Queen Margrethe II provides a New Yr’s speech and proclaims her abdication from Christian IX’s Palace, Amalienborg Citadel, in Copenhagen, on Sunday, Dec. 31, 2023.
Ritzau Scanpix | Through Reuters
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II introduced Sunday that she plans to abdicate after 52 years and hand over the throne to her son, Crown Prince Frederik.
The queen, who’s Europe’s longest-reigning residing monarch, introduced throughout her New Yr’s speech that she would abdicate on Jan. 14, the anniversary of her accession to the throne at age 31 following the dying of her father, King Frederik IX.
Margrethe, 83, stated the again surgical procedure she underwent in early 2023 led to “thoughts about the future” and when to go on the duties of the crown to her son. “I have decided that now is the right time,” she stated in her speech.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen paid tribute to her in an announcement, providing a “heartfelt thank you to Her Majesty the Queen for her lifelong dedication and tireless efforts for the Kingdom.”
Margrethe is the “epitome of Denmark” Frederiksen’s assertion learn, and “throughout the years has put words and feelings into who we are as a people and as a nation.”
The 6-foot-tall (1.82-meters-tall), chain-smoking Margrethe has been one of the vital standard public figures in Denmark, the place the monarch’s position is essentially ceremonial. She usually walked the streets of Copenhagen nearly unescorted and received the admiration of Danes for her heat manners and for her skills as a linguist and designer.
A eager skier, she was a member of a Danish girls’s air drive unit as a princess, collaborating in judo programs and endurance assessments within the snow. Margrethe remained robust whilst she grew older. In 2011, at age 70, she visited Danish troops in southern Afghanistan carrying a army jumpsuit.
As monarch, she crisscrossed the nation and recurrently visited Greenland and the Faeroe Islands — the 2 semi-independent territories which can be a part of the Danish Realm — and was met all over the place by cheering crowds.
Denmark has Europe’s oldest ruling monarchy, which traces its line again to the Viking king Gorm the Previous, who died in 958. Though Magrethe is head of state, the Danish Structure strictly dominated out her involvement in celebration politics.
But the queen was clearly well-versed in regulation and knew the contents of the laws she was known as upon to signal.
She acquired coaching in French and English from her earliest years, in addition to Swedish from her mom. Along with archaeology, she studied philosophy, political science and economics at universities in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Cambridge together with the London College of Economics and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ever since his delivery on Might 26, 1968, Frederik André Henrik Christian has been the inheritor to the Danish throne.
He’s the oldest son of Queen Margrethe and her late French-born husband, Prince Henrik, who died in February 2018. Frederik, 55, has a youthful brother, Prince Joachim.
Because the age of 18, he has served as regent every time his mom was outdoors the dominion and carried out official duties, shaking palms with hundreds and receiving overseas dignitaries.
“In the new year, Crown Prince Frederik will be proclaimed king. Crown Princess Mary will become queen. The kingdom will have a new regent and a new royal couple. We can look forward to all of this in the knowledge that they are ready for the responsibility and the task,” the prime minister’s assertion stated.