In January, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark celebrated the 50th anniversary of her reign, the beginning of her Golden Jubilee year, in a way that emphasized family togetherness. She hosted a private dinner for her two sons, Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim, their wives, and her eight grandchildren in the banquet hall at her Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen. Later, the Kongehuset released an official photo that showed the queen surrounded by her smiling family. Now, just eight months later, they are in the middle of a very public spat after the royal family announced that Joachim’s children would surrender their titles of prince and princess on January 1—and he suggested that he and his family were caught off guard.

The move to change their titles wasn’t so unusual—a somewhat similar series of events happened in Sweden’s royal family in 2019—and it has been clear that Joachim’s children would be expected to find their own sources of income ever since a May 2016 announcement that only Frederik’s oldest son, Prince Christian, would receive a government stipend for royal work when he turns 18. But, similar to the question of whether or not Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children will receive the titles that the law allows for, the fallout from the queen’s decision is a sign that Europe’s royal families are still trying to figure out that legendary heir-and-spare problem.

The saga started on Wednesday, when Lene Balleby, the Kongehuset’s director of communications, released a statement explaining that Joachim’s four children can only use their secondary titles of count and countess of Monpezat beginning in January, and their titles of prince and princess would be discontinued. ​”​Prince Joachim’s descendants will thus have to be addressed as excellencies in the future,” the statement read. “The Queen’s decision is in line with similar adjustments that other royal houses have made in various ways in recent years.” Until now, Prince Nikolai, Prince Felix, Prince Henrik, and Princess Athena, who range in age from 23 to 10, have been addressed as highnesses and have occasionally appeared at official events with their father, who is considered a working royal.

At a Copenhagen National Museum event later that same day, Margrethe explained that she had made the decision with her grandchildren’s future in mind. “It is a consideration I have had for quite a long time and I think it will be good for them in their future,” she said, according to Hello. “That is the reason.” In response to a question about whether her grandchildren feel “ostracized” by the move, she responded, “I haven’t seen it myself, I must say.”

Joachim seemed to contradict his mother’s optimism when he later suggested to a reporter that he felt blindsided and unhappy about the change in his children’s status. “We are all very sad,” he said in an interview with the Danish outlet Ekstra Bladet, per Hello. “It’s never fun to see your children being mistreated like that. They themselves find themselves in a situation they do not understand.”

Though the royal house said he was informed that a change was coming in May, Joachim disputed the timeline. “I was given five days’ notice,” he said, per Hello. “In May, I was presented with a plan, which basically stated that when the children each turned 25, it would happen. Athena turns 11 in January.”

In response to Joachim’s comments, Balleby released another statement. “We understand that there are currently many emotions in the game, but we hope that the wishes of the royal family to make the royal house future-proof will be respected,” she said, according to Hello.

Even if it was ultimately a miscommunication among the families and their staff, it reflects something deeper that has been roiling in the Danish family for decades. Joachim married his first wife, Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, and had his first child years before Frederik met and married Crown Princess Mary in 2004. When Nikolai was born in 1999, he was the center of attention in the Danish press and even did one of his first engagements at the age of two, at a Legoland ride opening.

Joachim had served in the military and received a stipend for being a working royal from the mid-1990s on. In a 2002 interview with Vancouver’s Scandinavian Press, Joachim mentioned that his own role was dependent on the then small size of his family. “Typically in a large family the older you get the more you will withdraw, or the fewer appearances you will have which is good for you personally as a kind of retirement,” he said. “The smaller the family, the less so. There will always be something for you.” He said he knew his son was growing up in the public eye but thought that the burden would be lessened when his brother married and had children.

In the years since Joachim made those comments, the family has gotten much larger. Frederik married Australia-born Mary Donaldson, who became Crown Princess Mary, and the couple had four kids, Prince Christian, Princess Isabella, Prince Vincent, and Princess Josephine. Joachim had another son, Felix, with his first wife, and after their divorce, he married Princess Marie, and they had two children, Henrik and Athena.

However, there isn’t necessarily an established procedure for the Danish royal family to “slim down,” as the British press tends to describe King Charles III’s desires for the future of the House of Windsor. Margrethe, who was one of three daughters of King Frederik IX, only became heir apparent after a 1953 law made women eligible to take the throne; otherwise it would have passed to her father’s younger brother. By the time she ascended the throne in 1972, her sister Princess Benedikte married Prince Richard of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg of Germany, and Princess Anne-Marie married King Constantine II of Greece and both joined their husbands in those countries. Though these families are no longer recognized by their respective states, the marriages ensured that their royal status in Denmark wasn’t necessarily a matter of public concern.

One potential explanation for the timing of the decision might be the fact that Nikolai, now 23 years old, has decided on a career outside of public service. In 2018, the prince enrolled in the Royal Danish Army’s sergeant school for a training course, but dropped out after two months. His mother’s office explained that the career was not for him. That same year he walked his first runway at London Fashion Week and has worked as a model ever since. As Eurohistory’s Seth Leonard pointed out, he actually appeared in a 2021 commercial for the Raffles Hotel chain where he was incorrectly introduced as “His Royal Highness” (until January, it should be the lower rung, “His Highness”) but said he preferred to be known as “just Nikolai.” Danish headlines about the commercial applauded him for declining to appear in the nude.

The understanding that a larger family means a smaller proportion of them take on state duties seems to be a common understanding among the family, and in comments to Ekstra Bladet, Crown Princess Mary said that her own children might eventually be subject to a similar title change. “We will also look at our children's titles when the time comes. Today we cannot see what the royal house will look like when it is Christian’s time, or when Christian’s time begins to approach,” she said to the outlet, per Australia’s News.Com.Au. “Change can be extremely difficult and can really hurt. I think most people have tried it. But this does not mean that the decision is not the right one.”

Though the Danish family has been unusually open about the relationship between the family members and their roles as public figures in the past, the circumstances around hereditary monarchy really have changed over the last half century as the media has begun to treat royals more like global celebrities. So far this has meant that an heir’s siblings operate with all of the public attention their status brings, some of the onerous legal and traditional constraints of being royal, but with little hope of a lifetime income from taking on royal duties. For a while, a spare could be happy with this by either taking on a military or diplomatic role or marrying into a wealthy family and becoming a more anonymous aristocrat. In an era where the public is more interested in royal families but less comfortable with the flaunting of inherited privilege, there is more pressure to make the monarch’s descendants stand on their own.

Another explanation for the timing might have to do with a news event that transfixed the world for much of this month. Queen Margrethe, who is now the last queen regent after the death of her third cousin Queen Elizabeth II. She attended last week’s funeral (and came down with a case of COVID-19 afterward). Though the timing for stripping her grandchildren’s titles apparently seemed surprising to them, it makes sense that the Kongehuset is thinking about becoming “future-proof” as another European country is seeing a change in monarch.

Regardless of whether Margrethe could have communicated her goals to Joachim and his children in a more sensitive way, the change ultimately lines up with the way she has spent her life both as a monarch and a well-regarded painter and translator. In a 2016 interview with The Telegraph, she explained that her job as queen was not about glamour. “It’s not for me to say whether royalty still has an aura—I look at it in a fairly matter-of-fact way. When I was a child I didn’t enjoy princesses in fairy tales in the least because I wasn’t that way. I wasn’t pink and tinsley at all,” she said. “The duty part of my life is nourished by the fact that I’m able to work in my art…the two [influences] go more or less hand-in-hand.”