Denmark’s Queen Margrethe to Abdicate After Tumultuous Year

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II said Sunday that she will abdicate on Jan. 14 after a recent surgery got her thinking about “whether the time had come to leave the responsibility to the next generation.”

Her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, will assume the throne, the popular 83-year-old monarch said in her annual New Year’s speech.

“I have decided that now is the right time,” she said.

Her decision caps a tumultuous year for the Danish royal family that included reports of a denied affair between Frederik and socialite Genoveva Casanova, and Prince Joachim and his family moving to the U.S. after the queen decided his four children would be stripped of their prince and princess titles.

Margrethe is the longest-serving European monarch, having been on the throne for 52 years. Although Danish royals have only ceremonial power, the monarchy is cherished.

“Danes love the royals,” Sara Lilja Steensig, a Danish-born journalist living in Finland, told The Daily Beast in 2021. “Over 70 percent support the monarchy. It’s not rational but we do. Frederik is charming and funny and people relate to him. He just seems like a really nice guy.”

Frederik is married to the former Mary Donaldson, an Australian-former ad exec who met the future king at a pub in Sydney. They have four children: Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, and twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine.

The marriage came under scrutiny this fall when a Spanish publication posted photos of Frederik out on the town with Casanova, who flatly denied any romantic relationship between the two.

Just months earlier, the royal family was beset by an internal feud, when Margrethe announced that Joachim’s children would no longer be called prince and princess while Frederik’s would keep their royal titles.

Joachim was outspoken about his shock. “Why must they be punished in that way?” he told reporters. His mother did not relent, however, and Joachim, Princess Marie, and the kids moved to Washington, D.C., for him to take a role as defense industry attaché at the Danish Embassy.

Margrethe’s abdication on live television comes as a surprise to many Danes, who expected her to be queen until her death. She had back surgery earlier in the year but appears to be in otherwise good health.

“The surgery naturally gave rise to thinking about the future,” she said in her address.