April 16: 80th birthday of HM Queen Margrethe II of Denmark

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Constitutional Role, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Frederik IX of Denmark, Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, Ingrid of Sweden, Margrethe II, Prince Joachim of Denmark, Princess Margaret of Connaught, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark., Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Royal Investigator

Margrethe II (full name: Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid; born April 16, 1940) is Queen of Denmark, as well as the supreme authority of the Church of Denmark and commander-in-chief of the Danish Defence. Born into the House of Glücksburg, a royal house with origins in northern Germany, she was the eldest child of Frederik IX of Denmark and Ingrid of Sweden, was the daughter of King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and his first wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom).

She was born during the reign of her grandfather the then-reigning King Christian X. Her birth took place just one week after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940.

She was named Margrethe after her late maternal grandmother, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden, Alexandrine after her paternal grandmother, Queen Alexandrine, and Ingrid after her mother. Since her paternal grandfather was also the King of Iceland, she was given the Icelandic name Þórhildur.

When Margrethe was four years old, in 1944, her younger sister Princess Benedikte was born. Princess Benedikte later married Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and lives some of the time in Germany. Her second sister, Princess Anne-Marie, was born in 1946. Anne-Marie later married Constantine II of the Hellenes and currently lives in Greece.

At the time of her birth, only males could ascend the throne of Denmark, owing to the changes in succession laws enacted in the 1850s when the Glücksburg branch was chosen to succeed. As she had no brothers, it was assumed that her uncle Prince Knud would one day assume the throne.

The process of changing the constitution started in 1947, not long after her father ascended the throne and it became clear that Queen Ingrid would have no more children. The popularity of Frederik IX and his daughters and the more prominent role of women in Danish life started the complicated process of altering the constitution.

The law required that the proposal be passed by two successive Parliaments and then by a referendum, which occurred March 27, 1953. The new Act of Succession permitted female succession to the throne of Denmark, according to male-preference cognatic primogeniture, where a female can ascend to the throne only if she does not have a brother. Princess Margrethe therefore became heir presumptive.

Margrethe was educated at the private school N. Zahle’s School in Copenhagen from which she graduated in 1959. She spent a year at North Foreland Lodge, a boarding school for girls in Hampshire, England,and later studied prehistoric archaeology at Girton College, Cambridge, during 1960–1961, political science at Aarhus University between 1961 and 1962, attended the Sorbonne in 1963, and was at the London School of Economics in 1965.She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Queen Margrethe is fluent in Danish, French, English, Swedish and German, and has a limited knowledge of Faroese.

Princess Margrethe married a French diplomat, Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, June 10, 1967, at the Holmen Church in Copenhagen. Laborde de Monpezat received the style and title of “His Royal Highness Prince Henrik of Denmark” because of his new position as the spouse of the heir presumptive to the Danish throne. They were married for over fifty years, until his death on February 13, 2018.

Succession

Shortly after King Frederik IX delivered his New Year’s Address to the Nation at the 1971/72 turn of the year, he fell ill. At his death 14 days later, 14 January 1972, Margrethe succeeded to the throne at the age of 31, becoming the first female Danish sovereign under the new Act of Succession. She was proclaimed Queen from the balcony of Christiansborg Palace 15 January 1972, by Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag. Queen Margrethe II relinquished all the monarch’s former titles except the title to Denmark, hence her style “By the Grace of God, Queen of Denmark”

Constitutional role

The Queen’s main tasks are to represent the Kingdom abroad and to be a unifying figure at home. The Queen performs the latter task by accepting invitations to open exhibitions, attending anniversaries, inaugurating bridges, etc. She receives foreign ambassadors and awards honours and medals.
As an unelected public official, the Queen takes no part in party politics and does not express any political opinions. Although she has the right to vote, she opts not to do so to avoid even the appearance of partisanship.

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, heir to the throne Crown Prince Frederik and his son, second in line to the throne, Prince Christian.

After an election where the incumbent Prime Minister does not have a majority behind him or her, the Queen holds a “Dronningerunde” (Queen’s meeting) in which she meets the chairmen of each of the Danish political parties. Each party has the choice of selecting a Royal Investigator to lead these negotiations or alternatively, give the incumbent Prime Minister the mandate to continue his government as is.

In theory each party could choose its own leader as Royal Investigator, the social liberal Det Radikale Venstre did so in 2006, but often only one Royal Investigator is chosen plus the Prime Minister, before each election. The leader who, at that meeting succeeds in securing a majority of the seats in the Folketing, is by royal decree charged with the task of forming a new government. (It has never happened in more modern history that any party has held a majority on its own.)

Once the government has been formed, it is formally appointed by the Queen. Officially, it is the Queen who is the head of government, and she therefore presides over the Council of State (privy council), where the acts of legislation which have been passed by the parliament are signed into law. In practice, however, nearly all of the Queen’s formal powers are exercised by the Cabinet of Denmark.

The official residences of the Queen are Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen and Fredensborg Palace. Her summer residence is Gråsten Palace near Sønderborg, the former home of her mother, Queen Ingrid, who died in 2000.

Margrethe is a chain smoker, and she is famous for her tobacco habit. However, on November 23, 2006, the Danish newspaper B.T. reported an announcement from the Royal Court stating that in the future the Queen would smoke only in private.

Margrethe is an accomplished painter, and has held many art shows over the years. Her illustrations—under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer—were used for Danish editions of The Lord of the Rings, which she was encouraged to illustrate in the early 1970s. She sent them to J. R. R. Tolkien who was struck by the similarity of her drawings to his own style.

Margrethe’s drawings were redrawn by the British artist Eric Fraser in the translation published in 1977 and re-issued in 2002. In 2000, she illustrated Henrik, the Prince Consort’s poetry collection Cantabile. She is also an accomplished translator and is said to have participated in the Danish translation of The Lord of the Rings.

On these dates in History: September 18…1964, 1872, 1714, 1180, 1066.

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Constantine II of Greece, Duke of Normandy, Frederick IX of Denmark, Harald Hardrada, Harald III of Norway, Harold Godwinson, Margrethe II, Philip II of France, Tostig Godwinson, William the Conqueror

September 18, 1964

The 55th wedding anniversary of King Constantine II of the Hellenes and Queen Anne-Marie (born Princess of Denmark, daughter of King Frederik IX of Denmark and sister to the current Queen Margarethe II of Denmark).

The couple and their children went into exile in 1967 after a military coup and the monarchy was abolished in 1973. Today the couple lives in Greece again.

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September 18, 1872

Oscar II (Oscar Fredrik; January 21, 1829 – December 8, 1907) was the King of Sweden from 1872 until his death, and was also the final King of Norway from the House of Bernadotte.

Oscar II became King on 18 September 1872, upon the death of his brother, Carl XV. At his accession, he adopted as his motto Brödrafolkens väl / Broderfolkenes Vel(“The Welfare of the Brother Peoples”). While the King, his family and the Royal Courtresided mostly in Sweden, Oscar II made the effort of learning to be fluent in Norwegian and from the very beginning realized the essential difficulties in the maintenance of the union between the two countries.

Oscar II was King during a time when both Sweden and Norway were undergoing a period of industrialization and rapid technological progress. His reign also saw the gradual decline of the Union of Sweden and Norway, which culminated in its dissolution in 1905. He was subsequently succeeded as King of Norway by his grandnephew Prince Carl of Denmark under the regnal name Haakon VII, and as King of Sweden by his eldest son, Gustaf V.

Oscar II is the paternal great-great-grandfather of Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden since 1973. Harald V, King of Norway since 1991, is a great-grandson of Oscar II, through his third son Prince Carl, Duke of Västergötland.

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September 18, 1714: King George I arrives in London.

George I (May 28, 1660 – June 11, 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from August 1, 1714 and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in the Holy Roman Empire from January 2, 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first British monarchof the House of Hanover.

Born in Hanover to its Elector Ernst August and Electress Sophia Sophia of the Palitinate), George inherited the titles and lands of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg from his father and uncles. A succession of European wars expanded his German domains during his lifetime; he was ratified as prince-elector of Hanover in 1708. After the deaths in 1714 of his mother and his second cousin Anne, Queen of Great Britain (r. 1702–1714), George ascended the British throne as Anne’s closest living Protestant relative under the Act of Settlement 1701. Jacobites attempted, but failed, to depose George and replace him with James Francis Edward Stuart, Anne’s Catholic half-brother.

During George’s reign, the powers of the monarchy diminished and Britain began a transition to the modern system of cabinet government led by a prime minister. Towards the end of his reign, actual political power was held by Robert Walpole, now recognised as Britain’s first de facto prime minister. George died of a stroke on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried. He was the last British monarch to be buried outside the United Kingdom.

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September 18, 1180

Philippe II (21 August 1165 – 14 July 1223), known as Philippe Auguste he was King of France from 1180 to 1223. His predecessors had been known as kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, Philippe II became the first French monarch to style himself “King of France”. The son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne, he was originally nicknamed Dieudonné (God-given) because he was a first son and born late in his father’s life. Philippe II was given the epithet “Auguste” by the chronicler Rigord for having extended the crown lands of France so remarkably.

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September 18, 1066: Harald Hardrada arrives in England.

Harald Sigurdsson (Old Norse: Haraldr Sigurðarson; c. 1015 – September 25, 1066), given the epithet Hardrada (roughly translated as “stern counsel” or “hard ruler”) in the sagas, was King of Norway (as Harald III) from 1046 to 1066. In addition, he unsuccessfully claimed the Danish throne until 1064 and the English throne in 1066. Before becoming king, Harald had spent around fifteen years in exile as a mercenary and military commander in Kievan Rus’ and of the Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Empire.

Harald was born in Ringerike, Norway in 1015 (or possibly 1016) to Åsta Gudbrandsdatter and her second husband Sigurd Syr. Sigurd was a petty king of Ringerike, and among the strongest and wealthiest chieftains in the Uplands. Through his mother Åsta, Harald was the youngest of King Olaf II of Norway.

With the truce and the recognition that he would not conquer Denmark, Harald turned his attention to England. England had belonged to Harthacnut, the son of Canute the Great, until he died childless in 1042. Harald based his claim to the throne of England on an agreement made between Magnus and Harthacnut in 1038, which stated that if either died, the other would inherit the throne and lands of the deceased. When Harthacnut died, Magnus the Good (King of Norway from 1035 and King of Denmark from 1042, ruling over both countries until his death in 1047) assumed the crown of Denmark and considered himself the lawful heir to Harthacnut.

When Edward died in January 1066, he was to Harald’s dismay succeeded by Harold Godwinson, a son of one of Edward’s advisors . Harald allied himself with Tostig Godwinson, (c. 1026 – September 25 1066) brother of King Harold Godwinson. After being exiled by his brother, Tostig supported the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada’s invasion of England, and both were killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on September 25, 1066 by the army of King Harold. Harold marched south where he met the army of Duke William II of Normandy at Hastings (near the town of Senlac) and was defeated in battle on October 14, 1066. Duke William marched onto London and was crowned as King of England on Christmas Day 1066.

Royal Numbering ~ Denmark

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Absolute cognatic primogeniture, Christian I, Christian IX, Denmark, Margrethe II, Waldemar III, Waldemar IV

In Denmark there is only one name that is numbered inconsistently and that name is Waldemar. The first king of Denmark by that name was Waldemar I the Great who was king from 1157-1182. Waldemar II The Victorious, was the son of Waldemar the Great and was king from 1202-1241. There are two individuals that have been labeled Waldemar III. The first is Waldemar the Young son of Waldemar II who was co-king with his father until his death in 1231 but was never sole king in his own right. The other king claiming to be Waldemar III was the son of Duke Eric II of Schleswig and Adelaide of Rendsborg. He was set up as a rival king to the unpopular Christopher II of Denmark 1320-1326. This Waldemar ruled briefly from 1326 to 1329 and again in 1325–26 during the times of upheaval with Christopher II. The son of Christopher II ascended the throne in 1340 as Waldemar IV Atterdag and ruled as a powerful king of Denmark until his death in 1375.

Although not a discrepancy, it is more of an oddity, is the tradition where the kings of Denmark alternated between the names of Christian and Frederik. King Christian I of Denmark, (1448-1481), Norway (1450-1481) and Sweden (1457-1464) was followed by his son Hans (John) of Denmark. John, in turn, was followed by his son, Christian II, until his death in 1523. Christian II was followed by Frederik II and from then on the names of Christian and Frederik alternated until 1972 when it was interrupted with the accession of Denmark’s present queen, Margrethe II. This tradition will carry on for a while it seems after Margrethe when her son, Crown Prince Frederik, eventually succeeds as King Frederik X and when his son eventually succeeds as King Christian XI. After the reign of Christian XI, far in the future, it remains to be seen how this tradition will be continued given the fact that absolute Absolute cognatic primogeniture was adopted in 2009.  Absolute cognatic primogeniture  is where titles and inheritance is passed to the eldest child regardless of gender.