[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-post-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”Black Han Sans|700||on|||||” header_text_align=”center” header_font_size=”46px” header_letter_spacing=”4px” custom_margin=”25px||5px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
WORDS: Gaby Hinsliff\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/01\/GettyImages-1932490963.jpg” alt=”relaxed woman” title_text=”Danish King Frederik X Succeeds Queen Margrethe II” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n She was the middle-class girl who fell for a prince. He was the royal heir whose occasionally fraught relationship with his younger brother ended in the \u2018spare\u2019 starting a new life in America. And no, this isn\u2019t Kate and William, but the couple some see as role models for Britain\u2019s young royals: Denmark\u2019s new King Frederik X and his Australian-born wife, Queen Mary, thrust into the spotlight by the surprise abdication of his 83-year-old mother Queen Margarethe.<\/p>\n The new king\u2019s coronation this January was a stripped-back affair by British standards, in keeping with a Danish monarchy that prides itself on being laidback and open. The former queen was often seen out on the streets of Copenhagen walking her dog, her grandchildren attended state primary schools, and tourists can walk close enough to the royal residence to peer through the windows. When Denmark\u2019s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that she wasn\u2019t originally a royalist but the outgoing queen had converted her, she spoke for many Danes: fewer than half were pro-monarchy when Margarethe came to the throne in 1972 but over 80% are now. Just 62% of Britons, by comparison, still want an unelected monarch. Can the British royals learn from their Danish counterparts?<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n King Charles is unlikely to be following Margarethe out of the door any time soon, given he has reigned for barely a year compared to her half a century. But the Princess of Wales is said to have learned from watching Mary – a former marketing executive who met her husband in a Sydney pub – integrate into royal life. Both women have chosen to focus on mental health issues like loneliness, bullying and children\u2019s wellbeing; both are also well aware of the need to move with their times, with both families aiming to slim things down to a smaller \u2018core\u2019 family of full-time working royals. That helps reduces the cost to the public (once palace upkeep is factored in, Denmark\u2019s royals are thought to cost about half the \u00a386 million British taxpayers shelled out via the sovereign grant last year).<\/p>\n But it can be painful for all involved, as Queen Margarethe found out last year when she stripped her younger son Prince Joachim\u2019s four children of their royal titles. Though she had argued it would let them \u2018shape their own lives\u2019 free from royal expectations and duties, both her son and daughter-in-law publicly protested, prompting the then Queen to apologise for the hurt caused. (Another big difference between the families is the Danish royals\u2019 emotional candour; in her New Year address, the Queen had talked openly about how the relationship with her son had run into difficulties ).\u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/01\/GettyImages-1934572211.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” title_text=”Danish Royal Family Received In Danish Parliament” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Akshar|600|||||||” custom_margin=”-15px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Queen Margrethe of Denmark and Prince Joachim of Denmark participates in the Danish Parliament’s celebration of the succession of the throne at Danish Parliament on January 15, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Though Prince Joachim has now moved to Washington DC to work for the Danish embassy there, the family seems to have found a way of putting distance between the brothers without breaking ties as dramatically as Harry and William did. They offer some potentially interesting lessons for British royals still working out both how to manage the breakaway Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and how to connect emotionally with the public in a less stiff upper-lipped age where family disputes can\u2019t necessarily be swept under the carpet.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Waleses, who are already said to be raising Princess Charlotte with the expectation that she\u2019ll need to get a job instead of joining the royal payroll, may also be interested to see how Frederik and Mary deal with their four children\u2019s future roles. Maybe now we know what the former prime minister Gordon Brown meant, when he predicted that King Charles would have a \u2018more Scandinavian\u2019 approach; not quite a revolution, but definitely some decluttering.\u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n IMAGE: Getty<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Could Kate and William be keeping a close eye on Copenhagen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"revans","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Princess of Wales is said to have learned from watching Mary<\/h2>\n
They offer potentially interesting lessons for British royals working out how to manage the breakaway Duke and Duchess of Sussex<\/h2>\n