Royal Court Denies Queen will Abdicate Next Year

A new book, Royal Travels – Behind the Scenes with the Monarchy, has reported that HM Queen Margrethe II will abdicate next April 16th – the day of her 70th birthday.

Written by journalist and royal expert John Lindskog, the book claims the Queen will abdicate next year to “follow her husband to his beloved home Chateau de Cayx.” Her husband, HRH Prince Henrik, is a native Frenchman and has been plagued with ill-health in recent years. “A number of events appear to have pushed forward something the Queen has always been against but that certain circumstances seem to suggest she will nonetheless do – be the first Danish monarch to abdicate the throne,” Lindskog writes.

The Danish Royal Court however today denied the claims made by Lindskog, with Lene Balleby (the Head of Communications) issuing a statement to the Danish news agency Ritzau: “There is no truth in this. There are no deliberations of that sort.”

The claims are also being refuted by several Danish historians, including controversial author Trine Villeman. She told Politiken that “our Queen has always put duty highest. And it has had both private and personal costs. But she has always been willing to pay the price. I cannot see why that should have changed.” Queen Margrethe herself is quoted as never abdicating, in a book released years ago by Annelise Bistrup:

“Being Queen is a profession…an office that one cannot put aside when you come home from work. It is there all the time, it is there all your life. For me, it is a responsibility that does not include abdication. It is a task one has been given and taken upon oneself, and one does not relinquish it because it would perhaps be convenient personally to be shot of some of it.”

Filed under Denmark
Tagged Abdication, Books, Margrethe II of Denmark.