Unifying and popular, Danish Queen Margrethe II, who announced on Sunday that she would abdicate on January 14, was at 83 years old the only queen and the longest-reigning monarch in Europe.
Always dressed to the nines, she subtly modernized the image of the Danish monarchy by remaining at the head of the small Nordic country for more than half a century.
On January 14, 1972, on the death of her father Frederik IX, she was the first woman to ascend this throne – Margrethe I was only officially regent in the Middle Ages (1375-1412).
It was exactly 52 years later that she passed the scepter to her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, 55 years old.
In Denmark, the share of monarchists peaks at more than 80% and the Danish royal family is among the most popular in the world.
Margrethe, whose reign is the second longest in the history of the kingdom, is an institution that has long seemed indestructible.
Since the death of her distant cousin Elizabeth II, she is the current longest-reigning monarch in Europe. In front of his Swedish neighbor and also cousin Carl XVI Gustaf, who has just celebrated his 50 years on the throne. In the world, only the Sultan of Brunei exceeds it by four years.
Immovable
If crown princesses are called to reign in several European countries, Margrethe is the only woman from the Old Continent to reign.
Queen, the Dane could also never have been because the Constitution prohibited until 1953 that the crown arrives on the head of a woman.
To the detriment of his uncle Knud and his son, the law was then changed by referendum, under pressure from Danish governments concerned with modernity.
The basis of her popularity is that “the queen is not at all political, she unites the nation instead of dividing it,” historian Lars Hovebakke Sørensen explained to AFP during the celebrations of her 50th birthday. years of reign in 2022.
“She managed to be a queen who unified the Danish nation through many changes: globalization, the advent of a multicultural state, economic crises (…) and the Covid-19 pandemic,” had -it develops.
Widowed since 2018, the queen, affectionately nicknamed “Daisy”, helped to gradually modernize the monarchy without trivializing it.
“I will stay on the throne until I fall,” this inveterate smoker, mother of two sons, had previously warned.
However, a back operation last February gave him pause.
“The operation (…) gave rise to reflections on the future, on the question of whether it was time to transfer responsibilities to the next generation,” the queen confided on Sunday during her traditional speech of the New Year.
Artist
Costume designer and scenographer, the Queen, born in Copenhagen on April 16, 1940, likes to take her frank smile across the country.
Every summer, she takes a cruise with her yacht, the Dannebrog, before taking up summer quarters in the southwest of France, at the Château de Cayx.
The sovereign bought it in 1975 with her late husband Prince Henrik, Henri de Monpezat, a noble diplomat born French, originally from the region.
Her erudition – she studied at Cambridge and the Sorbonne – and her multiple talents make her an example for the Danes who religiously follow her television interventions, in particular her end-of-year greetings.
A polyglot intellectual, she tried her hand at translation by developing in 1981, under a pseudonym and in collaboration with her husband, a Danish version of Simone de Beauvoir’s work “All Men Are Mortal”.
But it is especially in drawing and painting that she stands out. Margrethe has illustrated numerous literary works, such as the 2002 reissue of “The Lord of the Rings” by JRR Tolkien.
His paintings have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries – in Denmark and abroad.