Prince Consort of Denmark Henri Marie Jean André de Laborde de Monpezat, Count

Name/title: Henri Marie Jean André, Count(Comte) de Laborde de Monpezat.

As a result of his marriage, styled as HRH Prince(HKH Prins) Henrik af Danmark on 10 June 1967.

He held the office of Chancellor of the Royal Danish Orders.

Knight, Order of the Elephant of Denmark

Links:

• The Peerage
• Geneall
• HRH The Prince Consort
• Wikipedia: English Français Dansk

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Prince Henrik of Denmark, is the husband of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

Henrik was born in the French commune of Talence to the old French family the Laborde de Monpezats. Prior to his marriage with Margrethe, he worked in the diplomatic service. Henrik married Margrethe at the Church of Holmen on 10 June 1967 and became her consort when she succeeded her father, King Frederick IX, as monarch of Denmark on 14 January 1972. The couple have two sons, Crown Prince Frederik (born 1968) and Prince Joachim (born 1969).

Henrik has also published many works of poetry.

Henrik was born in Talence, Gironde, France. He is the son of André de Laborde de Monpezat (Mont-de-Marsan, 6 May 1907 – Le Cayrou, 23 February 1998) and his wife, Renée Doursenot (Périgueux, 26 October 1908 – Le Cayrou, 11 February 2001) (married religiously in Cahors, 6 January 1934 and civilly in Cahors, 22 January 1948), who was previously married firstly civilly to Louis Leuret (Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, 18 March 1881 – Saigon, South Vietnam, 29 December 1962) in Paris on 29 September 1928, from whom she divorced at the Tribunal Civil Français de Saigon on 21 September 1940. He was raised Catholic.

He spent his first five years in Hanoi (Vietnam), where his father looked after 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 (now known as INALCO). He also studied in Hong Kong in 1957 and Saigon in 1958.

After military service with the French Army in the Algerian War between 1959 and 1962, he joined the French Foreign Affairs ministry in 1962, working as a Secretary at the embassy in London from 1963 to 1967.

On 10 June 1967 he married Princess Margrethe, the heir presumptive to the Danish throne, at the Naval Church of Copenhagen. At the time of the wedding his name was Danicised to Henrik and he was created HRH Prince Henrik of Denmark. Before the wedding, the Prince converted to Lutheranism.

The Queen and Prince Henrik have two children and eight grandchildren:

Crown Prince Frederik, born on 26 May 1968 at Rigshospitalet, with Crown Princess Mary: Prince Christian, born on 15 October 2005 at Rigshospitalet Princess Isabella, born on 21 April 2007 at Rigshospitalet Prince Vincent, born on 8 January 2011 at Rigshospitalet Princess Josephine, born on 8 January 2011 at Rigshospitalet Prince Joachim, born on 7 June 1969 at Rigshospitalet, with Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg: Prince Nikolai, born on 28 August 1999 at Rigshospitalet Prince Felix, born on 22 July 2002 at Rigshospitalet Prince Joachim, with Princess Marie: Prince Henrik, born on 4 May 2009 at Rigshospitalet Princess Athena, born on 24 January 2012 at Rigshospitalet Prince Henrik's native language is French, and his second language is Danish. He also speaks fluent English, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Although he quickly learned Danish after marrying Margrethe, Danes still joke about his grasp of Danish and his thick French accent.

In 2002, Henrik left Denmark and went to stay at the couple's Château de Caïx in Cahors in southern France. The cause of his departure from Denmark was a New Year's Day reception in which his son, Crown Prince Frederik, had been appointed as host in the absence of Queen Margrethe. Henrik felt "pushed aside, degraded and humiliated" by being relegated to "third place in the royal hierarchy."

"For many years I have been Denmark's number two," he said. "I've been satisfied with that role, but I don't want to be relegated to number three after so many years." Henrik "fled" Denmark to reflect on his status in the Danish Royal Family. Queen Margrethe flew to France to meet her husband. Henrik stressed that neither his wife nor son were to blame for the incident. The Prince Consort spent three weeks in Caix, and did not appear with his wife as expected at the wedding of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, and Máxima Zorreguieta. After three weeks, Henrik returned to Denmark.

On 30 April 2008, shortly before the wedding of his younger son, Prince Joachim, to Marie Cavallier, the Queen conferred the new Danish title "Count of Monpezat" (Danish: Greve af Monpezat) on both of her sons and made it hereditary for their male-line descendants, both male and female. The Queen's private secretary Henning Fode commented, "The Queen and the Prince Consort have considered this for quite some time, and it has led to the belief that it was the right thing to do."

In fact, Henrik had mentioned this possibility as long ago as 1996, in his published memoir, "During our generation the future sovereign will perhaps receive approval to see 'Monpezat' added to the dynastic name of 'Oldenburg-Glücksburg'". While being interviewed by the French weekly Point de Vue in October 2005, Henrik raised the issue shortly after the birth of Crown Prince Frederik's first son, Prince Christian, who is expected to inherit the Danish crown one day: "It also makes him very proud and happy that Monpezat will be added to this small grandson's future name as Prince of Denmark. 'It is a great joy for me that his French roots will also be remembered.'" Although no announcement was made at that time, Prince Christian does now include this part of his French grandfather's surnames among his hereditary titles. The grant does not extend this Danish comital title to Henrik himself.

In her New Year's speech to the Danish people on 31 December 2015, Queen Margrethe announced that Prince Henrik would 'wind down' and give up most of his official duties with immediate effect from 1 January 2016. On 14 April 2016, Prince Henrik renounced the title of Prince Consort, which he had been given in 2005.

In August 2017, he announced that he won't be buried next to his wife in the Roskilde Cathedral, where Danish royals have been buried since 1559. Queen Margrethe who had a specially designed sarcophagus made for the couple, accepts Henrik's decision, according to a royal house spokeswoman.

On 6 September 2017, it was announced that Prince Henrik is suffering from dementia.

Henrik has written many poems in his native language French, some of which have been published in the poetry collections; Chemin faisant (1982), Cantabile (2000), Les escargots de Marie Lanceline (2003), Murmures de vent (2005), Frihjul (Roue-Libre, 2010), Fabula (2011), La part des anges (2013), and Dans mes nuits sereines (2014). The symphonic suite Cantabile by Frederik Magle is based on Henrik's poetry collection Cantabile and was premiered by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra at two concerts celebrating Henrik's 70th and 75th birthdays in 2004 and 2009.

Henrik has said about writing poetry (translated from Danish): "I see poetry as an opportunity for immersion in a superficial time dominated by news and entertainment that makes us rootless and restless. Poetry takes us closer to the true nature of the world, in poetry we can approach the eternal questions such as love, loneliness and death."

The Laborde de Monpezat family style themselves as counts, though their right to the use of that title is disputed: The Encyclopédie de la fausse noblesse et de la noblesse d'apparence (English: Encyclopedia of False and Seeming Nobility) states that Prince Henrik's ancestor, Jean Laborde, received royal letters patent of ennoblement in 1655, conditional on his reception as a noble in the Estates of the province of Béarn where his lands were located. But this condition was never fulfilled, as the Estates refused Laborde's petitions in 1703 and again in 1707. The family's surname was "Monpezat" by the time of the French Revolution, without title, until 14 July 1860, when it was changed by imperial decree to "de Laborde-Monpezat", and legally changed again on 19 May 1861 to "de Laborde de Monpezat". Although the comital title has been used by the family as if it were a titre de courtoisie, traditionally the royal court and French society accepted such titles when used by genuinely noble families. Since the title was assumed by Henrik's ancestor prior to the twentieth century, it is possible he was unaware of the misuse until his family's history was scrutinized by genealogists after his engagement. Henrik's 1996 autobiography acknowledges the unsuccessful ennoblement.

Danish law never required that royal spouses be of aristocratic origin. Nonetheless, no prince's marriage to a woman who lacked male-line descent from royalty or titled nobility had been accepted as dynastic by the sovereign in the course of Denmark's history as a hereditary monarchy, prior to the marriage of the heir to the throne, Princess Margrethe, in June 1967. Moreover, six months later Margrethe's first cousin, Prince Ingolf of Denmark, married an untitled commoner and was demoted to a count, and another cousin, Prince Christian of Denmark, also wed a Dane, Anne Dorte Maltoft-Nielsen, in 1971, forfeiting his dynastic position.

Decades later, Henrik's sons Frederik and Joachim both married foreign commoners without any serious doubt being raised about their continued eligibility for the throne.