Mary of Denmark celebrates her 52nd birthday this Monday. And, for this birthday, the first since she became queen consort, it is a private portrait with her father and taken by her youngest son that she chose to share.
She could have opted for a photo showing her in an evening dress, wearing a tiara. Or a photo taken on January 12 when, following the abdication of her mother-in-law Queen Margrethe II and the accession of her husband as new sovereign under the name of Frederik X, she became queen consort. Or even an image of a commitment linked in the kingdom or abroad with one of its many fields of action in the name of the Danish crown.
A photo taken in December in Australia
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Nothing of the sort. It’s a private, natural photo that Mary from Denmark chose to illustrate her 52nd birthday post. For her first birthday as the wife of the Danish monarch, celebrated this Monday, February 5, 2024 – on the eve of the 48th birthday of her sister-in-law Princess Marie – the Palace has in fact unveiled a photo where the fifty-year-old royal, her braided hair and sunglasses pulled up on her head, stands next to a man, whom she holds by the shoulder and who is none other than her father John Dalgleish Donaldson, aged 82.
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Legend tells us that both posed in front of the lens of Prince Vincent, the youngest of the two sons of the royal couple who has just celebrated his 13th birthday with his twin Princess Josephine. It is also specified that this portrait was captured during Mary’s last stay with her family in Australia, last December.
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Mary was born in Tasmania and met Prince Frederik in Sydney
Mary Donaldson was born on February 5, 1972 in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, an Australian state located about 200 km from the east coast of mainland Australia. The youngest of four children of John Dalgleish Donaldson, a professor of applied mathematics, and his wife Henrietta Clark Donaldson – two Scots who had emigrated to Australia in November 1963, a few months after their marriage in Edinburgh – she had, at 25 years old, the pain of losing his mother whose death occurred during a heart operation.
And it was in Sydney, on the sidelines of the 2000 Summer Olympics, that she met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and their love story was born. Which materialized with their marriage on May 14, 2004 in Copenhagen. Almost 20 years ago.
Mary on May 14, 2004, the day of her wedding in Copenhagen to Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, on the arm of her Scottish father John Dalgleish Donaldson SIPA / © VILLARD/NIVIERE/MEIGNEUX