Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II proclaims she’s going to abdicate the throne on Jan. 14

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II introduced Sunday that she plans to go away the throne to make method for her son, Crown Prince Frederik.

The queen introduced throughout her New Yr’s speech that she would abdicate on Jan. 14th, which is the 52nd anniversary of her personal accession to the throne at age 31 following the demise of her father, King Frederik IX.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen confirmed the choice in a information launch that paid tribute to the 83-year-old monarch, providing a “heartfelt thank you to Her Majesty the Queen for her lifelong dedication and tireless efforts for the Kingdom.”

Margrethe is the “epitome of Denmark” Frederiksen’s assertion learn, and “throughout the years has put words and feelings into who we are as a people and as a nation.”

The 6-foot-tall (1.82-meters-tall), chain-smoking Margrethe has been one of the vital common public figures in Denmark, the place the monarch’s function is essentially ceremonial. She typically walked the streets of Copenhagen just about unescorted and received the admiration of Danes for her heat manners and for her skills as a linguist and designer.

A eager skier, she was a member of a Danish girls’s air drive unit as a princess, participating in judo programs and endurance checks within the snow. Margrethe remained powerful at the same time as she grew older. In 2011, at age 70, she visited Danish troops in southern Afghanistan carrying a army jumpsuit.

As monarch, she crisscrossed the nation and commonly visited Greenland and the Faeroe Islands — the 2 semi-independent territories which can be a part of the Danish Realm — and was met all over the place by cheering crowds.

Denmark has Europe’s oldest ruling monarchy, which traces its line again to the Viking king Gorm the Previous, who died in 958. Though Magrethe is head of state, the Danish Structure strictly dominated out her involvement in occasion politics.

But the queen was clearly well-versed in regulation and knew the contents of the laws she was referred to as upon to signal.

She obtained coaching in French and English from her earliest years, in addition to Swedish from her mom. Along with archaeology, she studied philosophy, political science and economics at universities in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Cambridge together with the London College of Economics and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Ever since his start on Might 26, 1968, Frederik André Henrik Christian has been the inheritor to the Danish throne.

He’s the oldest son of Queen Margrethe and her late French-born husband, Prince Henrik, who died in February 2018. Frederik, 55, has a youthful brother, Prince Joachim.

Because the age of 18, he has served as regent every time his mom was outdoors the dominion and carried out official duties, shaking palms with 1000’s and receiving overseas dignitaries.

“In the new year, Crown Prince Frederik will be proclaimed king. Crown Princess Mary will become queen. The kingdom will have a new regent and a new royal couple. We can look forward to all of this in the knowledge that they are ready for the responsibility and the task,” the prime minister’s assertion stated.