Queen Mary of Denmark
Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (née Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 5 February 1972), styled HRH The Crown Princess is the wife of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark.
Family
The Crown Princess's father is Dr. John Dalgleish Donaldson, who is presently a professor in the Division of Applied Mathematics at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea. Until 2003, he was employed by the University of Tasmania, where he was head of the Department of Mathematics and, later, Academic Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology. He served as a guest professor at the University of Aarhus (Crown Prince Fredrick's alma mater) and has taught at Oxford University. He also was a senior fellow at the National Science Foundation in Houston, Texas, in the 1970s, and was a visiting professor at the University of Houston. The Crown Princess's mother was Henrietta Donaldson (née Clark), who was the executive assistant to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Tasmania. She died in 1997, following a heart operation. Both of the Crown Princess's parents were born in Scotland and moved to Tasmania in 1963.
In 2001, John Donaldson married Susan Moody (née Susan Elizabeth Horwood), the writer of popular crime novels. She also writes under the name Susannah James and Susan Madison.
The Crown Princess has three siblings (as well as three stepbrothers):
- Jane Alison Stephens (b. 26 December 1965)
- Patricia Anne Bailey (b. 16 March 1968)
- John Stuart Donaldson (b. 9 July 1970)
Education and career
After having attended elementary school in Houston, Texas, and junior high and high school in Australia, the Crown Princess attended Hobart Matriculation College for two years. She completed her studies at the University of Tasmania, which she attended from 1989 until 1994, at which time she graduated with Bachelors of Commerce and Laws (BCom.LLB) degrees. She later qualified for professional certificates in advertising and direct marketing. Prior to her marriage, she worked for Young and Rubicam in Sydney and Microsoft Business Solutions in Copenhagen, among other employers. She also taught English at a business school in Paris and worked as a sales director at Belle Properties, a real estate firm in Sydney.
Courtship
Mary Donaldson met Crown Prince Frederik at the Slip Inn, an inner-city pub in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia during the 2000 Summer Olympics. "It was a party of some Australians and two nephews of the Spanish king, plus Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim, Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Princess Märtha Louise. I didn't know who they were," she later told Danish journalist Anne Wolden-Raethinge in a series of interviews in 2004 that became the basis of a bestselling book called "Kronprinsesse Mary". "Half an hour later one my flatmates came up to me and asked, Do you know these people are prince this and princess that? Of course we have Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but in many ways we are a kind of republic. We don't have royals in Australia, so it was kind of unusual to run into those kind of people. But aside from that it was quite ordinary."
Donaldson and the prince became engaged in 2003 and were married on May 14, 2004, in Copenhagen, at Copenhagen Cathedral. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess reportedly spent their honeymoon in Tanzania and Zanzibar, though a Danish newspaper, Ekstra Bladet, said that the royal couple spent part of their honeymoon in Kenya.
Prior to meeting the prince, Donaldson had been involved in a seven-year relationship with Brent Annells, a public relations executive and son of the present head of Connex Australia. "Seven years is a long time, and he was there for me, when my mum died," Donaldson told Wolden-Raethinge. "He was very compassionate at that time. I couldn't have found anyone better in that situation. When I travelled out in the world, it might have been some unconscious way to test our relationship. But I think that we already knew then, that our relationship had to end."
Change of citizenship and prenuptial agreement
The Danish Folketing (parliament) passed a special law giving Mary Donaldson, who was a citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom, Danish citizenship upon her wedding, a standard procedure for new foreign members of the royal family. A Presbyterian, she agreed to become a Lutheran. She also signed a prenuptial agreement exactly like the ones her commoner father-in-law and her commoner sister-in-law had signed when they entered the royal family. The agreement limits any claim on the assets of her spouse and the royal family. It was officially registered moments before the court registry closed on Friday 14 May 2004, the day of the wedding.
Pregnancy announced
It was widely expected after the Crown Princess's wedding that the couple would soon have children. She told Andrew Denton in an interview for Australian television in January 2005 that it was "no secret" that they were planning to start a family. The Crown Prince jokingly told Danish reporters that he hoped there would be "kænguruer i pungen" or "kangaroos in the pouch"" by the 2008 Olympics, an allusion to the female kangaroo that carries a juvenile (called a joey) in a pouch on the belly for up to a year.
On April 25, 2005 the Danish royal court announced that the Crown Princess was pregnant with her first child, due to be born in October. If it is a boy, he will be second in line to the Danish throne; if a girl, it might spark a revision of the laws of succession, as has recently occurred in the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium. Neighboring Sweden changed its laws of succession to allow the accession of the first-born child, of whatever sex, in 1979. Denmark currently holds male-preference primogeniture (the technical term is Feudal Primogeniture). Males are preferred for succession, and the monarch's oldest son automatically inherits the throne. If no son exists, the eldest daughter inherits the throne, as was the case with Queen Margrethe II who has two sisters.
"If the first-born is a daughter, we'll need to change the Constitution so that women have the same succession rights as men," Pia Christmas-Moeller of the governing Conservative Party said, again according to CNN. The news service also noted that "Lawmakers from other parties have made similar statements."
Residences
Their official residence is the Chancellery House, an early 18th-century structure that is a wing of Fredensborg Palace, about 25 miles north of Copenhagen. It was previously the home of the Crown Prince's maternal grandmother, the Queen Mother, Queen Ingrid. They also have a temporary apartment in Copenhagen, at Levetzau Palace, a part of the Amalienborg Palace complex, which will be their home until renovations are completed on their new home, Brockdorff Palace, which is also part of Amalienborg and was the home of the Crown Prince's maternal grandparents, King Frederick IX of Denmark and Queen Ingrid, formerly HRH Princess Ingrid of Sweden.
External links
References
Australian Associated Press Ltd, 'Mary expecting new heir to Danish throne', Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2005. [1]