In the Great Hall, used by the Crown Prince Couple as a living room © Hasse Nielsen (Today, he is married to the English suspense novelist Susan Moody.) Her father is John Dalgleish Donaldson, an applied mathematics professor and Scottish fisherman’s son, who emigrated to Australia in 1963 with her late mother Henrietta, who was an executive assistant at the University of Tasmania. She was born in Hobart, Tasmania, 10,000 miles from Copenhagen, in 1972. Mary Elizabeth Donaldson was raised worlds away from the elite schools, sports or society mixers that have shaped many of her princess peers in other countries. If an appetite for public service was instilled in the Crown Princess from an early age, it came from academic circles rather than a childhood filled with high-profile fundraisers and galas. Australian by birth, she married Queen Margrethe II’s eldest son in 2004, and has been a consistent figure on the world stage ever since. The Crown Princess in front of tapestries made from Swedish photographer Miriam Bäckström’s digital images © Hasse NielsenĪs crown princess, Mary is the future queen of Denmark. “How progress happens is dependent on the personalities of the people within the royal family, and, of course, the people they are among.” “A monarchy exists in the time and the society that it is a part of, and Danes are progressive and innovative and free-thinking,” she says. As the residence of the heirs to the Danish throne, the palace is a place of representation, and the princess well understands how her choices – of hairstyle, outfit or decorative scheme – will project. She is warm but poised, ethereal but commanding, much like her surroundings. She is dressed in black trousers and an emerald-green bishop-sleeve blouse with rigorous cuffs, her mahogany hair polished and pristine. Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark enters the study from her next-door office. ![]() “We wouldn’t do this,” she advises, demonstrating an elbow bump with a forbearing smile. A courtier instructs as to the correct greeting. It’s an apt reflection of the couple’s progressive public persona, but certain formalities remain. The decor is a useful synthesis of modern (a daring scheme) and traditional (the walls retain their gilded mouldings and curly cornices frame every door). The works were commissioned by the princess and her husband, Crown Prince Frederik, in 2009, when they took over the building that bears his forefather’s name and invited 10 Danish artists to decorate its state rooms. Looking through an open door in Crown Princess Mary’s study at Frederik VIII’s Palace, the view to the adjacent salons is trippy: wild walls of colour and texture by artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Kaspar Bonnén and Morten Schelde.
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