“Fortunately, I have been able to learn a lot from my wife,” the new king reveals.
He has been king for less than two weeks, but the Danish Frederik can already write a nice success to his name. He has appeared in the Danish bestseller lists with his book Kongeord! In this book he also makes some remarkable statements about both his father, Prince Henrik, and his wife, Queen Mary.
Bestseller
Danish booksellers did not know what hit them when Frederik’s book Kongeord (loosely translated: The King’s Word) was published last week. In collaboration with author Jens Andersen, he published a 110-page book, which sold out immediately after publication. A prominent bookstore even told Fortune that Kongeord had equaled the sales record for the bestseller of all of 2023 in one day. Wow!
Father
The fact that a book full of royal outpourings has proven to be extremely popular is of course nothing new. In Kongeord, Frederik shares his opinion about his father in a particularly candid manner. For example, he states that Prince Henrik was ‘very patriarchal’ and that he tried to pass on these same ideas to his sons.
To refresh your memory: we are talking about the same Prince Henrik who in the later years of his life decided to throw mud at his wife, Queen Margrethe, through the media. For example, he stated in interviews that the queen ’embarrassed’ him. The reason? He was known as prince consort, and not king consort.
The sulking prince even went to the south of France for a few weeks in early 2002 (and therefore missed the wedding of our own King Willem-Alexander and Máxima) because he felt ‘put third’. The fact that even his son Frederik came before him in the hierarchy was difficult for the prince to accept. In 2016, he also renounced his title as prince consort. Ouch….
Mary
Fortunately, Frederik took too much notice of his father’s tantrums. And we have his wife, Queen Mary, to thank for that!
The prince writes: “As mentioned earlier, my father was very patriarchal, and he tried to pass those patterns on to his two sons. Here, however, I learned a lot from my wife who, every now and then, reminds me that of course I am not always right, and that my words should not automatically be taken at face value just because I am the man of the house.”
Ha! Despite initial doubts about the match between the down-to-earth Australian businesswoman and the crown prince, this proves once again that Mary and Frederik are well matched.
Source: The Daily Mail, Fortune | Image: NL Image
