With the death of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022, there is only one reigning queen left: Queen Margrethe of Denmark, who has been on the throne since 1972, announced that after 52 years on the throne, she will abdicate on January 14 for her son, Crown Prince Frederik.

In addition to leaving behind a world without a single queen, at least for now, the story coming out of Denmark is multi-layered and perhaps not as straightforward as it appears. Right, wrong, or indifferent, there is clearly a tendency to cite Mulgrethe's age. Since she is 83 years old, many initially assumed that her abdication was simply to retire, to live out the remainder of her life free of the pressures of the throne. But as Queen Elizabeth herself has shown (she was 96 at the time of her death and still on the throne), monarchs do not usually do such things. Abdication usually occurs only when something deeper is going on. When a monarch ascends to the throne, he or she understands that it is generally for life. Margrethe is the first Danish monarch to abdicate in more than 500 years, People reports. She has previously indicated that she intends to reign for life, echoing comments made (and kept her word) by her third cousin, Queen Elizabeth, in a speech on her 21st birthday in 1947.

Here's a potential reason: Margrethe's heir, eldest son Frederick, was photographed with Mexican-born socialite Geneveva Casanova (a name that sounds like it came straight out of a movie) during a private trip to Madrid, Spain, in November, She had just been embroiled in a Rose Humbley-esque scandal. Casanova has denied the allegations of an affair with Frederick, and Frederick and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, have been united since the rumors broke.

But then, in a New Year's Eve speech, Margrethe shocked the world by revealing that she would step down as monarch in just two weeks. The queen may have taken this action because she feared the marriage would break up and the royal family would lose Mary," Phil Dampier, a longtime writer and royal commentator who has covered the Danish royal family for 20 years, told The Telegraph. (Mary is to Denmark what Princess Kate is to Britain. Fashionable and well-liked, Mary is somewhat like Kate.) ) "It would have caused a great deal of trouble. The Queen has always seen Mary as a tremendous asset. But to make such a sudden announcement just a few months after the story of the Crown Prince's alleged affair surfaced, it seems like a terrible coincidence. In less than two weeks, the Crown Prince and Princess will be posted together as the King and Queen. Perhaps the queen thinks that their reconciliation will save their marriage"

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In early December, shortly after news of Frederick and Casanova's rumored relationship broke, Mary traveled to her native Australia without her husband to visit her family before Christmas. Mary traveled with two of her four children.

Like Queen Elizabeth, Queen Margrethe is the longest reigning monarch in her country's history, and her decision to abdicate on January 14 has significance. In her speech, Mulgrethe said that her 52-year reign "will leave its mark on everyone - even me. 'As time goes on, it takes its toll, and the number of illnesses increases. I cannot do as many things as I used to. In February of this year, I underwent major back surgery. Thanks to the competent medical staff that took care of me, everything went well. Inevitably, this surgery led me to think about the future. I wondered if now was the right time to pass on the responsibility to the next generation. I decided that now was the right time."

Her decision may also have been influenced by the fact that Prince Christian, Frederik and Mary's eldest son and heir to the throne, just turned 18 last October and is more than ready to step into his new role as heir as an adult.

Dampier said the queen's announcement "came completely out of the blue. I think a lot of Danes are shocked." Margrethe herself said in 2016 that she had no intention of abdicating. My father did, and so did my predecessors. And so is my way of thinking," he said. According to the Daily Mail, she once claimed that "unless she becomes hopelessly ill, [abdication] is unthinkable."

According to the Tatler, Margrethe is reportedly in the habit of smoking as many as 60 cigarettes a day and has been called the "Queen of Ashtrays." (The magazine credits her with "making the Danish monarchy more popular," and The Times writes that she "reshaped the monarchy for an instinctively less pious age through a mixture of humor, modernization, and judicious public engagement.") The Tatler called Mulgrethe "the original multi-phenolic queen. The endlessly interesting Margrethe spoke five languages and oversaw costume and set design for the Netflix drama "Elengarde: leading the nation with a quiet, commanding presence," the magazine reported. In 2022, Margrethe and the Danish royal family will strip their second son, Prince Joachim's children made headlines when they stripped her of her royal title from the She is a flamboyant artist, once illustrated the Danish version of "The Lord of the Rings" (after fanmailing the idea to author J.R.R. Tolkein), is good at both watercolor and acrylic painting, studied at the London School of Economics, and wears brightly colored raincoats He is known for. [Frederick and Mary met in 2000 in a bar in Sydney, Australia, while visiting for the Summer Olympics, and became engaged in 2003, celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary this year. Often compared to a "real-life fairy tale," Mary Donaldson was an advertising executive at the time and had no idea who "Fred" was when they passed each other at the Slip Inn on that fateful day. If Mary becomes queen, she will be the first ever Australian-born queen.

And with Margrethe's abdication, the world is now without a royal-born queen, but it won't be long: Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain have female successors.