Margrethe II of Denmark

Biography

Margrethe was born in Copenhagen in April 1940, a week after the German occupation of Denmark began, the eldest daughter of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Ingrid. Only men could then inherit the throne, and she became heir presumptive through a 1953 change to the Act of Succession, approved by referendum, that allowed a daughter to succeed when there was no son. She studied at the University of Copenhagen, Girton College in Cambridge, Aarhus University, the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics, and in 1967 married the French diplomat Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, who became Prince Henrik.

She succeeded her father on 14 January 1972 as the first queen under the new succession rules. As a constitutional monarch she stayed out of party politics and did not vote, met the prime minister weekly, and after elections held the round of meetings with party leaders that decided who would form a government. Her New Year addresses occasionally touched public debate, notably a 1984 appeal against hostility toward immigrants.

Alongside her official role she worked as an illustrator, a designer of church textiles, a set and costume designer for ballet and film, and a co-writer of Hans Christian Andersen film adaptations, and she took part in archaeological excavations in several countries. She announced her abdication in her New Year's Eve address of 2023 and stepped down on 14 January 2024, exactly 52 years after her accession, in favour of her son Frederik X.