Ancestry Magazine

Editor’s Note: This article accompanies “Millennium Queens” by Stefan Ash—an online Ancestry Magazine extra.

---

Over the centuries, Engl and has been ruled by several Danish kings. The earliest occurrence of this intermarriage came in the eleventh century, when three successive Danish kings ruled Saxon England. Those kings were Canute, Harold Harefoot, and Hardicanute, who ruled from about 1017 to 1040. Whether any of them were married, and if so, to whom, history is rather vague about.English princesses have also shared the throne of Denmark, just as Danish princesses have shared the English throne. [An English princess even shared the throne of Holland (known today as the Netherlands), and her son William married Mary Stuart of England; together, William III and Mary II shared the throne of England.] For instance, recently and by a strange quirk of fate, the first and last Stuart monarchs of England were married to Danes (the last Stuart was Queen Anne (Mary II’s sister), who was married to Prince George of Denmark).

Some of the other English-Danish connections are as follows:

• In 1406, the Princess Philippa, daughter of King Henry IV of England, married King Eric VII of Denmark. This union did not affect succession because it was childless.
• In 1589, Anne of Denmark, daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, married the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and thus became Queen Consort of England on the accession of her husband, James VI of Scotland/James I of England, in 1603.
• During the Hanoverian period (1714-1901) that followed the Stuart dynasty, several spare English princesses were exported to Denmark, although all six Hanoverian monarchs married Germans. For instance, the Princess Louisa (1724-51), daughter of King George II, married King Frederick V of Denmark (1723-66) in 1743. Louisa would die at the early age of twenty-seven, having born her husband a male heir and three daughters. The son became King Christian VII (1749-1808), who married his first cousin, Princess Caroline Matilda (1751-75) in 1766. The marriage was a disaster and ended in divorce in 1772. Caroline Matilda wa s niece to her mother-in-law, being the daughter of Louisa’s brother.
• The latest and possibly the most famous marriage between the two countries was that of Princess Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925) and Edward, Prince of Wales (1841-1910) in 1863. Edward became King Edward VII. Note that Princess Alexandra’s father, King Christian IX (1818-1906), was a sixth-generation descendant of the only princess of Holland to ever marry into Denmark. (In contrast, no Danish princess ever shared the throne of Holland.)