But now she's Queen of Denmark. Her story is told in the New York Times.
...when Mary Donaldson, then a 28-year-old from Tasmania working in real estate, met “Fred” — also known as Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark — at the Slip Inn in September 2000, she was suddenly plunged into an entirely different fairy tale...But toward Mary, who is seen as relatable and down-to-earth, that republican bent does not apply. “Mary’s relentless abjuration of drama, her enthusiastic commitment to causes in the public interest and her truly rare championing of the LGBTQ+ community in Denmark and beyond” appeal even to fervent anti-monarchists...And then there is the improbable back story. When Mary and Frederik met, Frederik was visiting Sydney for the Olympic Games. One of the people with him asked an Australian friend to join them at the pub. The friend brought her sister, who brought her own friend who brought his roommate, Mary...She attended public school, rode horses, played sports and had an otherwise unremarkable upbringing, before studying law and commerce in college and moving to Melbourne and then Sydney to pursue a career in advertising.“I don’t recall wishing that one day I would be a princess,” she told reporters shortly after the couple became engaged in 2003. “I wanted to be a veterinarian.”
More on the Danish "bicycle monarchy" (no crown except on a coffin, grandchildren stripped of prince and princess status, king/queen as servants of the people, not the other way around) in the Washington Post.
“I don’t recall wishing that one day I would be a princess,” she told reporters ... “I wanted to be a veterinarian.”
ReplyDeleteAnd that's what makes her a great princess and will make her a great queen.
Americans tend to have an image of royalty that does not exist anymore. Modern (European) royalty are nothing else than high-end PR folks that get paid (and housed!) really nicely for their work.
Y'all talk about kings as dictators and really need to start separating those words. Current monarchs, especially those in Europe, have very limited power, regardless of what the law says.
Sure, the King of the UK is still an absolute god-anointed monarch, but in reality, he has nothing to say about daily governance. The only thing a UK monarch can do in protest of a really really bad pm is die.
The Scandinavian, Dutch, Belgian and Spanish monarchs have very little political power, and legally none. The Dutch and Belgian Kings are sworn in (not crowned) in parliament to note the fact that they are monarch by fiat of parliament - and hence can be removed by parliament (and in Belgium they have, whereas in the Netherlands they came very close).
Contrast that with the US, where your Congress that legally fire a president, but never has the political guts to do so - even though the US is older than the Dutch and Belgian monarchies.
The Luxemburgian, Monascan and Liechtensteinian monarchs still run the government, but they wouldn't last long if they abused their power.
And yes, in the Middle-East there are some royalty left that rule as dictators, but even that is just how the neighborhood is run.
So please, stop having your judges say a president is not a king. Kings can and have been removed. Y'all can't seem to get that done with your presidents.
It's the people of the US who hire and fire the president, not congress. This happens in election years, which are a mere four years apart. I won't claim that's led to nirvana, only that the turnover argument falls flat.
DeleteAt a deeper level, it's the super rich and corporate players who are our aristocracy. But the jewels are not on display--at least in any formal sense. The "common folk" of the US try and ignore this as much as possible. And the rich get richer.
We have another kind of royalty: celebrities. Actors, musician, athletes. This Roman circus distracts us from what ought to matter.
I smell a rat with Queen Mary. When I hear advertising, real estate and LGBTQ, I'm reminded of America's identity fascinated limousine liberals. Also, every other girl wants to be a vet. But not the kind of vet that comes home in a body bag--that's still the domain of the poor-ish men of the world.
She's not going to be Queen. You only get a King and a Queen on the throne when the King of country A marries the Queen of country B. She'll be a royal consort.
ReplyDeleteHow about "Queen Consort"
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_consort