late husband and consort, Prince Henrik, complained – bitterly, but in vain – that he was never called king, at one point even fleeing to the couple’s chateau in France after Crown Prince Frederik was chosen to host a New Year’s reception in the queen’s absence.
French-born Henrik complained he felt “pushed aside, degraded and humiliated” at being relegated to “third place” in the hierarchy, especially after having “satisfied myself, for so many years, with being number two”. He would later refuse to be buried next to his wife on the grounds he was never made her equal.
There have been hints, too, that Margrethe was not the warmest of mothers. Villemann, who wrote a bestselling biography of the queen, said Joachim and Frederik were “raised by their nanny, on the top floor of palace. Margrethe hardly went up there. They weren’t allowed down for dinner until they were four or five.”
As a result, she said, the two brothers – born barely a year apart – became “incredibly close. They were almost like twins.” Their relationship has cooled since, observers say, with Joachim gradually being sidelined and his royal duties cut back amid claims in the media that as second son he was effectively exiled to Paris.
But it is the very public slanging match that has most shocked Denmark. “It’s extremely unusual, even unprecedented,” commented Jacob Heinel Jensen, royal correspondent of the BT tabloid.
“Not only did they quite clearly fail to talk it all over internally, but they are now washing their dirty linen in public. We’ve really not seen anything like it, certainly not since Henrik 20 years ago. We all like this fairytale idea of a happy, harmonious royal family – but it turns out they’re really not.”
Peter Thygesen, veteran royal correspondent for the daily Politiken, concurred. “No one saw it coming,” he said. “Normally the family never comments in public; now they’re communicating with each other through the media. It’s all very damaging.”
Thygesen said it was now up to the queen, “who will certainly survive this”, to “bring the family back together and sort it out”. Margrethe took a tentative first step in that direction this week, conceding she had “underestimated the extent to which my younger son and his family feel affected … and for that I am sorry.”
But she stuck by her decision, saying she wanted a monarchy “in keeping with the times” and the move would help “future-proof” the institution. “My children, daughters-in-law and grandchildren are my great joy and pride,” she said. “I now hope we as a family can find the peace to find our way through this situation.”
On Amalienborg square, sporting a golden jubilee daisy brooch from museum gift shop, Pernille Christensen wasn’t sure. “I’ve always liked her, but she hasn’t handled it very well, has she?” she said. “I don’t think things are as tricky as in Britain’s royal family. But I’m not sure what ours will be like when Margrethe goes.”
