Queen Margrethe II of Denmark has stripped four of her grandchildren of their royal titles.
Prince Joachim’s three sons will no longer be princes and his daughter will no longer be a princess, the royal household announced Wednesday. The kids will officially lose their titles on Jan. 1.
The monarch said the move was for the good of the children, ages 10 to 23.
“Her Majesty the Queen wishes to create the framework for the four grandchildren to be able to shape their own lives to a much greater extent without being limited by the special considerations and duties that a formal affiliation with the Royal House of Denmark as an institution involves,” the royal family wrote.
But the kids didn’t quite see it that way.
“This came from out of the blue,” Prince Joachim’s first wife, Countess Alexandra, told a Danish paper. “The children feel excluded. They can’t understand why their identity is being taken from them.”
Alexandra is the mother of the two older children, Nikolai, 23, and Felix, 20. Prince Joachim remarried and had two more kids — Henrik, 13, and Athena, 10 — with his new wife, Princess Marie.
Prince Joachim also has an older brother, Crown Prince Christian. His four children will be allowed to keep their titles.
Even though Prince Joachim’s children lost their titles, they’ll keep their places in the line of succession, the palace said.
