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Denmark's Prince Henrik wanted to be king. So he'll protest for eternity

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Copenhagen: Prince Henrik of Denmark has been married to the country's queen for 50 years, and he has been carrying a grudge the whole time. Now, in an act of protest, he says he no longer wishes to be buried by her side, the Royal Danish House announced Thursday.

Behind the decision lies decades of frustration over what he sees as unequal treatment.

Henrik, now 83, married Queen Margrethe II in 1967, and was later bestowed with the title of the queen's prince consort. But what he really wanted was to be king - or in this case "king consort."

"It is no secret that the prince for many years has been unhappy with his role and the title he has been awarded in the Danish monarchy," the Royal Danish House's director of communications, Lene Balleby, told the tabloid newspaper BT. "This discontent has grown more and more in recent years."

"For the prince, the decision not to buried beside the queen is the natural consequence of not having been treated equally to his spouse - by not having the title and role he has desired," Balleby added.

The prince has not announced where he would like to be buried instead.

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Queen Margrethe II, 77, serves as Denmark's head of state and is responsible for signing all laws passed by Parliament. But the country's legislative powers have been in the hands of elected governments since 1849.

Henrik's complaints about his title and position have increased in recent years, but he also made his grievance known publicly more than three decades ago when he complained about not receiving his own annual salary.

"The first hint came around his 50th birthday when he said on TV he found it difficult to ask his wife for pocket money for cigarettes," said Stephanie Surrugue, a journalist and author of a biography of the prince, titled "Loner."

He eventually did receive a salary and staff, but he never got the title he wanted.

The Danish court's reasoning is that the practice is in line with that of other European royal families, but that has not mollified Henrik.

"He has said he loves his wife, but has difficulties with the queen as an institution," Surrugue said. His ambition is not to be crowned regent, she said, but in many ways "he doesn't feel treated as part of the ruling couple."

"That's what his protest is about," she said.

The prince retired from most of his official duties last year and is rarely seen in public. Balleby said that the couple's marriage and the queen's work would not be affected by Henrik's change of plans on his final resting place.

Denmark has long prided itself as a nation that has for centuries aimed for gender equality, but Henrik's call for equal rights has often been mocked.

"It's absolutely ridiculous," Karen Sjoerup, an associate professor at Roskilde University who specializes in gender issues, told Politiken, a daily newspaper, of the prince's demands for gender equality. "The court is not based on equality, but on the right of inheritance," she said. "The law on gender equality does not apply to the royal court."

When Henrik married Margrethe, who was then crown princess, he was a successful diplomat in the French foreign service and a member of the nobility.

In marrying Margrethe, he exchanged his career for an undefined role as the queen's spouse - a first in the history of Denmark, where all previous monarchs had been male aside from a 14th-century queen, who was married to the king of Norway.

For at least seven years, Bjorn Norgaard, a sculptor, has been working on a glass sarcophagus carried by silver elephants that is designed to hold both the queen and the prince in Roskilde Cathedral after their deaths.

But now, the royal court said, when the time comes the queen will rest there alone.

The New York Times