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STOCKHOLM, Sweden — 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 12 months’s speech that she would abdicate on Jan. 14th, which is the anniversary of her personal accession to the throne at age 31 following the dying of her father, King Frederik IX.
Margrethe, 83, mentioned the again surgical procedure she underwent in early 2023 led to “ideas in regards to the future” and when to cross on the duties of the crown to her son. “I’ve determined that now could be the fitting time,” she mentioned in her speech.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen paid tribute to her in an announcement, providing a “heartfelt thanks 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 “all through the years has put phrases and emotions into who we’re as a folks and as a nation.”
The 6-foot-tall (1.82-meters-tall), chain-smoking Margrethe has been probably the most common public figures in Denmark, the place the monarch’s function is essentially ceremonial. She usually walked the streets of Copenhagen just about unescorted and gained the admiration of Danes for her heat manners and for her abilities 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 at the same time as she grew older. In 2011, at age 70, she visited Danish troops in southern Afghanistan sporting a navy jumpsuit.
As monarch, she crisscrossed the nation and repeatedly visited Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, the 2 semi-independent territories that are a part of the Danish Realm, and was met in every single 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 occasion politics.
But the queen was clearly well-versed in regulation and knew the contents of the laws she was referred to as upon to signal.
She obtained 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 Faculty of Economics and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ever since his start 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 February 2018. Frederik, 55, has a youthful brother, Prince Joachim.
For the reason that age of 18, he has served as regent every time his mom was exterior the dominion and carried out official duties, shaking fingers with 1000’s and receiving overseas dignitaries.
“Within the new 12 months, Crown Prince Frederik can be proclaimed king. Crown Princess Mary will change into queen. The dominion may have a brand new regent and a brand new royal couple. We will look ahead to all of this within the data that they’re prepared for the duty and the duty,” the prime minister’s assertion mentioned.
