Arriving a quarter hour late, the 36-year-old queen spent 20 minutes listening stiffly to speakers while cannons, hauled in by oxen, thundered ear-shattering volleys. Then she abruptly waved goodbye and left without uttering a single royal word. "I think there may be a language problem," said Tom Grasso, husband of Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso, as he and 60 other guests prepared to lunch with Margrethe aboard a private yacht. "A local TV newsman tried to interview her, and she looked right through him, making him feel this big," said Grasso, holding his fingers a shot glass apart.
In fact, the Cambridge-educated Margrethe speaks the Queen's English with a crisp British accent. But with strangers she is a shy monarch who chain-smokes to calm her nerves and who is accustomed to a tame Danish press. Visibly skittish about nosy questions at a Washington press conference, she refused to discuss birth control or even name her favorite American author. Asked later about royal marriages—her own to Prince Henrik, 41, is rumored to be troubled—she gave a distant nonanswer: "I have been married nine years now and that's all I can say about it."
The queen and her French prince will wrap up their visit—they are popping into eight states—with final stops in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (a former Danish possession). Their tour included a lunch at the White House and a gala performance of the Royal Danish Ballet at New York's Metropolitan Opera. There were also such unqueenly stops as a Manhattan Urban Renewal project and commencement ceremonies at Dana College in Nebraska. "I really wanted to make a point of trying to see very different parts of the United States," said the queen.
Margrethe is the youngest reigning queen of the oldest and best-connected ruling monarchy in Europe. She has blood ties to the Russian, English, Norwegian, Swedish, Belgian and Greek royal families. Daughter of Sweden's Queen Ingrid and the late King Frederik IX, Margrethe won the right to the throne at age 13 through a plebiscite which extended the line of succession to women. She is the oldest of three sisters: Benedikte, 32, married a German prince, and Anne-Marie, 29, is the exiled Greek queen. In 1967 Margrethe married diplomat Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat. They have two sons, Frederik, 8, and Joachim, who will be 7 next month.
At home in Amalienborg Palace and on her 110-acre farm, Nordgarden, Margrethe fancies blue jeans and pigtails. Friends call her "Daisy." She is a classical music buff, an artist talented enough to draw her country's 1970 Christmas seal and a strong swimmer who dislikes sailing. Feminism, however, is not one of her interests. "I don't engage myself in any particular movement," she says. "That would be reaching into politics, which I am constitutionally barred from doing—and which I am very happy not to have to do."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
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