Queen Margrethe II of Denmark — queen of denmark with roots in the Russian Empire
Margrethe was born at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen on 16 April 1940, a week after the German occupation of Denmark began, the eldest daughter of Crown Prince Frederick and Ingrid of Sweden. At the time Danish law allowed only men to inherit the throne; a constitutional change in 1953, approved by referendum, made her heir presumptive.
Her Russian descent comes through her father's mother. Queen Alexandrine of Denmark, wife of Christian X, was born a duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1879, the daughter of Grand Duke Frederick Francis III and Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia. Anastasia had been born at Peterhof in 1860, the daughter of Grand Duke Michael Nikolayevich and a granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I, and her marriage was celebrated in St Petersburg. Alexandrine's sister Cecilie became German Crown Princess, so the same Romanov grandmother stands behind both the Danish royal house and the house of Hohenzollern.
Margrethe studied philosophy at Copenhagen, prehistoric archaeology at Cambridge, and political science at Aarhus, the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics, and trained in the Danish Women's Air Force Corps. In 1967 she married the French diplomat Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, who became Prince Henrik; they had two sons, Frederik and Joachim. Henrik died in 2018. Her younger sisters are Princess Benedikte and Anne-Marie, the former Queen of Greece.
She became queen on 14 January 1972, on her father's death, proclaimed from the balcony of Christiansborg Palace by Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag, the first woman to reign in Denmark since Margaret I in the Middle Ages. Over a reign of fifty-two years she became widely known also as an artist: she illustrated the Danish edition of The Lord of the Rings, translated Simone de Beauvoir into Danish with her husband, and designed costumes and scenery for ballet, theatre and film.
On 14 January 2024, exactly fifty-two years after her accession, she abdicated in favour of her son, who became King Frederik X. Her reign was the second longest in Danish history, after that of Christian IV. Through her, the line from a grand duchess born at Peterhof continues in the Danish crown.
Tracing the roots — Peterhof (great-grandmother)
Her grandmother, Queen Alexandrine of Denmark, was the daughter of Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna, born at Peterhof in 1860 and a granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I.
Great-granddaughter of Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna (b. Peterhof 1860), granddaughter of Nicholas I, through her grandmother Queen Alexandrine and father Frederick IX.
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Peterhof (great-grandmother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.