On September 28, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark shocked the world—and some of her own family—when she announced that the four children of her second son, Prince Joachim, would be stripped of their royal titles of prince and princess. As of January 2023, Felix, Athena, Henrik, and Nikolai will be known as the counts and countess of Monpezat.

“With her decision, Her Majesty the Queen wishes to create the framework for the four grandchildren to be able to shape their own lives to a much greater extent without being limited by the special considerations and duties that a formal affiliation with the Royal House of Denmark as an institution involves,” the palace announced.

Prince Joachim publicly voiced his dismay, as did his wife, Princess Marie, who claimed her daughter, Athena, aged 10, was being bullied in her Paris school over the loss of her title. Even more importantly to Queen Margrethe II—whose family has enjoyed Danish approval ratings of close to 80%—it has angered some of her long-loyal subjects and sparked international conversations.

The scandal could not be more ill-timed. This year, the 82-year-old monarch celebrated her Golden Jubilee. With the death of her third cousin and friend Queen Elizabeth II, Margrethe is now the longest-reigning living monarch in Europe.

Unlike her tight-lipped, unknowable cousin Elizabeth, Margrethe II is outwardly flamboyant and approachable. Nicknamed the “Ashtray Queen,” Margrethe is a highly educated, chain-smoking, six-foot-tall “eternal student,” known for her brightly colored clothing, love of archaeology, fluency in five languages, and artistic abilities, which include illustrating J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and designing costumes and scenography for European stage productions.

Margrethe’s air of affability has made her a beloved figure in Denmark. The queen has been spotted walking out of a grocery store chomping on a hotdog, and enthusiastically riding a roller coaster. But for all her outward quirks, at heart she is—much like Queen Elizabeth was—devoted to tradition, and first and foremost devoted to the crown. “Margrethe has approached her long reign with an extreme sense of duty,” says author and former royal reporter Trine Villemann, a pointed critic of the royal family with controversial opinions. “She truly believes that her position was given to her by God, and being a deeply religious person, she feels a huge sense of obligation.”

This devotion to crown and country has often seemed to drive her immediate family members to distraction.

Margrethe was born in Copenhagen on April 16, 1940, only a week after Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. Nicknamed “Daisy,” she was the oldest of the three girls born to King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

When she was five, Denmark was liberated, and two years later, her father ascended the throne. In Queen in Denmark: Margrethe II Talks About Her Life, written by Anne Wolden-Ræthinge and published in 1989, Margrethe recalls her father encouraging her before an appearance on the balcony to accept the adoration of her constituents. “Don’t just stand there and wave, open your arms!”

In 1953, the bookish, inquisitive Margrethe became heir presumptive, when laws were changed to allow a woman to ascend the Danish throne, the oldest monarchy in Europe. “The 15th of January 1972 has been my purpose in life since the age of 13,” she told Wolden-Ræthinge. “I am, I am yours! My task now is my country, for my country, for my Danes.”

In 1964, while studying at the London School of Economics, Margrethe was introduced to the French diplomat Henri de Laborde de Monpezat. “When I did meet the man I married, I fell in love with a bang,” she recalled, according to Wolden-Ræthinge. The couple married in 1967.

“Henrik was for better and for worse a larger-than-life figure,” Villemann says. “Flamboyant, extrovert, an alpha male with a Gallic temper. He could be generous and kind, but also mean and vicious.”

The seeds of discontent in the marriage were sown from the start. In 1972, Margrethe became queen, her husband prince consort. The stylish, towering young queen was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brainy, talented, humorous.” She was also remarkably pragmatic about her role, comparing it with a farmer inheriting a farm. “I feel that I am extremely privileged,” she told Wolden-Ræthinge. “Partly because I have a position which is special, which absorbs me immensely, and which I love…a job which is satisfying, exciting, and boundless—literally a purpose in life.”

She was also clear that duty, not family, came first. “Denmark is more important to me than anything else. I do not think I have ever even flirted with the idea of putting my marriage before the throne,” she said decisively. “All over Denmark I had already been met with such great expectations and received so much kindness and respect. To turn my back on all this would be to fail everyone who depended on me.”

Her husband was not so fulfilled in his position. Like Prince Philip, in his early years, Henrik appeared to be at a loss in his new subservient role, and earned the nickname in international press as “the world’s grumpiest royal.”

The queen was publicly sympathetic to her husband’s odd position, telling Wolden-Ræthinge:

I do not think that his new life in Denmark was always very easy for my husband. We were both madly in love and knew this was what we wanted, but we had no doubts that it would have a price. It has not been effortless for my husband to alter so many things in his life or—in some ways—to change himself.

In 1968, the couple’s first child, Crown Prince Frederik, was born. A year later, Prince Joachim arrived—the heir and the spare complete. “They grew up as twins, were even dressed alike by their nanny,” Villemann says. “Frederik was the sensitive one, prone to tears and tantrums, while Joachim was more robust.”

Busy with their duties, Margrethe and Henrik had little time for day-to-day child rearing. “She has admitted to having been an absent mom when her boys were small because she put her duty before her family life,” Villemann says.

“We left quite a lot of the boys’ upbringing and their company to others, and as a result, we and the boys have missed a lot,” Margrethe recalled in Queen in Denmark.

However, Villemann has reported that the young princes were not totally shielded from their parents’ dysfunction. “Their marriage was definitely tumultuous—and from very early on,” Villemann says. “In my book 1015 Copenhagen K – Mary’s Dysfunctional In-Laws, I describe an incident where Margrethe and Henrik were arguing furiously while their infant son Frederik was sleeping next door.… A maid passed by and discovered the prince left alone. She could hear Margrethe and Henrik having a blazing row in the next room so she took the prince, put him in his buggy, and walked around Copenhagen with him. Several hours later she returned to the palace only to discover that no one—including his parents—had even noticed that the little prince had gone missing.”

Queen Margrethe seemed to admit to having had disagreements with her husband, whom she called an “invaluable critic.” “My husband and I have discussions in front of our sons,” she told Wolden-Ræthinge, “but they all consider me shy of conflicts. I suppose I am, but I hate disagreeing with anyone—though I do like to be right!”

Journalist Stéphanie Surrugue, who wrote a biography of Prince Henrik, has noted that he really began to voice his misgivings publicly during the 1980s. “The first hint came around his 50th birthday when he said on TV he found it difficult to ask his wife for pocket money for cigarettes,” she told The New York Times.

Henrik also harped on his lack of kingship—and the fact that while his wife could have elevated him to king consort—she did not. “He—rightfully, I think—felt that it was unjust that, per tradition, a king’s female spouse becomes a queen and a majesty upon ascending the throne whereas he never enjoyed the same privilege,” says Villemann.

“The inequality of it all infuriated Henrik and he never missed an opportunity to complain about what he perceived as his misfortune,” she adds. But that wasn’t all that irked him. In 2002, when his son Prince Frederik went to a party representing the queen, Henrik told the Danish tabloid BT he felt “pushed aside, degraded, and humiliated,” and was furious at being demoted from number two to “number three.”

In 2017, his discontent again burst onto the public stage when he gave an extraordinary interview to the magazine Se og Hør. In it, he railed against the queen, who he claimed did not show him the respect a wife should show her spouse.

“My wife has decided that she would like to be queen, and I’m very pleased with that,” he said. “But as a person, she must know that if a man and a woman are married, then they are equal.”

He furiously issued an ultimatum. “She’s the one playing me for a fool,” Henrik thundered. In retaliation for this perceived slight, he said he would not be buried in the bizarre, custom-made glass memorial his wife had commissioned for the pair in Roskilde Cathedral. “If she wants to bury me with her, she must make me a king consort,” he said. “Finished. I do not care.”

However, Henrik’s temper tantrum did not dissuade his steely wife. When Henrik died on February 13, 2018—his wife and children by his side—he was still only a prince. “On several occasions Henrik publicly humiliated his wife by expressing his fury and—in my opinion—that is the main reason the Danes never really took to Henrik,” Villemann says. “He died an angry, bitter man, and even in death he gave his wife and the Danish people the finger by refusing to be laid to rest in the official royal resting place at Roskilde Cathedral. Instead, he was cremated.”

With her husband gone, Queen Margrethe II has been increasingly focused on securing the monarchy in Denmark and the smooth accession of her son Crown Prince Frederik and his wife, Princess Mary, an affable, photogenic duo with four children, known to the public as the “bicycling royals.” Meanwhile, her second son, Prince Joachim, has become less of an asset as a public figure.

“She has seen how enormously popular her oldest son and his family have become, whereas Joachim has had a more volatile relationship with the Danish public,” Villemann says. Royal reporter Kenth Madsen told the Daily Mail last month that he had been informed by palace sources that Prince Joachim has “felt humiliated and ignored for a long time.”

There also may be more personal reasons for the decisions, as the two brothers—much like Prince William and Prince Harry—appear to have grown apart after being close to each other in childhood. “The brothers were each other’s best friends,” Villeman says.

They also appeared to be well-matched. Queen Margrethe seemed assured that Joachim would be an ideal spare to help the heir. “Joachim’s nature makes him very good at being a younger brother, he simply can’t bear a grudge,” she said in Queen in Denmark, adding, “He has always backed up his elder brother. Frederik can be quite introspective, and…very impatient with himself—Joachim could always mediate between Frederik and whatever was bothering him.”

“Joachim was described by his mother as the perfect number two, because of how well he coped with knowing that Frederik was going to be king and he was the spare,” says Villeman. But the dynamics changed when the brothers married, especially when Frederik married the Tasmanian-born Mary Donaldson, and the brothers grew apart.”

Things came to a head in 2019, when Joachim and his second wife, Princess Marie, moved temporarily to Paris with their children so he could participate in a military training program. However, he has yet to return and is now an attaché to the Danish Embassy. In an extraordinary July 2020 interview with Se og Hør, Princess Marie made it clear she was not happy with the move, saying it had not been their choice. “It is not always us who decide,” she said, and declined to explain further. “I think that’s important to know.”

Joachim himself railed against the Danish royal family in September, when he claimed he was given only five days’ notice that his children’s titles were being taken away. “Why must they be punished in that way?” Joachim raged to a reporter. The couple gave interviews decrying the decision, with a representative for Prince Joachim telling CNN that his eldest son had asked, “What will they write in my passport now?”

Joachim’s ex-wife, Alexandra, the mother of his two eldest children, also entered the fray. “We are all confused by the decision,” she told BT. “We are saddened and in shock. This comes like a bolt from the blue. The children feel ostracized. They cannot understand why their identity is being taken away from them.”

While this decision may seem to point to personal favoritism on the queen’s part, Villemann does not believe this is the case. “Frederik certainly was not the queen’s favorite growing up. She never understood his sensitive nature and the fact that he quite openly resented his fate. He wanted to be anything but king,” she says. “But old age is beginning to catch up with her and she wants to put her house in order. If that means sidelining Joachim and his family, then so be it. As the queen and the head of state, she sees her main duty now as securing the dynastic future of her family.”

There are also practical reasons to streamline the Danish royal family. “Denmark is a small country and not big enough for the two brothers and their—by Danish standards—large families. There simply aren’t enough royal duties for so many full-time royals,” Villemann says. “In 2016 the royal palace announced that only Crown Prince Frederik’s oldest child, Prince Christian, is expected to receive public funding. The key word here is expected. I am told that the palace is pursuing a plan whereby Frederik’s second-oldest child, Princess Isabella, also gets public money, and that removing the titles from Joachim’s children is part of that plan because the palace can argue that the monarchy is slimming down. The irony here is that none of Joachim’s children were ever expected to receive public funding, and their titles would have disappeared if and when they marry a commoner.”

Whatever the case, Queen Margrethe, who admitted in Queen In Denmark that she was becoming sharper with age, seems to have been taken aback by the public’s reaction to the decision. On October 3, she released an extraordinary statement apologizing for any pain she had caused, reading, in part:

Holding a royal title involves a number of commitments and duties that, in the future, will lie with fewer members of the royal family. This adjustment, which I view as a necessary future-proofing of the monarchy, I want to take in my own time. I have made my decision as queen, mother, and grandmother, but, as a mother and grandmother, I have underestimated the extent to which my younger son and his family feel affected. That makes a big impression, and for that I am sorry.

However, there is little doubt that Queen Margrethe II, who for 50 years has made the difficult choice of the good of the crown above all else, will stand firm—even if it causes familial and public problems. “I don’t think she regrets it. I am certain that she was taken aback by the fierce public reaction to it, but she is not going to back down,” Villemann says.

“Sometimes we must face facts,” Queen Margrethe II once reflected. “Even facts we would rather not acknowledge.”