In the always active “it’s tough to be a guy” department, few recent
developments are more choice than the announcement, last week, by His
Royal Highness Prince Henrik of Denmark that he refuses to be buried
next to his wife, Margrethe. She is still alive and happens to be
Queen—Margrethe II, to you and me—and they have been married since 1967.
The Royal House of Denmark’s Communications Office—and who would not
believe anything coming from that source?—has assured the public that
the marriage will not be affected by the Prince’s decision.
We should probably pass up the opportunity to imagine the conversation
at the royal breakfast table the morning after the Prince announced his
refusal, but if he and the Queen are not in couples therapy already,
they probably should be. The story is rich on so many levels, but just
to start with Psych 101: there is no more classic example of passive
aggressiveness than this. “You’ll be sorry when I’m dead,” sure. We’ve
all said that. “You’ll be sorry when you’re dead”? That is on a whole
other level.
The Prince is reported to have long been aggrieved by the fact that he
has been denied the title of King. (He is from France, né Henri, and a
former diplomat.) Apparently, he would have settled for King Consort.
According to a story in the Times, when the couple were first married,
Henrik was not given a staff or a salary. He complained in a television
interview that he had to ask the Queen for money to buy cigarettes. (She
evidently did not consider him ready for joint checking.)
Eventually, he was granted a salary and a staff, but what he really
wanted was the title.
Two thoughts occur to a disinterested observer. The first is, So give
him the title already. It’s not as though the world is filled with
people more qualified to be King Consort of Denmark than Prince Henrik.
He’s the only person who wants the job. And it’s not even a job. The
Queen barely has a job. Like Britain’s Elizabeth II, to whom she is
distantly related, Margrethe rubber-stamps laws passed by the
democratically elected Danish Parliament. While waiting for these
documents to arrive, she engages in artistic pursuits, which include
illustrating the Danish translation of “The Lord of the Rings.” She also
illustrated a collection of Henrik’s poems. Titles are cheap. It costs
little to permit Henrik, whenever he feels like it, to say to himself,
with Mel Brooks, “It’s good to be the king.” What does Denmark have to
lose?
A second thought is that Denmark is one of the oldest monarchies in the
world, dating back to the rule of Gorm the Old (real name, not a Tolkien
character), who died in 958; Margrethe is the first woman to take
the throne since 1412, when the reign of Margrethe I ended. Since the
present queen’s parents, King Frederik IX and his wife, who happened to
be Princess Ingrid of Sweden, had no sons, it was necessary for the law
of succession to be changed for her. A small step for a woman but a
giant leap for womankind (European royalty division). One imagines that
the guy could find it in himself to get out of the way.
Why do European countries even have kings and queens anymore? That
question boils over into public controversy now and then, but those
countries don’t seem to get rid of them. “Tourists are money,” the Sex
Pistols pointed out in “God Save the Queen,” and that’s probably one
reason the institution hangs on. Domestically, though, members of the
royalty are celebrities. They feed the press. (Even posthumously, as the
twentieth anniversary of Diana’s death, this month, shows.) Britons
follow the quasi-dysfunctional goings on of the House of Windsor in the
same way that Americans follow Hollywood breakups. Even in Norway, the
Crown Prince, whose name is Haakon and who has a B.A. from the
University of California, Berkeley, is followed like a movie star. There
is also possibly something to be said for a public figure who has no
“base” to pander to (wouldn’t that be nice?), and who can, if so gifted
and so inspired, utter words of calm or encouragement in anxious
national moments.
On the other side, there is democracy. One of the most valuable benefits
of living in a democratic society is that people are not expected to do
what their parents did. That is not the way democratic societies
reproduce themselves. Their educational systems are designed to get
people away from their families and their neighborhoods and allow them
to get the jobs for which they are best suited and to live how and where
they choose. But Henrik, Margrethe, Haakon, and Elizabeth are doing what
they were born to do, and that is to do exactly what their parents did.
What good is all the plumage if you can never escape the gilded cage?
The consorts, it’s true, could have opted out. People who marry people
in a line of succession somewhere (and always ask before taking any
vows!) should know what they are in for. But one can feel a little sorry
for Henrik. He reminds one of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
According to the miniseries “The Crown” (and television miniseries
are really the best way for Americans to learn about the British
monarchy), he, too, gave up a career for love. The Duke (the Prince?
Which is it? How can you be a prince and a duke?) finally resigned his
formal duties as consort this month, after a career that included more
than twenty-two thousand public engagements. His last posting was a
review of a group of Royal
Marines on the grounds of Buckingham Palace, where he stood erect in pouring
rain. He is ninety-six. Let these people go!
The democratic equivalent is the first spouse. Around the same time that
Henrik was taking his revenge-by-interment, the President of France,
Emmanuel Macron, was delicately walking back a plan to make the
position of First Lady of
France official. The concept of an unelected spouse being treated as more than
any other spouse apparently put the French in mind of Marie Antoinette,
and was too much for descendants of the stormers of the Bastille.
Macron’s wife, Brigitte (who is in such good shape, very, very good
shape), was formerly a literature teacher in a lycée. She has no
political experience. But she is trapped. Anything she says will be
scrutinized and criticized, and only because she happens to be married
to a President.
Our own unelected First Ladies are granted a budget and some official
trappings, putting on them the burden of having to have a cause. In this
artificial setting, most have comported themselves creditably. The
current unhappy occupant of the non-position has, of course, identified
her cause as cyberbullying, apparently forgetting that she is married to
Tweetie Pie. Wake up, Melania. You’re trapped, too.