A year after waving from a balcony to huge crowds alongside her newly minted monarch husband Frederik, Australian-born Danish Queen Mary has hit her stride and is wielding considerable clout behind palace walls.
“Mary and I could not have wished for a better start as king and queen,” King Frederik said in his first live TV address on New Year’s Eve.
And it appears Danes and royal watchers agree.
Mary and Frederik each received 85 per cent approval ratings in a December opinion poll of 1004 respondents for Danish broadcaster DR.
Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the high-stakes royal succession, with chain-smoking octogenarian Queen Margrethe having been adored by the public for 52 years before her shock abdication.
“It has been a very successful year for both the king and queen ... they haven’t made any mistakes,” royal house expert Thomas Larsen told AAP.
“(Mary) is a powerbroker... she is a crucial adviser to the king.”
Trine Villemann, the author of 1015 Copenhagen K: Mary's Dysfunctional In-Laws, characterised 52-year-old Mary as the “backbone” of her husband’s reign.
“She’s King Mary. She’s the power behind the throne. Nothing gets done at Amalienborg Palace without Mary (or her staff’s input),” Ms Villemann told AAP.
“Here we have this girl from Tasmania, a completely ordinary normal girl who has not been afraid to seize power. It’s a really successful feminist story.”
Frederik, 56, is “doing quite well” in the top job, Ms Villemann said - a far cry from the five-year-old boy who once went missing before a nanny found him “sobbing his heart out” and screaming: “I don’t want to be king".
The Tasmanian commoner has been a godsend for the next generation.
Ms Villemann cited 19-year-old Crown Prince Christian – who appears far more comfortable with his fate than his father was at the same age – as “one of Mary’s greatest achievements”.
“Mary always made sure that Christian saw and learned from what his parents were doing, which means today we have this very self-assured, confident crown prince,” she said.
The royal couple are "extremely energetic" and hard-working, Mr Larsen said, noting they hosted state visits by the Icelandic and Egyptian presidents and had official trips to Sweden, Norway, Greenland and Germany.
Mary also travelled solo to Brazil – pulling faces as she realised ants were on the lunch menu.
Cheering on Danish athletes at the Paris Olympics gave the royal couple a chance to reminisce about how it all began – a Sydney pub encounter during the 2000 Games. (Incidentally, Mary made a sneaky visit to say ‘G’day’ to the Aussie team at the Paris athletes' village.)
Despite celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary in 2024, tabloid speculation swirled about their marriage.
Months before he became king, Frederik was photographed in Madrid with Mexican socialite Genoveva Casanova. The palace refused to comment, and Casanova categorically denied reports of an affair.
A year on from the episode, Mary made a private visit to Australia to attend her niece’s wedding in Tasmania and hit the beach in Sydney.
The marriage is “rock solid,” Ms Villemann said.
Frederik reflected on his domestic life in a memoir called The King’s Word, published days after he ascended the throne.
“I love marriage, my wife, our children and the whole happy base that arises for the people who manage to stay together and persevere,” the father-of-four said.
Copenhagen shop assistant and royal fan Ida Hansen thinks the royal couple should hold hands more often.
“Why have they stopped being physical with each other in public? It only sparks the rumours,” she told AAP.
But hand-holding is not an accurate barometer, Ms Villemann insisted.
“I think what you are seeing these days is Mary trying to be the perfect queen. And in her book the perfect queen is not holding hands with her king husband all the time,” she said.
One thing is certain: Australia retains a special place in Mary’s heart.
Palace social media photos show her homeland roots: dresses by Australian fashion labels Zimmerman and MOSS & SPY, a kangaroo Christmas ornament and Tasmanian pine being incorporated into a recycled wood dining table.
