One monarch was nicknamed Lilibet; the other, Daisy. One was the longest-reigning royal in Britain, skilled at disarming world leaders with humor. The other was educated at Cambridge, is often seen with a cigarette dangling from her lips and hopped a roller coaster in May to mark her Golden Jubilee.
Though they ruled from capitals hundreds of miles apart in Europe, they found time now and again to meet and spill the tea about family, children and other matters.
When Lilibet, better known Queen Elizabeth II, died last Thursday at 96, Daisy, a.k.a. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, became the reigning queen in Europe.
Elizabeth reigned for 70 years. Margrethe has marked 50 years at the helm of one of the oldest monarchies in Europe. As the news of the British royal’s death ricocheted around the globe, Margrethe, 82, scaled back plans to celebrate her own jubilee, called for a moment of silence and quickly sent a sorrowful letter to Elizabeth’s oldest son, King Charles III, that said, “We shall miss her terribly.”
More than friends, the queens shared lineage dating to Queen Victoria. When they commiserated, Margrethe recalled in an interview with the British broadcaster ITV News in May, they used their nicknames and had an “affectionate” rapport.
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Margrethe, the eldest of three daughters of King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid, entered the line to the throne at age 13 when Denmark made a constitutional change to allow female succession and the king passed over his brother for his daughter.
A good chunk of her schooling took place in Britain: Margrethe attended boarding school there, went to Cambridge University to study archaeology and spent time at the London School of Economics.
In 1966, while breezing through New York on her way to Latin America, she paused to for an interview with The New York Times. She allowed that though she would try out her Spanish on her tour, “I don’t know if it will work.”
“I speak English, French and I wouldn’t starve in Germany,” she said then.
After the Danish Parliament approved her engagement to Count Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpezat, a French diplomat who was a member of the nobility, they married in 1967. (The wedding was delayed a tad so that her pregnant sister Queen Anne-Marie of Greece could attend.) News reports said the couple jetted off to the Mexican island of Cozumel for their honeymoon.
Margrethe acceded to the thrown after her father died in January 1972. At the time, most Danes viewed the royal family as an anachronism in a modern democracy. But now, surveys indicate that the majority support the Danish monarchy.
That may be due in no small part to Queen Margrethe.
She is hugely popular in Denmark and draws praise for modernizing that monarchy. An artistic streak runs through her: She has illustrated “Lord of the Ring” books under a pseudonym, reports say, and has created museum-worthy artwork.
Of her two sons, Crown Prince Frederik is in line to succeed her. But Queen Margrethe vows, “I will stay on the throne until I drop.”
Having personally avoided major scandals during her reign, the queen faced a doozy in 2017, when her own husband went full tilt on a grudge that he had been nursing for 50 years.
Prince Henrik chafed at not being called king — or at least king consort — and long complained about not having his own cash.
“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,” Stephanie Surrugue, a journalist and author of a biography of the prince, has said.
He ended up getting a salary, but it was not a salve for his wounds. At 83, in an epic fit of royal pique, Henrik announced that he no longer wished to be buried alongside the queen.
Six months later, the prince was dead. After a small service, he was cremated, local reports said. Half of his ashes were spread over Danish waters, and the other buried in the private gardens of a castle north of Copenhagen.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
