Crown Princess Mary, Current Events 5: September 2005 - May 2006

[soCal girl]

Is Mary still technically on maternity leave and just happens to pop out now and then for an official duty?

[pdas1201]

Originally Posted by soCal girl

Is Mary still technically on maternity leave and just happens to pop out now and then for an official duty?

I believe her maternity leave has ended. But, I think she is taking things lightly at first so she can learn to effectively juggle her role as a mother and duties as a crown princess. By next month, she ought to be back into her normal pattern.

[carlota]

i just read in the royal archive (royalarchive.com) this article about an australian journalist writing a book on mary. it's worth reading. perhaps someone from australia can clarify better who she is and if the book is already out for selling and how did people take it.

here is the article and the webpage:

http://www.royalarchive.com/index.ph...=1611&Itemid=2

Trash 'n' treasure: Paparazzo rifling through Mary Donaldson's rubbish

BEN McDonald has no regrets about all the dark Friday mornings he spent rifling through Mary Donaldson's rubbish.
Apart from being standard operating procedure, the torn photos and tomato sauce-stained letters he nabbed from her green wheelie bin turned out to be worth their weight in Danish kroner.
"It's not a pleasant job," the Sydney private investigator and paparazzo says matter-of-factly. "You need a strong stomach. But very good intelligence information comes from it, and if you don't follow the procedures, you'll miss out."
Mary Donaldson, now Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, is no longer so blase when it comes to disposing of personal papers and items. But despite a concerted campaign to control what the public knows about the woman who married Crown Prince Frederik on May 14 last year and last month gave birth to a son, Mary has left a trail she'd rather her fans didn't find. These include personal documents, video footage of her posing bra-less and pictures of some embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions.
It goes to show that even princesses with legions of minders and spin doctors aren't able to whitewash their past. It also reveals that princessification in the 21stcentury does not involve only antique tiaras and jewelled slippers. There may also be a private investigator outside your suburban palace ransacking your bin on rubbish night. Now, why don't they ever mention that in the fairytales?
I discovered the hidden side of HRHCPM of D while writing an unauthorised biography, Something About Mary, which is being launched in Sydney tomorrow.
"Peter", one of Mary's friends from her high school days in Hobart, is among the few people from Mary's past who agreed to speak out (albeit from the safety of a pseudonym). Peter fancied his high-achieving classmate but found her perfectionism a bit of a libido killer. He remembers Mary, the daughter of a mathematics professor, as being like a Holden Commodore: "Boring, but does exactly what you want it to do. No offence if you drive a Holden Commodore..."
After graduating in law and commerce from the University of Tasmania, Mary moved to the mainland to work in advertising. In 2000, fate arrived in the form of an invitation to join a bunch of out-of-towners for drinks during the Sydney Olympics. The visitor who took Mary's fancy was Frederik, a mischievous young chap with a hairless chest who turned out to be the heir to the Danish throne.
Mary and Fred managed to keep their long-distance courtship under wraps for 14 months before being busted in spectacular fashion by an Australian gumshoe wearing rubber gloves.
McDonald got the call from Danish celebrity magazine Kig Ind in early November2001. The Danish media had discovered their playboy prince was secretly dating an Australian real estate agent (Mary had made a career change) and desperately wanted dirt. "I had her under round-the-clock surveillance," says McDonald, 32. "Kig Ind wanted as much information as I could provide."
For this, the magazine paid him $1300 a day. The former insurance fraud specialist photographed and filmed Mary while staking out her Bondi Junction house in a customised Toyota Land Cruiser. Every two hours he phoned or e-mailed a "sitrep" (situation report) to the magazine back in Denmark. The magazine was particularly interested in the contents of Mary's rubbish bin.
Garbage night was Thursday. To reduce the chances of being seen, McDonald would wait until first light on Friday mornings. He'd slip on a pair of latex gloves, drag Mary's Otto bin round the corner and transfer the contents to another plastic bag to take back to his office.
McDonald ransacked the rubbish at 20Porter Street many times, but didn't get lucky until several days before Mary moved to Europe in December. Purging in preparation for her new existence, the princess-in-waiting threw out letters, shopping lists, overdue credit card reminders and photos from her "fat" days. One of these was an autographed snap of a round-faced Donaldson posing with model Sarah O'Hare. Mary wasn't content with merely throwing this little number in the bin: she ripped it into 14 pieces, decapitating its subjects in the process.
"We'd hit pay dirt," McDonald says. "I don't have emotional responses when I'm working, but my offsider and I were pretty pleased with ourselves." Poring over the contents of a famous person's garbage is a dirty business. On the one hand it seems wrong and invasive. On the other, it's very revealing. Tell someone a detective has given you photos of the contents of Mary Donaldson's rubbish bin and they start crying "Show me" almost before they've finished the mandatory "That's disgusting and wrong".
This has a lot to do with the uneasy foxtrot between the famous and the fans. They want to control their appearances in public. We resist being spun. They want to touch up, airbrush and edit. We crave raw data. Even if it's something as trivial as a receipt Mary got from Sunrise Mountaineering in Walnut Creek, California, back in 1999. (For the record, McDonald says it was for a black Maiden Pk Pant -- whatever that is -- that cost $US89.95.)
Asked about the ethics of bin searches, McDonald says it's a SOP: standard operating procedure. The Australian Institute of Private Detectives confirms the practice is legal. "Once something's on the street outside the confines of your property, it's on common property," says institute president John Bracey. "Anyone can pick it up and it's not thieving." Bracey never throws paperwork into his rubbish: "I know what happens so I only throw out putrescence and glassware. Everything else gets shredded."
When McDonald was first hired to follow Mary, there were only two other people on the job: a Danish reporter and Sydney paparazzo Jamie Fawcett, who was paid $20,000 to spend two weeks photographing Mary in the final days of her normal life. Later Fawcett, dubbed "the black prince of the paparazzi", scored photos of Frederik (in board shorts) and his fiancee (in a string bikini) skylarking on a Sydney beach. "She dakked him," he recalls. "I got a photo of the royal arse."
In the four years since the world learned Mary was Frederik's secret girlfriend, she's only given the occasional interview.
Friends and family have been equally reticent. But evidence of her unofficial past is out there and it doesn't always require a bin search to find it.
Going Public is a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a group of small Apple retailers who attempted a float on the stock market. The documentary screened on the ABC before Mary was outed, which explains why no one recognised the frumpy young woman joining the Apple gang in a weird, arm-waving game that involved shouting, "I got it, I got it, I got it".

[norwegianne]

Any discussion about the book: "Something about Mary" by Emma Tom, can take place in the thread dedicated to discussing the book. http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums...mary-8225.html

As the book really isn't current events, discussion of it does not need to take place in the current events thread.

Norwegianne
Danish forum Moderator

[Xandra]

Was her last official duty on 10 March? When is she going to work again?

[kate14]

Well if one looks at the Danish Royal Family Calendar, her next engagement is April 4th.

[Margrethe II]

Originally Posted by Xandra

Was her last official duty on 10 March? When is she going to work again?

4th April - HRH the Crown Princess shall be attending the Brain Injury Association's conference.

7th April - HRH the Crown Princess attends the opening of the Frederiksborg Museum's exhibition dedicated to Australian Art & interests. The first official Danish portrait of the Crown Princess by Ralph Heimans (An Australian Parisian) shall be unveiled by HRH.

10th April - TRH the Crown Princely Couple receive two Tasmanian Devils in Copenhagen's Zoological Garden's as a gift from the Tasmanian Government.

11th April - HRH the Crown Princess inaugurates the Knud Lavard Centret (nursing home) in Ringsted.

12th April - HRH the Crown Princess shall attend the Children's Aid Foundation's Little Brother Prize at Copenhagen Town Hall...the Crown Princess is the foundation's patron.


"MII"

[pdas1201]

Please view the Danish Royal Calender thread http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums...ndar-6703.html for the upcoming events of DRF. The reasoning behind the sticky thread was that members don't have to post the upcoming events several times in various separate threads.

[pdas1201]

All the posts regarding Mary's makeup have been moved to a more appropriate thread in the Royal House of Fashion titled 'Mary's Makeup and the "look"' http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/f63/crown-princess-marys-makeup-look-4840.html?

[Adry]

The lovely Princess Mary in the inaguration of a nursing home in Ringsted
Dagbladet

[soCal girl]

Mary looks great at the nursing home. I think the hat is a great improvement from the purple one she wore at the portrait unveiling. The hat just goes better with the outfit. She looks very polished. :)

[GlitteringTiaras]

She looks okay. Major hat improvement over the purple one she wore last week; now that in my book was a serious disaster.

Again, I can't relate to Mary like other royals such as Queen Rania of Jordan, Crown Princess Letiza, and Crown Princess Maxima. But she seems to be doing her duty for her country so good for her. Well done I guess.

[Kelly]

By nursing home do they mean an elderly institution (no offense)? She looks lovely by the way.

[pdas1201]

Originally Posted by Kelly

By nursing home do they mean an elderly institution (no offense)? She looks lovely by the way.

Yes, its a an home for the elderly.

[soCal girl]

The thing about Mary is that she can work a crowd. Everytime I see her greeting the Danish people or anybody she always has a big smile on her face and you can see that people pretty much adore her. She has a relateableness about her which I think is evident in this photo:
http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=83em.jpg

Are there any more photos from this event? These two pictures are wonderful but very little for a Crown Princess Mary duty.

[LadyS]

Are there any more photos from this event? These two pictures are wonderful but very little for a Crown Princess Mary duty.

I agree, photos for this event seem to be a bit scarce. I expect if it had been a more high profile event (a fashion show for example ) we would have had pages of photos.

Perhaps this would prove the point that Mary isn't just a princess who appears to just attend fashion shows it's the media that dictates which photos are seen.


Just an observation.:)

[Australian]

Originally Posted by LadyS

agree, photos for this event seem to be a bit scarce. I expect if it had been a more high profile event (a fashion show for example ) we would have had pages of photos.

Perhaps this would prove the point that Mary isn't just a princess who appears to just attend fashion shows it's the media that dictates which photos are seen.


Just an observation.:)

An observation I definately share!

[Larzen]

A selection from Photographer AOP Denmark and PPE

[legnavirginia2006]

I have noticed Mary has started to wear boring color suits. I though she was going to keep the cute desings and the fun yet elegant outfits. Very disapointing.

[eireann]

Originally Posted by LadyS

I agree, photos for this event seem to be a bit scarce. I expect if it had been a more high profile event (a fashion show for example[IMG]../../ugala/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif[/IMG] ) we would have had pages of photos.

Perhaps this would prove the point that Mary isn't just a princess who appears to just attend fashion shows it's the media that dictates which photos are seen.


Just an observation.[IMG]../../ugala/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]

Maybe someone´s been reading these forums and decided to up the photos of non-fashion events