A “fairytale kiss provided an antidote to our times”. The “ultimate fairytale ending”. Australia’s European correspondents hauled their sacks of florid cliches to Copenhagen’s Christiansborg Palace to watch the woman formerly known as Mary Donaldson become queen of Denmark.
One wonders if The Australian‘s Jacquelin Magnay and the Nine papers’ Rob Harris were struck by the coincidences in their coverage. I mean, what are the chances that both writers would be put in mind of Danish fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen? That both would be struck by the magic of Copenhagen’s “cobbled streets”? Harris added a reference to Scandi-noir favourite Borgen to complete the list of things that come up when you google “Denmark”. (Presumably there was no way to work in a reference to Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich or pioneering existentialist Søren Kierkegaard? Posh and Becks conceived their first son Brooklyn in Denmark — is there anything in that?)
Harris casts the event as “an antidote, perhaps, to months of horror headlines” that we might allow ourselves to be swept up in, “if only for a moment”. He’s filed six consecutive pieces on Queen Mary in the last week, including the insight garnered from an old interview that Mary doesn’t allow phones at the table (if you think I’m picking out the most mundane detail of the piece to be a jerk, it’s literally the headline).
But Harris and Nine are a picture of restraint compared to the Oz: “Here was the new royal couple, the first Australian-born queen, beaming and beautiful: offering a perfect wave, embraced by her husband and soon joined by her son, 18-year-old Christian, now the heir and new crown prince, and the rest of the family”.
The criteria that Magnay uses to separate a “perfect” wave from a failed one, alas, isn’t explained, but for the uninitiated, it involves moving one’s hand from side to side in a gesture of greeting. From the sounds of things, Mary nailed it.
We also learn that “the couple’s stipend of $416,000 a month from the Danish government will increase substantially”, which is nice to hear. To her credit, Magnay doesn’t go along with the many outlets that insist on referring to her as “our Mary” (the new queen renounced her Australian citizenship decades ago).
Meanwhile, over at the ABC, check out this truly unforgivable bit of clickbait: “Denmark’s King Frederik wanted a low-key ascension. But one thing he saw brought him to tears.”
Spoiler: it was the crowds. Literally the crowds gathered to celebrate his ascension to the throne.
Frankly, the Tourism Tasmania board comes away with the most dignified thing in the papers today, with this ad in the Nine papers:
