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DenmarkEuropean Royals

Queen Margrethe set to create scenography and costumes for new film

Queen Margrethe will provide the set and costume designs for an upcoming fantasy film released through Netflix, it was announced Tuesday.

The Danish queen has been employed to design the sets and costumes for an upcoming adaptation of Ehrengard from a novel by Karen Blixen. Blixen, a Danish author, is perhaps most famous for her autobiography, Out of Africa, which was adapted into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, winning seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay – Based on Material From Another Medium.

In a statement about her work for Ehrengard, Queen Margrethe said: “I have tried to interpret Blixen’s fantastic universe in the development of the découpages and costumes, and I look forward to seeing the story of Ehrengard come to life in the film.”

She added: “Karen Blixen’s stories have always fascinated me, with their aesthetic tales, their imagination and their, to me, image-creating worlds—and I’m very happy to be part of this project.”

Ehrengard was published posthumously in 1963 and tells the story of the titular character who “is the young Valkyrie who is drawn steadily deeper into an unwanted role in the intrigue, her powerful but only half-awakened nature subjected to appalling conflicts of loyalty, but not overwhelmed,” per the Goodreads listing for the book.

The film adaptation of Ehrengard will be directed by Danish Oscar-winner Billie August, who said of Queen Margrethe’s involvement: “The Queen has created the most fantastic decoupages for the occasion, and they will be the dominant feature of the film’s overall scenographic expression. Fantastic (in the most literal sense) is our starting point for the film; we wish to use humour and elegance to create a devil-may-care, burlesque, fabulous and autonomous visual universe.”

Queen Margrethe has worked for various film, stage and television productions as a set and costume designer. Her illustrations were used for the Danish translation of The Lord of the Rings in the 1970s under a pseudonym, Ingahild Grathmer.

Ehrengard will be released internationally by Netflix in 2023.

About author

Jess Ilse is the Assistant Editor at Royal Central. She specialises in the British, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Royal Families and has been following royalty since Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. Jess has provided commentary for media outlets in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Jess works in communications and her debut novel THE MAJESTIC SISTERS will publish in Fall 2024.