It was a basic Australian love story, set in a Sydney pub: Woman meets boy. Woman marries boy. Woman lives fortunately ever after.
However when Mary Donaldson, then a 28-year-old from Tasmania working in actual property, met “Fred” — often known as Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark — on the Slip Inn in September 2000, she was all of a sudden plunged into a wholly totally different fairy story.
“The primary time that we met or shook fingers, I didn’t know he was the crown prince of Denmark,” Mary mentioned in a 2003 interview. “It was maybe half an hour or so later that somebody got here as much as me and mentioned, ‘Are you aware who these persons are?’”
This month, greater than 23 years later, Mary — now Crown Princess Mary, aged 51 — will change into Denmark’s subsequent queen, after Queen Margrethe II introduced her abdication in her New Yr’s Day speech. Mary’s husband will change into King Frederik X.
She has change into internationally acclaimed amongst royal watchers for her distinctive sense of non-public type and her outspoken dedication to progressive causes, together with local weather change advocacy and sustainability, in addition to the rights of ladies and kids.
In Denmark, she is adored. And in her native Australia, the unlikely story of their Tasmanian princess has for many years prompted frothy headlines and intensive protection of their homegrown member of the Danish royal household and her much-vaunted wardrobe.
In truth, Mary has lengthy since renounced her Australian (and British, by way of her Scottish dad and mom) citizenship. She retains solely the slightest hint of her authentic accent and speaks fluent Danish. However in Australia, she is widely known as a neighborhood treasure.
“Princess Mary is a superb ambassador for Tasmania,” Jeremy Rockliff, the premier of Tasmania, mentioned, in a current assertion. He added: “We’re so proud.”
Her forthcoming accession to the throne has solely heightened that curiosity and satisfaction: One current headline on the entrance web page of The Australian, a nationwide broadsheet newspaper, learn: “All hail Mary, our flannie queen residing a fairytale dream.” (“Flannie” is Australian slang for the informal flannelette shirts, typically worn on farms and work websites, that Mary favored as a youthful individual.)
The British press’s effort to recast her as “Mary, Queen of Scots,” citing her Scottish roots, has prompted scathing commentary in Australia. “Not content material with their very own royal household,” The Melbourne Age newspaper mentioned this week, “British newspapers are attempting to say Denmark’s subsequent queen, Crown Princess Mary, as considered one of their very own.”
King Charles III, the British head of state, can also be the Australian monarch, so the British royal household is technically Australian. However most Australians really feel at finest ambivalent about this: Solely 35 % of Australians are dedicated to retaining a British monarch in the long run, in accordance with a current ballot.
However towards Mary, who’s seen as relatable and down-to-earth, that republican bent doesn’t apply. “Mary’s relentless abjuration of drama, her enthusiastic dedication to causes within the public curiosity and her really uncommon championing of the LGBTQ+ group in Denmark and past” attraction even to fervent anti-monarchists, the Australian commentator Van Badham wrote in a current Guardian column.
After which there may be the inconceivable again story. When Mary and Frederik met, Frederik was visiting Sydney for the Olympic Video games. One of many folks with him requested an Australian pal to affix them on the pub. The pal introduced her sister, who introduced her personal pal who introduced his roommate, Mary.
“From the very first second that we began speaking,” Mary mentioned of Frederik in a 60 Minutes Australia interview in 2003, “we by no means actually stopped speaking.” She gave him her quantity, or so the story goes, and he rang her the following day. A secret, then not-so-secret, relationship adopted, culminating of their marriage in 2004.
The daughter of a arithmetic professor and an govt assistant, Mary was born in Hobart, the capital metropolis of Tasmania, Australia’s southern island state. “I used to be a T-shirt-and-shorts lady, recognized to go barefoot,” she informed the Monetary Instances in a current interview. She attended public faculty, rode horses, performed sports activities and had an in any other case unremarkable upbringing, earlier than finding out regulation and commerce in faculty and transferring to Melbourne after which Sydney to pursue a profession in promoting.
“I don’t recall wishing that someday I’d be a princess,” she informed reporters shortly after the couple grew to become engaged in 2003. “I wished to be a veterinarian.”
Amongst Danes, who applaud her diligence, professionalism and Danish language abilities, Mary is enormously well-liked, with an 85 % approval score outstripping many different members of the royal household, in accordance with a current ballot commissioned for Denmark’s public radio station, DR.
“She has appeared very skilled as a Crown Princess from Day 1,” mentioned Lars Hovbakke Sorensen, an knowledgeable on the Danish royal household. “That is one thing that Danes place nice significance on — the truth that they’ll see the royal household works lots and engages within the issues they’re concerned in.“
He added: “One may say that she has been so well-liked that it has even been obligatory in recent times to downplay her position a bit. So she wouldn’t danger overshadowing the crown prince, who’s the one destined to be the reigning monarch in some unspecified time in the future.”
Australians additionally love Mary’s good works. However for a lot of, Ms. Badham wrote in her column, a part of her magic lay within the sheer unlikelihood of an Australian monarch whose path to the throne started at a faintly insalubrious inner-city pub.
“It was not God that put her there,” she wrote, “however a heat Sydney night time … and the Slip Inn.”
