Queen Margrethe II publicizes her abdication from Christian IX’s Palace, Amalienborg Castle, in Copenhagen, on Sunday, Dec. 31 2023, throughout her New Year’s deal with.

Keld Navntoft/Ritzau Scanpix through AP

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Keld Navntoft/Ritzau Scanpix through AP

Queen Margrethe II publicizes her abdication from Christian IX’s Palace, Amalienborg Castle, in Copenhagen, on Sunday, Dec. 31 2023, throughout her New Year’s deal with.

Keld Navntoft/Ritzau Scanpix through AP

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

The queen introduced throughout her New Year’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 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, chain-smoking Margrethe has been one of the fashionable public figures in Denmark, the place the monarch’s position is basically ceremonial. She typically walked the streets of Copenhagen just about unescorted and received the admiration of Danes for her heat manners and for her abilities as a linguist and designer.

A eager skier, she was a member of a Danish girls’s air pressure unit as a princess, collaborating 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 sporting a army jumpsuit.

As monarch, she crisscrossed the nation and usually visited Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, the 2 semi-independent territories that are 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 Old, who died in 958. Although Magrethe is head of state, the Danish Constitution strictly dominated out her involvement in get together politics.

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

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

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

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

Since the age of 18, he has served as regent each time his mom was exterior the dominion and carried out official duties, shaking arms 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 mentioned.