Henrik, Prince Consort of Denmark
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
His Royal Highness The Prince Consort of Denmark (né Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpezat1, June 11, 1934), is the husband of the queen of Denmark, Margrethe II.
He was born in Talence, Gironde, France, the son of André de Laborde de Monpezat1 (d. 1998) and his wife, the former Renée Doursennot (d. 2002). He spent his first five years in French Indo-China (now Vietnam) where his father was in charge of family business interests. He returned to Hanoi in 1950, graduating from the French secondary school there in 1952. Between 1952 and 1957 he simultaneously studied law and political science at the Sorbonne, Paris, and Chinese and Vietnamese at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales. He also studied in Hong Kong in 1957 and Saigon in 1958.
After military service with the French army in Algeria between 1959 and 1962, in 1962 he joined the French Foreign Affairs ministry, working as a Secretary at the embassy in London from 1963 to 1967.
On 10 June 1967 he married Princess Margrethe, the heiress presumptive to the Danish throne. At the time of the wedding his name was Danicised to Henrik. They have two children, Crown Prince Frederik (born 26 May 1968) and Prince Joachim (born 7 June 1969).
Prince Henrik's native language is French, though he quickly learned Danish after his marriage. He also speaks fluent English, Chinese, and Vietnamese.
Publications
Prince Henrik has translated several books into Danish, as well as publishing several other books.
- In 1981, under the pseudonym H.M. Vejerbjerg he and the Queen translated Simone de Beauvoir's Tous les hommes sont mortels.
- Chemin faisant, 1982, a volume of French poems.
- Destin oblige, 1996, his memoirs as Prince Consort.
- Ikke Altid Gåselever (not always goose liver), 1999, a selection of favourite recipies.
- Cantabile, 2000, poems.
- Les escargots de Marie Lanceline, 2003.
Notes
1The Laborde de Monpezat family style themselves as "Counts", though their right to the use of the title ‘Count’ is at best, disputed: Pierre-Marie Dioudonnat's Encyclopédie de la fausse noblesse et de la noblesse d'apparence (p. 208) states that Jean de Laborde received letters of ennoblement in 1655, conditional on his reception in the Estates of the province, and this condition was never fulfilled. The "count" title is thus essentially a "courtesy title", meaning an usurped title that is allowed in social intercourse.da:Prins Henrik nl:Hendrik van Denemarken
