Almost a year has passed since Queen Margrethe of Denmark's husband, Prince Henrik, went through a very public self-described "mid-life crisis", announcing that he felt useless as the monarch's consort before retiring to his hometown to take stock of his future. But in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the 62-year-old queen reveals that she and her husband have worked through what Henrik called "the greatest crisis" of his life, and gives some sage advice to those aiming for lifelong marriages.
Though many speculated Henrik's astonishing comments were the beginning of the end for the couple's union, Queen Margrethe reveals otherwise. "He's got over all that," says Queen Margrethe of the high-profile breakdown. "It's the sort of thing that happens to you occasionally when you really don't feel happy. He went through a very difficult period, but he's very well again now."
And, says the Danish monarch, bumps in the marital road are par for the course. "What is wrong today is that we expect a marriage or a relationship to be happy and successful all the time," she explains. "We forget that people who have lived together for 50 years cannot have been happy every single day. Marriage is like the weather: it changes… But this is no tragedy. It does not mean that your marriage is not working. It works again afterwards. People find one another again without great difficulty."
In addition to marriage tips, the queen doesn't hesitate to list her secrets to being a successful monarch, issuing them with a sense of humour which is surely one reason that she's maintained a 90 per cent approval rating over the last 30 years. Among her rules are "be positive" and "accept your destiny", the latter of which she said she had trouble grasping as a teen. "At school I got really upset if somebody said, 'You are going to be queen one day'," she recalls, adding: "I see now that my insecurity and my malaise were probably an equal mixture of constitutional law and hormones."
These days, however, the accomplished artist who also proudly shows off self-made tissue boxes – "I cut out bits from Sotheby's and Christie's catalogues and stick them onto boxes…It's a complete joke, but it keeps me out of mischief," she says – is firmly ensconced in her role. "It is what I do," she says. "It is what I am. It is what my life has been about. I am the Queen of Denmark. It is as simple as that."
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
