Having abdicated the Danish throne after 52 years on exactly the same date she became queen – and announced her surprise decision live on TV with just two weeks’ notice – there’s little doubt Margrethe II has a sense of drama.
After signing the abdication declaration last weekend, she left the room with tears in her eyes and the words: “God bless the king.”
Now the popular royal is to be given The Crown treatment when she becomes the subject of a fictional series about her life.
The TV show – working title Af Guds nåde (By the grace of God) – is being developed by Borgen maker Sam Productions and Danish broadcaster TV2. It will be set at Amalienborg palace, the royals’ official residence in Copenhagen, starting with Margrethe’s birth in 1940.
Its producers say it will tell the story from the perspective of members of the royal family and also royal court employees, and that the series will “embrace the royal family for better or worse”. Above all, they said, it is the story of “a girl and her family”.
The announcement comes less than a week after Margrethe, Denmark’s longest serving monarch, stepped down aged 83 to hand over the throne to her 55-year-old son, King Frederik X, and his wife, the new Queen Mary. She was the first Danish monarch in nearly 900 years to abdicate voluntarily.
Tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Copenhagen to bid her farewell on Sunday as she went to the Danish parliament at Christiansborg palace to stand down.
Af Guds nåde has been in the works for a year-and-a-half and is expected to be released next year.
The show’s executive producer, Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen, who was a producer on the 2012 Oscar-nominated drama A Royal Affair starring Alicia Vikander, said the former queen “has been part of the history of all Danes”.
“Regardless of whether you are royalist or not, and no matter how you spin it, she has a huge meaning for us as a people, in our little duck pond, but also out in the world,” she said.
“It was not on the cards for the little princess to be queen, but times changed and she became a great queen. Now is the time to tell the magnificent story, which can give us an insight we have not had before.”
Sam Productions declined to say how the series would compare to the hit Netflix series about the British royal family, divulging only that “it will be a grand story about Queen Margrethe and the historic events since her birth in 1940”.
Margrethe was born a princess in Nazi-occupied Denmark to her parents, who were then the crown prince and crown princess and later became King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid. Her cousin is Sweden’s king, Carl XVI Gustaf.
After becoming heir to the throne as a teenager, after an alteration to the constitution to permit female succession, she became queen at 31 after the death of her father.
Pernille Bech Christensen, a senior executive producer at TV2, said she hoped the series would help illuminate viewers on Danish identity, describing it as “an important story about all of us Danes”.
She added: “It is the story of a family, of an institution and of an anachronism that struggles to maintain its relevance in a modern age. The royal house is something that all Danes share, regardless of whether you are a supporter, an opponent or just somewhere in between. And it is still a rallying point for the Danes.
“It is TV2’s hope that the series can contribute to a greater understanding of the importance of the royal house to who we are as Danes, and how societal development has spread in both ways.”
