Brianna Parkins: How the Queen of Denmark met her prince down the pub

The newly crowned Australian-born Queen of Denmark has a lot to answer for. Mary Donaldson set unrealistic expectations for the quality of men you could meet on a night out by encountering the Crown Prince of Denmark at a Sydney pub. Then she married him, becoming officially known as “her royal highness the Crown Princess of Denmark,” which means no one can top her at any high school reunion with that title written on her name badge. She might need a second now that she’s “her majesty the Queen of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat” after the planned abdication of her mother-in-law and ascension of her husband.

The Australians have a similar attitude to royals as the Irish – half crankily begrudging their existence, half fascinated by all their scandals, glamour and general weirdness. But Mary, or “our Mary” as she is called by the nation’s mothers, is beloved by all because we love to see a local girl done heaps good.

For the generations of Gen X and Millennial women, she is the one who made us all think you can meet a prince in a pub. And not even a particularly fancy pub either. Mary and King Frederik X met during the 2000 Olympics when she had the relatable CV of an average 28 year old – a law and commerce graduate working in a real estate firm and renting a place in Bondi Junction. She allegedly brought the Fred, the crown prince at the time, back to the little terrace she shared with flatmates at some point and that was it – a wedding, a coronation, four kids and some Danish lessons later and the couple are still going strong and enjoy the affection of their subjects.

Mary didn’t know Fred when they met, so it remains a mystery about how he let slip about the whole being a crown prince thing and if she believed him.

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Sydney women are used to being told all sorts of things from smooth-tongued tourists trying to get the shift, and without any word of it being true. If they were all being honest on a night out then the GAA wouldn’t be able to function with senior club panels empty due to every Irish lad in Bondi supposedly playing for the county. It’s surprising Ireland can even field a side for the Six Nations given how many of its would-be star rugby players were forced into early retirement by an injury and are now sitting in Sydney’s smoking areas.

But Mary believed Fred, they started dating long distance, she took lessons on deportment, Danish history, Danish language and then she married her prince.

However, as tempting as it is to believe “marrying up” is simply a matter of polishing your sow’s ear self into a silk purse via etiquette classes, DuoLingo and learning how to walk with a book on your head, it’s probably not going to happen.

This is a problem given the value and pressure society has traditionally placed on women in particular to “marry up” to “improve their station in life”. The theme of “girl doing well for herself by snagging a rich man” fuels some of our most loved and culturally important texts like Pygmalion/My Fair Lady; the collected works of Jane Austen; The Sound of Music; Mills and Boon novels; The King and I; Vanity Fair; Crazy Rich Asians; How to Marry a Millionaire; Bridgerton; The Real Housewives franchise; La Boheme; and the most revered of all – Fran Drescher’s The Nanny. The repeated narrative from art, entertainment, “femininity coaches” on TikTok and the odd granny stresses that you need to marry into money and you could do it if you just gussy yourself up enough to fit in.

There is a couple of problems with this – the first is it tells women to shape their lives, looks, taste to meet the approval of a hypothetical spouse and to embark on relentless self-improvement until they become “good enough” for someone with more money than them. The second problem is that, according to research, the Cinderella story is unlikely to happen.

An Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) project in 2012 found that despite having more choice than ever when it comes to partners, British men and women increasingly married within their same social class. Nick Pearce, IPPR director, said the results showed “how social class has tightened its grip on marriage in Britain... as well educated, higher earners marry each other and then pass on the fruits of their combined success to their children”.

Queen Mary didn’t just catch her husband’s eye on the way to the loo that night

A 2014 paper published by the US National Bureau of Economics Research found a rise in assortative mating, meaning a man was more likely to marry someone with similar education or employment status, even taking into account the rise of college attendance since the 1960s. A 2018 study of data from Germany and Denmark found similar results.

The increase in people marrying from within their social class could be partly put down to more women in third-level education and in the workforce. Instead of education helping women to “marry up”, a 2017 study says it might be more beneficial to men. Research from the University of Kansas found the increase of highly-educated women decreased their chances of “marrying up” while increasing men’s chances of improving their economic well being through marriage. Women used to receive more “financial return” in education because it yielded a high return in the marriage market, the research says. “However, this female advantage has deteriorated over time despite women’s substantial progress in education and labour-market performance.”

To add to that, even further killing the dream of meeting a prince in a pub, Queen Mary didn’t just catch her husband’s eye on the way to the loo that night. She was attending “an exclusive private dinner party” organised by her flatmate’s well-connected friend for a gaggle of visiting European royals attending the Olympics.

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“I’m sorry to break everybody’s hearts, but it’s not always about randomly bumping into princes in pubs,” clarified her bridesmaid and mate Amber Petty.

So marrying a prince is still more about proximity than polishing your vowels to “the rain in Spain”.