Prince of Denmark hits out at Queen Margrethe’s decision to strip his children of royal titles
A Danish prince on Thursday accused his mother, Queen Margrethe, of harming his children by stripping them of their royal titles so they could have a more normal life
Prince Joachim, her second son, claimed he was only given five days' notice that his children would not be called prince or princess or their royal highness from Jan 1 and only addressed as excellencies instead.
'We are all very sad. It's never fun to see your children being harmed. They have been put in a situation they do not understand,' he told the Ekstra Bladet newspaper.
Princes Nikolai, 23, Felix, 20, Henrik, 13, and Princess Athena, 10, have been allowed to keep using their titles as “counts and countess of Monpezat".
Margrethe, 82, who stripped four of her eight grandchildren of their titles, said: “'It is a consideration I have had for quite a long time and I think it will be good for them in their future.”
Europe’s longest-serving monarch and sole queen since the death of Elizabeth II did not remove the titles belonging to the four children of her eldest son and heir to the throne, Crown Prince Frederik.
The Danish palace said: "Her Majesty the Queen wishes to create the framework for the four grandchildren to be able to shape their own lives to a much greater extent, without being limited by the special considerations and duties that a formal affiliation with the Royal House of Denmark as an institution involves.”
The statement said the decision corresponded to “similar adjustments that other royal houses have made in various ways in recent years”.
Succession is unaffected
Joachim, 53, is sixth in line to the Danish throne with his children seventh to tenth. Their place in the line of succession is unaffected.
Countess Alexandra, Joachim’s ex-wife and mother to Nikolai and Felix, said they were “saddened and in shock”.
“This comes like a bolt from the blue.The children feel ostracised. They cannot understand why their identity is being taken away from them," her spokesman told the Se og Hor celebrity magazine.
Margrethe was crowned in 1972 aged 32 after the death of her father and was the first woman to inherit the throne in Danish history. The rules of succession were altered in 1953 to allow female royals to become monarch.
Although Crown Prince Frederik’s children keep their royal titles, only Prince Christian, the future king, will receive an appanage, which is a provision of money, land or position made for the maintenance of younger children of senior royals, after a 2016 decision.
Margrethe's decision to slim down the royal family follows a similar one by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. In October 2019 he said that children of Princess Madeleine and Chris O’Neil, and Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia, would lose their HRH titles.
There were arguments behind the scenes over titles for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s two children after Charles became King, People magazine claimed.
Grandchildren of a monarch are entitled to be called prince or princess but there has been no move to bestow the titles on Archie and Lilibet, it said.
