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Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, King Christian IX of Denmark, King Christian X of Denmark and King Haakon VII of Norway, King Constantine I of the Hellenes, King Felipe VI of Spain and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, King Frederik X of Denmark, King George V of the United Kingdom, King Harald V of Norway, King Philippe of Belgium, Louise of Hesse-Cassel
Christian IX (April 8, 1818 – January 29, 1906) was King of Denmark from November 15, 1863 until his death in 1906. From 1863 to 1864, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg.
A younger son of Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Cassel who was born at Gottorp, Schleswig, in the Duchy of Schleswig, to Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel and his wife Princess Louise of Denmark, the daughter of King Frederik V of Denmark and Louise of Great Britain.
Her elder sister Marie Sophie of Hesse-Cassel became Queen consort of King Frederik VI of Denmark.
Prince Christian grew up in the Duchy of Schleswig as a Prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a junior branch of the House of Oldenburg which had ruled Denmark since 1448.
Although having close family ties to the Danish royal family, he was originally not in the immediate line of succession to the Danish throne.
Following the early death of his father in 1831, Christian grew up in Denmark and was educated at the Military Academy of Copenhagen. After unsuccessfully seeking the hand of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom in marriage, he married his double second cousin, Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel, in 1842.
Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel Louise was born as the daughter of Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel and Princess Charlotte of Denmark. Princess Charlotte was a daughter to Prince Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Norway, and Princess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
Her father, Prince Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Norway, was a younger son of King Frederik V of Denmark and Norway, while her mother was a daughter of Duke Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. At birth she had two older siblings, Prince Christian Frederik (who later became King of Norway in 1814 and was King of Denmark as Christian VIII from 1839) and Princess Juliane Sophie. She later had a younger brother, Prince Frederik Ferdinand.
Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel lived in Denmark from the age of three.
In 1852, Christian was chosen as heir-presumptive to the Danish throne in light of the expected extinction of the senior line of the House of Oldenburg. Upon the death of King Frederik VII of Denmark in 1863, Christian (who was Frederik’s second cousin and husband of Frederik’s paternal first cousin, Louise of Hesse-Cassel) acceded to the throne as the first Danish monarch of the House of Glücksburg.
The beginning of his reign was marked by the Danish defeat in the Second Schleswig War and the subsequent loss of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg which made the king immensely unpopular. The following years of his reign were dominated by political disputes, for Denmark had only become a constitutional monarchy in 1849 and the balance of power between the sovereign and parliament was still in dispute.
In spite of his initial unpopularity and the many years of political strife, in which the king was in conflict with large parts of the population, his popularity recovered towards the end of his reign, and he became a national icon due to the length of his reign and the high standards of personal morality with which he was identified.
Queen Louise died at age 81 on September 29, 1898 at Bernstorff Palace near Copenhagen. King Christian IX survived his wife by seven years, and died peacefully of old age, at age 87, on 29 January 1906 at his residence, Christian IX’s Palace at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, after a reign of 42 years and 75 days.
After lying in state at the chapel at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, he was interred on 16 February 1906 beside Queen Louise in Christian IX’s Chapel in Roskilde Cathedral on the island of Zealand, the traditional burial site for Danish monarchs since the 15th century.
Christian’s family links with Europe’s royal families earned him the sobriquet “the father-in-law of Europe”. Four of Christian’s children sat on the thrones (either as monarchs or as consorts) of Denmark, Greece, the United Kingdom and Russia. His youngest son, Valdemar, was on 10 November 1886 elected as new Prince of Bulgaria by The 3rd Grand National Assembly of Bulgaria but Christian IX refused to allow Prince Valdemar to receive the election.
The great dynastic success of the six children was to a great extent not attributable to Christian himself, but the result of the ambitions of his wife Louise of Hesse-Cassel. An additional factor was that Denmark was not one of the Great Powers, so the other powers did not fear that the balance of power in Europe would be upset by a marriage of one of its royalty to another royal house.
Christian’s grandsons included Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, King Constantine I of the Hellenes, King George V of the United Kingdom, King Christian X of Denmark and King Haakon VII of Norway.
Today, most of Europe’s reigning and ex-reigning royal families are direct descendants of King Christian IX, and most current European monarchs are descended from him, including King Frederik X of Denmark, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, King Philippe of Belgium, King Harald V of Norway, King Felipe VI of Spain and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg.
The former consort Queen Sofía of Spain is also an agnatic descendant of King Christian IX, as was King Constantine II, the former and last King of the Hellenes, and his consort the former Queen Anne-Marie. Former King Michael I of Romania and his wife Queen Anne were also descendants of King Christian IX.