Queen Margrethe HAS announced an update to the titles and styles of the Danish Royal Family.
In a brief statement, on September 28th 2022, Denmark’s queen announced that the children and descendants of Prince Joachim, by his first wife Countess Alexandra and his second wife Princess Marie, will have their titles of prince and princess removed with effect from 1 January 2023.
The Danish Royal Court said in the statement that “The Queen’s decision is in line with similar adaptations that other royal houses have implemented in different ways in recent years.”
In 2019, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden removed the royal status from the children of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia and Princess Madeleine and Christopher O’Neill in order to limit the size of the Swedish Royal House; only Princess Estelle and Prince Oscar retain their royal status among the Swedish king’s grandchildren, as the children of Crown Princess Victoria.
Henceforth, Prince Joachim’s children and descendants will be titled as Count or Countess of Monpezat and styled as Their Excellencies. The four children affected by this statement, Prince Nikolai, Prince Felix, Prince Henrik and Princess Athena, will retain their places in the line of succession.
The title of Count or Countess of Monpezat was conferred upon all of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik’s children and their spouses, as well as their descendants, in April 2008 in order to continue the legacy of the late Prince Henrik’s family titles.
A second announcement in May 2016 confirmed that only Prince Christian, the eldest child of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, would receive an allowance from the government once he reached adulthood.
This means that, while Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine will retain their titles and styles, their activities will not be government funded and they will need their own sources of private income as adults.
Queen Margrethe was said to have made the decision because she wanted “to create the framework for the four grandchildren to be able to shape their own lives to a much greater extent without being limited by the special considerations and obligations that formal belonging to the Royal House as an institution entails.”
The decision will be active from 1 January 2023.
