The prince of Denmark plans to make a formal protest with his corpse.
Prince Henrik, who has been married to the country’s queen for 50 years, says he doesn’t want to be buried with her.
“It’s no secret that the prince for many years has been dissatisfied with his role and the title he has been awarded in the Danish monarchy,” royal spokesperson Lene Balleby told Danish tabloid BT. “The dissatisfaction has grown more and more in recent years.”
The prince consort has repeatedly asked to be called “king consort.”
“For the prince, the decision not to bury beside the queen is the natural consequence of not having been treated equally in relation to his spouse — not having the title and function he desires,” Balleby said.
It has not been announced where the 83-year-old prince will be buried.
His wife, 77-year-old Queen Margrethe II, is head of state, but much like in Canada, the monarchy in Denmark is a constitutional institution.
When she passes, she will be laid to rest in a glass sarcophagus carried by silver elephants located in Roskilde Cathedral, in the city of Roskilde, about 35 kilometres outside of Copenhagen.
The prince hasn’t been happy with his title, nor his position in the monarchy for years.
“The first hint came around his 50th birthday when he said on TV, he found it difficult to ask his wife for pocket money for cigarettes,” Stephanie Surrugue, who wrote a biography of the prince, told the New York Times.
“He doesn’t feel treated as part of the ruling couple,” she explained.
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Prince Henrik has said the fact that women who marry kings become queens, while men who marry queens aren’t titled kings, is an expression of gender inequality.
He retired last year and renounced his title of Prince Consort. Since then, he has participated in very few official duties and instead, spent much of his time at his private vineyard in France, although he is still married to the queen and they officially live together.
But associate professor Karen Sjørup from the department of social sciences and business at Roskilde University told Danish newspaper Politiken his argument is “completely ridiculous.”
“The royal house is not based on gender equality, but on the inheritance. Our Equality Act does not apply to the royal house.”
“The Danes do not buy his argument,” Jes Fabricius Møller, associate professor of the Saxo Institute at Copenhagen University, told Politiken.
“He wants a status derived from his spouse’s job. This is not what we understand about gender equality in Denmark.”
Henrik, formerly Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpezat, renounced his French citizenship to become Danish. He met the crown princess Margrethe while he was stationed in London as a diplomat.
The two have two children, Prince Frederik and Joakim.
— With a file from Reuters
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