At the end of September, the announcement of Queen Margrethe II had the effect of a thunderclap.
The sovereign has decided to withdraw certain titles of nobility from her grandchildren Nikolai, Felix, Henrik and Athena.
“As of January 1, 2023, the descendants of His Royal Highness Prince Joachim will only be able to use their titles of Count and Countess of Monpezat, their previous titles of Prince and Princess of Denmark becoming obsolete”, explained the Court in a communicated.
“Light” monarchies
The official reason for this choice?
The monarch intends to offer a normal existence to his grandchildren, and let them “shape their own life”.
An initiative that is part of a fundamental trend: that of reducing the active members of royal families, in order to ensure their sustainability.
Read alsoFrom England to Denmark, these heirs deprived of titles of nobility
Only downside, Prince Joachim, father of the four children stripped of their titles of princes and princess, revealed that he did not endorse this approach.
“In reality, whether you modernize or lighten the monarchy, you have to do it appropriately,” he said indignantly in an interview with Danish media
BT
on Saturday October 1.
They are still children.”
Adding: “I can say that my children are upset, he told
BT
.
They don't know which foot to dance on, or what to believe.
Why should their identity be taken away from them?
Why do they have to be punished this way?
In video, in London, Charles III and Prince William grant themselves a surprise walkabout to greet the public in the queue
Mea culpa
His eldest son, Prince Nikolai, meanwhile expressed his “sadness”, “shock” and “confusion” over the decision.
“It is clear that this news hits us hard, all the more so since it was made public,” he said.
An outcry to which Queen Margrethe II responded with a mea culpa, formulated on Monday, October 3.
To read alsoNikolai of Denmark, the charming prince who came from the cold
"As a mother and grandmother, I underestimated how affected my youngest son and his family could be," she wrote.
It made a big impression, and I'm sorry about that."
The sovereign has not, however, reconsidered her choice.
Prince Joachim, meanwhile, no longer spoke to his mother, his brother and his sister-in-law after the announcement of the news.
"In love with his sister-in-law"
The story could have ended there.
But the words of Prince Joachim, who said he had "complicated" relations with Prince Frederik and his wife Mary, brought back old controversies.
According to the Spanish tabloid
Vanitatis El Confidencial,
the initiative of Margrethe II would have as a backdrop a private scandal, in which the heir to the throne and his wife would be involved.
The newspaper thus affirmed that Prince Joachim was once “madly in love with his sister-in-law”.
So much so that the tipsy 50-year-old would one day have tried to kiss the latter, during a gala organized by the Royal Guard Regiment, in July 2008, as announced by the Swedish weekly
Svensk Damtidning
, supporting photo .
The magazine describes the incident as follows: “Queen Margrethe's youngest son, who was showing signs of being drunk, tried to kiss his sister-in-law on the mouth.
It has slipped away as she could, wearing an imperturbable smile.
An embarrassing moment attended by Princess Marie (
Joachim's wife since 1995, editor's note
).
According to the Swedish tabloid, the rumor of this crush spread shortly after the marriage of Prince Frederik and Princess Mary in 2004. “It also didn't help that in 2007 Prince Joachim announced his engagement with a Frenchwoman of the same first name, and a striking physical resemblance to Mary”, can we read in the article.
Faced with the scale of the controversy, Queen Margrethe II would have split at the time of a "call to order", and would have "initiated a campaign to demonstrate that there were no problems between the two women”.
A “historic” situation
A waste of time: fifteen years later, these clashes resurface.
They would have, moreover, taken on an unprecedented scale due to the decision of Margrethe II, according to royalty expert Lars Hovbakke Sørensen.
“It is an unusual, historic situation, and the seriousness with which the queen feels called to make such a personal announcement in an official press release shows it well, analyzes the royal correspondent in the columns of the Danish newspaper
Ekstra Bladet
.
She had never done it before."
A story of succession worthy of a Netflix series.