Danish royal roundup # 2

TV 2 and B.T. report on the traditional torchlight procession by local Fredensborg residents to welcome Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik back to Fredensborg Palace for their summer residency (although it didn't look very summery!). You can see a Ritzau video on the B.T. site.



For those of our readers who want to see Princess Alexandra, here she was on 22 April 2006 at an engagement in Copenhagen for the beginning of a weekend seminar with participants in 'Junior Achievement Young Enterprise' at Danish Industry House.




Here's a rundown on the stories in 'Denmark's royal magazine' Billed Bladet this last week.

The last issue of Billed Bladet has a story 'When Mary sat as a model' about her sitting for Jiawei Shen at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney in March last year. It says Jiawei Shen was nervous as he went up to Crown Princess Mary's suite, but that soon disappeared. He worked very fast to produce sketches in the three hours he had with Mary which he then took back to his studio to complete there. A Danish documentary maker is making a program about Jiawei Shen to be shown in 2008.


On the Joachim and Marie front Billed Bladet says they had a private vacation together over Easter. Joachim is said to have left Schackenborg Manor in secret the Wednesday before Easter to keep his date with Marie somewhere in central Europe after both have had some very busy weeks. Billed Bladet repeats earlier reportage of Marie's wish for the relationship to develop and that she had been stunned by her experience with the Danish media.


According to Billed Bladet Princess Alexandra has also had an Easter vacation. Together with her boyfriend Martin Jørgensen and the princes Nikolai and Felix, Princess Alexandra sought out the sun and had to fit the 11 day vacation in with Nikolai's Easter break from school. Also, this is the first time the little princes have not been to Marselisborg Slot with the rest of the Royal Family for Easter and nor did they celebrate their grandmother's birthday with their little cousin Prince Christian. It is agreed between Alexandra and Joachim that they take turns with the boys for holidays and in his gentlemanly way he has no objection to them spending time with Martin Jørgensen. (Note there is no real information about where Alexandra went and this is probably an old photo.)

Billed Bladet also reports on Queen Margrethe's birthday celebration with Christian at Marselisborg, where she was able to give him his first lessons in being royal. Christian behaved perfectly as he was passed between his grandmother the Queen and his parents.

In other snippets:

Princess Benedikte leaves for Kuala Lumpur tomorrow in the hope of winning the presidency of the International Equestrian Federation.

And,a little something to look forward to this coming weekend. The Swedish Royal Court is putting on its party tiaras (well, the ladies will) for the 60th birthday of King Carl Gustaf.

Prince Joachim will stay in Denmark as regent and Frederik will be on his quest in Nanoq in a Farr 40 regatta (he does need to be a worthy representative of Denmark for next year's Farr 40 World Championship he helped win for Copenhagen). Going off to Stockholm for the party will be Queen Margrethe, Prince Henrik and Crown Princess Mary, and, probably Christian will go along too (as he always seems to go where his Mummy is!)