Chain smoker and artist with a job at Netflix: the sharp Danish queen Margrethe

The world, says the queen, is ‘a picture you can enter’. She also chain smokes, with an extra strong, filterless Greek cigarette always smoldering between her royal fingers with bright red painted nails. And because the world is an image, images are also the world. Your world. Because Margrethe II from Denmark is an artist in her spare time.

She currently makes her art available on Netflix. Designed costumes and complete sets for the film “Ehrengard: The Story of a Seduction” by director Bille August. Based on a text by the Dane Tanja Blixen, who became a guarantee for romantic costume conflicts thanks to the film adaptation of her autobiographical novel ‘Out of Africa’ with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

Tanja Blixen, Bille August, Queen Margrethe, plus the film and series stars Sidse Babett Knudsen (“Borgen”) and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard – “Ehrengard” is a big Danish name. At least on paper. The film about amorous entanglements between nobility and bohemians is lovingly criticized. Everyone agrees that the design is great. Even outside Margrethe territory.

In the documentary that Netflix is ​​airing alongside “Ehrengard,” the shirtless queen can be seen drawing costumes and choosing fabrics, improving (or not) the script and using scissors to select the smallest details from dozens of cut-out art books and magazines. and put together to create new, surreal fairytale landscapes. In the film these become digital backgrounds.

Under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, she previously created sets for fairy-tale films and illustrated books, including the popular Danish edition of “Lord of the Rings”. The perfect Art Deco drawings were created during her studies in Cambridge and London, where she studied prehistoric archaeology, political science and economics (and at the Sorbonne in Paris).

Tolkien’s knights, monsters, hobbits, elves and battlefields from an imagined ancient time were close to her, just as the ancient statues and ancient castles she works with for her film sets are today. And her greatest passion when she was young was archaeology anyway; she loved climbing around Egyptian excavations, but she achieved nothing other than a reputation as an amateur archaeologist.

The feature film ‘Ehrengard’ and the accompanying documentary were shot in 2021. In 2023, Margrethe had to undergo serious back surgery and then stopped smoking, an almost unimaginable sacrifice. Shortly before, she had vowed that she would go to her grave smoking and had even lit cigarette after cigarette in the presence of seniors who suffered from asthma.

On the occasion of her New Year’s speech on December 31, 2023, she announced her resignation. That was also unthinkable until recently; In 2016, she said in an interview with Spiegel about her son, Crown Prince Frederik: “He will be king when I am no longer here.” Frederik takes over the crown on January 14. Margrethe is now 83 years old and has been on the throne since 1972.

During her studies in London she also met her great love, the angular French diplomat Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpeza. He grew up in Indochina as the son of a French industrialist, studied law, political science, French, Chinese and Vietnamese in Paris , Hong Kong and Saigon studied, sailed, were interested in viticulture and wrote bad poetry. The Danes regarded him as a French snob who disregarded their beer and preferred silk stockings to sensible woolen socks.

Margrethe gave him a new name, a new appellation and a position. When they married on June 10, 1967, the Catholic Henri became the Evangelical Lutheran Henrik and the diplomat a prince consort. A title that he found discriminatory all his life.

When Crown Prince Frederik took on increasingly important tasks in the early 1990s, the rebellious husband went abroad for a while because he could not bear to be no longer even number two, but only number three in the state of Denmark. But Margrethe remained steadfast. The prince consort never became a king consort. Henrik died in 2018 due to severe dementia. He was never able to match his wife’s exorbitant popularity ratings. Disturbingly, villains in Danish series and films are often called Henrik.

She also remained harsh to half of her eight grandchildren. In the autumn of 2022, she decided to launch a major ‘de-principalization campaign’. Her son Joachim’s four children have no longer been allowed to call themselves prince and princess since January 1, 2023; there are now only three earls and a countess.

The queen had not informed her family of her decision, and the shock was deep, because those who were so disenfranchised were now ‘allowed’ or had to strive for their own income, an ‘opportunity’, as Margrethe nicely put it, that princes and princesses normally have “denied” remains. The British press was enthusiastic and tried to force a similar austerity measure on Charles. And peripheral British royals like Fergie, who had divorced Andrew, suddenly panicked, emphasizing their proximity to the Windsors’ inner circle.

The beautiful Count Nikolai, who models for Burberry, Dior and Cartier, among others, was particularly dismayed by grandmother Margrethe’s decision: “My whole family and I are of course very sad,” the 23-year-old told the Danish tabloid Ekstra. Bladet,” “we are shocked by this decision. I don’t understand why it had to happen this way.”

Margrethe is a devout, conservative Christian who sometimes embroiders altar cloths for churches, does not have a mobile phone and does not use the internet. ‘Support’ and ‘roots’ are important terms for her. Although she sees Europe as a true multi-ethnic collage, the purpose of a monarchy is precisely to remind the Danes of their roots and their history.

Your statements about the migration complex, which is especially problematic in Denmark, vary between self-criticism and complacency. She lacks the determination of her grandfather, King Christian X, who actively protected the Danish Jews from the Nazis.

Her heart currently beats for Ukraine, about Putin, whom she once saw, she said in the weekly magazine ‘Weekendavisen’ in February 2023: ‘I have never seen such cold eyes in my life’, and ‘Putin thought he could completely tear up. apart, but he made sure we stood together.” But in principle she does not want to express herself politically or get involved in political matters.

Margrethe became queen due to a change in the rules of succession. “Biology is to blame,” she says, “my father had no sons, so I became queen. All I had to do was fill this role. I am not a career woman and would never have been one in normal life, because I am not ambitious enough for that.” Her ambition is part of her art.

Margrethe II remained close friends with her British cousin Elizabeth II until the queen’s death; the two often had tea in London and talked about their families and their dogs. Corgis for the queen, dachshunds for Margrethe. They called each other by their nicknames: Lilibet and Daisy, Daisies. A daisy looks like a small daisy. Margarethe prefers to wear jewelry in the shape of daisies.

The future King Frederik and his Australian wife Mary, who will hold the title of Queen, are considered progressive, down-to-earth, environmentally conscious and even woke in Denmark. They send their children to state schools and you can meet them in the supermarket and restaurants. Villains from the future series probably won’t be named Frederik.

“Ehrengard: The Story of a Seduction” by Bille August and the documentary “Behind the Scenes of ‘Ehrengard’” are playing on Netflix.