Danish Queen Margrethe to mark 40 years on throne

By Thomas Borchert Dec 6, 2011, 1:06 GMT

Copenhagen - Denmark's Queen Margrethe, fondly known as Daisy, will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her reign in January.

Margrethe II is Europe's second longest-serving monarch after Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. Her biography offers a retrospective marked by touches of irony and shows that even at 71, she is still full of life.

Queen Margrethe used to think the king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, was silly, the biography reveals.

She is a self-critical wife and mother. And she has read JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings nearly 10 times, according to the book, which was published a few weeks before her jubilee on January 14.

In the biography, titled M - 40 Years on the Throne, the Danish sovereign gives new insight into royal life in interviews with author Jens Andersen.

Released in time for Christmas sales, the biography gives Danes a chance to discover whether their queen feels like a 'boring old aunt' at age 71 and after four decades as head of state.

Not at all, Margrethe replies sprightly. 'You look in the mirror and go 'oops' - and on to the next exciting project.'

For the tall Dane, these include activities as varied as cross-country skiing, visiting troops in Afghanistan and a trip to New York. All in all, they allow her 'to completely forget how old one really is,' she says.

This is in marked contrast to how Margrethe felt on January 14, 1972, when her father, King Frederik IX died. The reportedly shy and insecure crown princess ascended to the throne at the age of 31.

'Mother, what shall we do?', she asked her mother, Queen Ingrid. - 'Daisy, you decide now,' Ingrid replied. 'You have the say.'

That helped, Margrethe told her biographer Andersen. 'When I realized that I did not have to be guided by my heart alone, but could follow my mind as well, everything started to make sense.'

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was an important encounter for the self-critical queen, who describes herself as 'sometimes talking like a waterfall.'

In 1969, at a time when she was breast-feeding her son, Prince Joachim, she stumbled across the book while browsing in a bookstore.

'It got my imagination going. I could not put it down, when I had finished it. I had to start reading it all over again.' She has read it nearly 10 times and has twice read the entire trilogy aloud to Joachim and his elder brother, Prince Frederik. Margrethe also made illustrations for the trilogy's Danish-language version.

'I was always delighted by my children, that was not the problem,' Margrethe says. 'But there was so much else that I was busy with then, I must concede.'

The queen also seems to have a guilty conscience towards her French-born husband, Prince Henrik, 77. In 2002, the Frenchman complained publicly that he felt like 'number three' in the Danish court - implying that the queen and the heirs to the throne were more important than he was.

As a result, he felt 'humiliated'. And - as if that were not enough - Henrik retreated to his vineyard, Chateau de Cayx, in the south of France for a while.

Nearly a decade later, the queen says: 'Most people experience something similar at some stage during their marriage or with their friends and families.' She added: 'I did not offer my husband as much support as I should have. I overlooked the problem. I did not think about it enough.' Henrik has long since returned home.

Margrethe now has seven grandchildren - and she is also an artist. She did not want to comment in the book on her legendary burst of anger and tears, when experts harshly criticized a rug she had designed for an altar.

Margrethe prefers to stay good-humoured: 'We always laughed a lot at home.' All Danes have heard their queen's loud laughter at some point.

On one memorable occasion in 1978, Margrethe was showing Joachim around Schackenborg Castle and told him he would eventually inherit the estate.

When his elder brother Frederik piped up and asked what he would inherit, Joachim answered consolingly: 'You'll get the rest.'