THE NORTH STAR
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. 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. 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). It’s an apt reflection of the couple’s progressive public persona, but certain formalities remain. A courtier instructs as to the correct greeting. “We wouldn’t do this,” she advises, demonstrating an elbow bump with a forbearing smile. I stick to a hands-free bow.
Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark enters the study from her next-door office. She is dressed in black trousers and an emerald-green bishop-sleeve blouse with rigorous cuffs, her mahogany hair polished and pristine. She is warm but poised, ethereal but commanding, much like her surroundings. 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. “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. “How progress happens is dependent on the personalities of the people within the royal family, and, of course, the people they are among.”
As Crown Princess, Mary is the future queen of Denmark. Australian by birth, she married Queen Margrethe II’s eldest son in 2004,
