Australian-Born Queen

Hear ye, your Royal Reporter is on the job again.

No, we’re not talking about an Australian Queen. You would be dreaming. That would be way too progressive for us humble, forelock-tugging loyal subjects of King Charles III and his very English consort, so grateful to still be under the watchful patronage of the House of Windsor.

The future King Frederik X of Denmark couldn’t find a decent woman at home, and literally went on a reconnoitre to the other end of the world, known as Down Under.  I guess it’s a compliment to Australian womanhood or some such, and to his credit apparently that there was no dating website involved.

As an arch anti-monarchist, of course I don’t want to rain on the lovely coronation parade in Copenhagen, much!  But as we proudly congratulate ourselves on the fairytale (essential cliche) rise of our home-grown Mary Donaldson of Hobart to the exalted position of Danish Queen Mary, a little nationalistic reality check is required too. 

Part of that heady ascendancy for Mary involved renouncing her Australian citizenship, so she is officially no longer an Australian. Hence the new descriptor of her as Australian-born. Surely a corollary is that she can’t be described or indeed describe herself as a proud Australian.

Converting to Lutheranism was part of the deal too, but that’s a mere bagatelle. And the Danish parliament had to pass a special ‘Mary’ law to allow a foreigner Queen. I guess that’s the kind of flexibility that kept the same family on the Danish throne for a thousand years.