Frederik IX of Denmark
Frederik IX was king of Denmark from April 1947 to January 1972, the sailor king, the naval officer with the tattoos who conducted the royal orchestra and had three daughters and no son. His reign is remembered for the constitution of 1953 that let the eldest of them succeed him. That is why Denmark has had a queen for most of the years since. He was the son of Christian X, trained in the navy from 1917 to a rear-admiral's rank, which he took seriously. He was tattooed on the arms and chest in the manner of the lower deck, which the country found endearing. He had spent the occupation as crown prince beside his father, whom the Germans watched and he did not much resemble. The constitution of 5 June 1953 was the reign's work. It abolished the upper house, the Landsting, lowered the voting age, wrote the ombudsman into the law, brought Greenland into the kingdom as a county, and, by a separate act of succession approved in the same referendum, let daughters inherit when there were no sons. That meant Margrethe, then thirteen. The country approved it by a majority large enough to clear the constitution's own high bar for amendment. That had been the difficulty. The twenty-five years were the welfare state's, under Social Democratic governments for most of them. There were the membership of NATO from 1949, which he had favoured, the Nordic Council, the European Free Trade Association, and the application to the Common Market, which the referendum of October 1972 approved nine months after his death. The king's part in them was to open the parliament, receive the ministers, and conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra, which he did well enough that the recordings are still sold. He married Ingrid of Sweden, the daughter of Gustaf VI Adolf, in 1935. That joined the two thrones. The daughters were Margrethe, who reigned for fifty-two years, Benedikte, and Anne-Marie, who became queen of Greece in 1964 and lost the throne in 1973. He was born at Sorgenfri. He died at Copenhagen after a heart attack in January 1972, at seventy-two. He is buried outside Roskilde cathedral, not in it, by his own wish, in a grave the public can walk up to. That was the kind of king he had decided to be.
- Lived: 1899 CE – 1972 CE
- Nationality: Danish
- Roles: king, monarch
