Queen Margrethe II of Denmark introduced her abdication on Sunday, set for Jan. 14, relinquishing the throne after 52 years and passing the reigns to her son, Crown Prince Frederik.
The queen, who’s Europe’s longest-reigning residing monarch, introduced throughout her New Year’s speech that she would step down on Jan. 14, which is the anniversary of her personal accession to the throne at age 31 following the demise of her father, King Frederik IX.
Margrethe, 83, mentioned the again surgical procedure she underwent in early 2023 led to “thoughts about the future” and when to pass on the responsibilities of the crown to her son. “I’ve determined that now’s the appropriate time,” she mentioned in her speech.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen paid tribute to her in a press release, 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 statement read, and “all through the years has put phrases and emotions into who we’re as a individuals and as a nation.”
The 6-foot-tall (1.82-meters-tall), chain-smoking Margrethe has been some of the in style public figures in Denmark, the place the monarch’s function is essentially ceremonial. She usually walked the streets of Copenhagen nearly 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, participating in judo programs and endurance checks 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 carrying a navy jumpsuit.
As monarch, she crisscrossed the nation and commonly visited Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, the 2 semi-independent territories, that are a part of the Danish Realm, and was met all over the place by cheering crowds.
Denmark has Europe’s oldest ruling monarchy, which traces its line again to the Viking king Gorm the Old, who died in 958. Although Magrethe is head of state, the Danish Constitution strictly dominated out her involvement in get together politics.
Yet the queen was clearly well-versed in legislation 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. In addition to archaeology, she studied philosophy, political science and economics at universities in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Cambridge together with the London School of Economics and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ever since his start on May 26, 1968, Frederik André Henrik Christian has been the inheritor to the Danish throne.
He is the oldest son of Queen Margrethe and her late French-born husband, Prince Henrik, who died in February 2018. Frederik, 55, has a youthful brother, Prince Joachim.
Since the age of 18, he has served as regent at any time when his mom was exterior the dominion and carried out official duties, shaking arms with 1000’s and receiving international dignitaries.
The queen’s announcement made up only some sentences on the finish of her wide-ranging New Year’s speech which mirrored on the “turbulence and upheaval on the planet” amid the wars within the Middle East and Ukraine, and the local weather disaster.
But she additionally thanked her nation’s individuals for “the heat and hospitality I meet with all over the place in Denmark.”
While lavishing accolades on the queen, the prime minister additionally regarded to the long run.
“In the new year, Crown Prince Frederik will be proclaimed king. Crown Princess Mary will become queen. The kingdom will have a new regent and a new royal couple,” he mentioned in his assertion. “We can sit up for all of this within the data that they’re prepared for the accountability and the duty.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com