Further driving home the point that the British royal family isn’t the only monarchy that spells Drama with a capital D, let’s travel to Denmark, where in September 2022 Queen Margrethe unexpectedly stripped the royal titles of her younger son Prince Joachim’s children, leading to a family rift that ultimately saw Joachim and his family relocate to the United States. (Though it sounds like we are making this up to be the Danish version of the Prince Harry story, we’re not.)
Margrethe—who surprised most if not all when she abdicated the throne in January in favor of her eldest son and heir to the throne King Frederik—shocked Joachim, his wife Princess Marie, and their children Nikolai, Felix, Henrik, and Athena when she made the decision. (Joachim shares his eldest two children, Nikolai and Felix, with his ex-wife Alexandra.) Beginning in 2023, the four lost their His or Her Royal Highness (HRH) status, and became known as Count or Countess of Monpezat. Per Tatler, Marie—mother of Henrik and Athena and stepmother of Nikolai and Felix—said that it was “complicated” for the family, and that “We weren’t happy about the way it happened.” Joachim and his family now live in Washington, D.C., and spoke to The Washington Post about the Queen’s decision.
Marie said it was about more than just the HRH title: “It’s a family thing,” she said. “It’s complicated. It’s also their name. It’s their identity since they were born. So it’s more than just what people see as a title.”
At the time, Joachim expressed dismay at his mother’s decision, saying that his family was “very sad” and that the children had been “put in a situation they do not understand.” He added “It’s never fun to see your children being harmed.”
Alexandra, Joachim’s ex-wife, said that her two sons Nikolai and Felix were “saddened and in shock,” telling Se og Hor magazine “The children feel ostracized. They cannot understand why their identity is being taken away from them.” Nikolai himself told Ekstra Bladet “We are…in shock at this decision and how quickly it has actually gone…I am very confused as to why it has to happen like this.” (Margrethe has two sons, Frederik and Joachim; because at the time Frederik was heir to the throne—and is now on the throne—his children got to keep their HRH titles.)
As Tatler writes, “The decision caused a significant rift—the family spent Christmas in 2022 apart, breaking with a time-honored tradition.” Margrethe made a public apology for having “underestimated” the hurt caused to four of her grandchildren, but didn’t change her mind, adding that she made the decision “to ensure that the monarchy continues to shape itself in keeping with the times.”
Though Joachim and his family did join the Queen at Marselisborg Palace—the customary Christmas venue for Danish royals, as Sandringham is to the British royal family—for the holiday in 2023, the children did not attend Frederik’s accession in January, the next month. (Joachim was there to support his older brother.) “Their absence from the major family event was read by some as a sign of tension,” Tatler writes. “Others contended that this was precisely Queen Margrethe’s intention when she stripped the titles from Joachim’s children—intending to relieve them of their royal obligations in favor of a normal life.” A Palace spokesperson defended the children’s absence, saying “Prince Joachim will be there, but the children go to school,” they said. “There is no special reason.”
Nikolai and Felix are older and grown—Nikolai is 24 and Felix is 21—but Joachim, Marie, Henrik (who is 14), and Athena (who is 12) all relocated to Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2023, where Joachim began a new job with the Danish Embassy under the Ministry of Defense. In D.C., Joachim told The Washington Post, he and his family have the freedom to fly under the radar: “We’ve lived here for seven months now and very few people know who we are, Danes apart,” he said.
A year and a half after Margrethe’s decision—and an ocean away from the royal family of their home country—Joachim spoke of his family and told the outlet, decisively, “We’ve moved on.”
