These are quotes by QMII from when she realized that she was soon to be monarch almost 52 years ago.
The thoughts that went through her head back then are fortunately not the same as those we may imagine may go through Frederik's head these days.
From the book: Under Way by Tom Buk Swienty.
This is when QMII hosted the New Year Court on behalf of Frederik IX who had fallen ill.
"Even though dad's situation didn't seem serious and I was completely untroubled at that point I still had a strange premonition in the evening during the gala dinner. I didn't say much. I still don't at that occasion. The (the royal anthem) was played and it gave a - and always does - a jolt in me, because it's so solemn. But that evening I felt like a cold chill down my back. I had a strong and nasty feeling of this not being an exception, me standing here in this role, but that it was only the beginning. I think mother too had the feeling."
Frederik IX was committed to hospital.
"Until then we had not been nervous, but now there was unfortunately good reason for that. The doctors told us that the situation was serious and of course we sensed that as well.
Dad soon became more and more distant and by now there wasn't much left of him (his mind/awareness). Then we began to realize where it went. Anne-Marie had come home and Benedikte was there as well. We visited him every day and we began to take turn sitting by his side."
"Mother was a fantastic support for me. She was simply eminent. She began to plan and prepare what was to come and was setting up even the smallest details for what was to be done. She felt good about that and it took the mind off from how colossal that we went through was. And there was a lot to prepare. Going into that process was like a time away from the sadness that dad soon wouldn't be among us anymore."
"Now I have to show dad that I can! That was the thought that settled more and more within me during the last days before his death. At the same time my though began to circle around what proverb I should have as queen and in my mind was also that I should prepare a little speech for the day I was proclaimed."
On the 14th January Frederik IX died with his family there.
"It was so quiet and peaceful in his room. Gently, very gently life slipped away from him. When he himself sensed what way it went, he understood to let go. He died around 20.30.
Of course everything jittered within us when it happened, but we were first and foremost focused on the task that lay ahead of us. Also in that situation my mother was incredibly strong and composed and she went ahead as a role model. When we stepped out of the hospital in the dark, sad January evening, she said to me: Now you must go in front."
Frederik referred to himself as the executive officer in his speech to QMII, Perhaps he refereed to this thought by QMII after the death of Frederik IX when she boarded Dannebrog for the first time:
"During the days around the death of my father and the funeral, I often thought about the mental image I had of him, the sailor, the naval officer, standing on the bridge when Dannebrog was to be sailed safely into the harbor and when he then said: I'll take it! (The rudder.)
I could identify with that situation when I became Queen. The feeling of that now it's me who is standing on the bridge and take it - not because I'm to command - but because the responsibility is mine. That's what it entails in a chief taking over the command of a ship.
I wasn't trained at sea like my father and I could of course not for real like him say: I'll take it. Yet it was perhaps only in that moment, when I was aboard Dannebrog on the spring day some months after dad's death that it dawned on me in earnest that I had become Queen.
The ship was mine."
- Frederik will of course go through the emotions of losing his mother at some point, but now he can at least focus on his grief and not the burden he has already taken over.
He'd be foolish to think that after having been a frontseat witness to the title debacle where Joachim appear to have attempted to stall her decision.
