A page is turning for the Danish monarchy. Denmark's Queen Margrethe II announced on Sunday (December 31) during her traditional New Year's speech that she would abdicate on January 14, after 52 years on the throne.

"On January 14, 2024, 52 years after succeeding my beloved father, I will step down as Queen of Denmark. I will leave the throne to my son, Crown Prince Frederik," she said in her televised New Year's greetings.

Unifying and popular, the sovereign, widowed since 2018, had undergone a major back surgery in February that prevented her from appearing in public until April.

"The operation (...) gave rise to reflections on the future, on whether it was time to hand over the responsibilities to the next generation," the 83-year-old queen said.

"Many of us have never known another monarch. Queen Margrethe is the epitome of Denmark and over the years she has put words and feelings on who we are as a people and as a nation," Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement.

A modern queen

Always dressed to the nines, she subtly modernized the image of the Danish monarchy by remaining at the head of the small Nordic country for more than half a century.

On 14 January 1972, on the death of her father Frederik IX, she became the first woman to ascend the throne – Margrethe I was officially only regent in the Middle Ages (1375-1412).

It was exactly 52 years later that she handed over the sceptre to her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, 55.

In Denmark, the share of monarchists peaks at more than 80% and the Danish royal family is among the most popular in the world.

Margrethe, whose reign is the second longest in the kingdom's history, is an institution that has long seemed unassailable.

Since the death of her distant cousin Elizabeth II, she is the current longest-reigning monarch of Europe. In front of his Swedish neighbour and cousin Carl XVI Gustaf, who has just celebrated 50 years on the throne. In the world, only the Sultan of Brunei is four years older.

Read alsoElizabeth II, a life for the crown

Nicknamed "Daisy"

While crown princesses are called upon to reign in several European countries, Margrethe is the only woman from the Old Continent to reign.

The Dane could also have never been a queen, because the Constitution forbade the crown to be worn on a woman's head until 1953.

To the detriment of his uncle Knud and his son, the law was changed by referendum, under pressure from Danish governments concerned with modernity.

The basis of her popularity is that "the queen is not political at all, she unites the nation instead of dividing it," historian Lars Hovebakke Sørensen told AFP during the celebrations of her 50-year reign in 2022.

"She managed to be a queen who unified the Danish nation through many changes: globalization, the advent of a multicultural state, economic crises (...) and the Covid-19 pandemic," he said.

Widowed since 2018, the queen, affectionately nicknamed "Daisy", has helped to gradually modernise the monarchy without trivialising it.

"I will stay on the throne until I fall," the inveterate smoker and mother of two had previously warned.

Polyglot and artist

Costume designer and set designer, the Queen, born in Copenhagen on April 16, 1940, likes to walk her frank smile around the country.

Every summer, she takes a cruise with her yacht, the Dannebrog, before taking up her summer quarters in southwestern France, at the Château de Cayx.

The monarch had bought it in 1975 with her late husband Prince Henrik, Henri de Monpezat, a French-born noble diplomat from the region.

Her erudition – she studied at Cambridge and the Sorbonne – and her many talents make her an example for the Danes who religiously follow her televised speeches, especially her end-of-year greetings.

A polyglot intellectual, she tried her hand at translation by developing in 1981, under a pseudonym and in collaboration with her husband, a Danish version of Simone de Beauvoir's book "All Men Are Mortal".

But it is above all in drawing and painting that she distinguishes herself. Margrethe has illustrated numerous literary works, including the 2002 reprint of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."

His paintings have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries – in Denmark and abroad.

With AFP

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