 |
| Queen Margrethe and Prince
Henrik |
| Courtesy Wonderful Copenhagen |
Denmark has been a kingdom since the Middle Ages.
The monarchs have behaved reasonably well, and there
has never been a great groundswell of popular opposition
toward them. The Danish national genius for gradual
change has kept royal heads on royal shoulders.
When talking to foreigners, or for public utterance,
nobody says anything but nice things about the royal
family. In private, some have been heard to throw
up their hands. “They don’t do anything,”
they mutter. “Why should they have so much
money?”
There’s some substance to the complaint. It
doesn’t take much effort to break a bottle
of champagne against a battleship. It’s hard
to quantify what a royal family actually “does”
by any normal measure. From a purely bottom-line
standpoint, palaces, jewels and servants do seem
to be high pay for waving at crowds. But what they
are supposed to do in this century is to unify an
entire country just by being there. They are the
focal point of a shared experience the whole nation
can savor. By that standard, the Danish royal family
is doing fine.
When royals behave well -- as the Danish royal
family does -- their subjects are proud of them.
If they misbehave -- as other European royalty has
been known to do -- they provide grist for gossip
mills, the tabloid industry, and countless conversations.
People tend to judge their own behavior, consciously
or not, by that of the royal role models. With that
in mind, maybe it’s a shame that Queen Margrethe
reportedly smokes three packs of cigarettes a day.
On the other hand, she’s admired for being
gifted and kind.
Harald Bluetooth
The Danish royal tradition goes back to Gorm the
Old (d.985) and his son Harald Bluetooth, who was
the first big Viking chieftain to convert to Christianity
and the namesake for Denmark’s hottest IT company.
Gorm’s direct line died out in the 15th century,
and then the Danish crown, like that in other European
countries, was passed down through a complicated
genealogy that no one but the most ambitious courtiers
would try to comprehend.
The upshot is that now the Danes have Margrethe,
who is a good queen. In the 25-plus years of her
reign, no political party has ever tried to float
the idea of a republic. One of the pleasant paradoxes
of modern life is that one of the most socially
advanced countries in the world has more royalty
than many countries in Asia.
The current monarch is only the second queen since
1432, as women were not allowed to succeed to the
throne until 1953. Margrethe was born in 1940, one
week after the German occupation. That event itself
helped to brighten those dark days.
On her 18th birthday, Margrethe was invested as
heir to the throne. In 1959, she completed training
as a squadron leader in the women’s flying
corps. She spent five years studying political science
and archaeology. Then she married the Comte Henri
de Laborde de Monpezat, who shed all of those names
for the title Prince Henrik. He has a master’s
degree in literature and has published a book of
poems.
On the death of the King Frederik IX in 1972, the
crown princess became Queen Margrethe II. She has
also made a name for herself as an artist of graphics
and textiles, a book illustrator, and costume designer.
The queen has two children, both of whom seem to
have turned out well. Crown Prince Frederik is a
bit of a warrior king -- he has studied military
science at three of Denmark's branches, and has
passed the course with the Diving Corps, roughly
equivalent to the Navy Seals in the U.S. He recently
took a journey across Greenland on a dog sled. He
is perhaps best known in Copenhagen for his tattoos
and his Australian fiancé.
One of the high points of the year and a unifying
moment is the queen's New Year's message, broadcast
on radio and TV. It is the basis for national discussions
on the direction the country is taking. It gets
better ratings than any televised events except
a critical soccer match. In one of her best-known
speeches, from 1984, the queen asked Danes not to
greet immigrants with “silly comments.”
|
