Christian IX
Christian IX was King of Denmark from 15 November 1863 until his death in 1906. From 1863 to 1864, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg.
A younger son of Frederick William, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Christian grew up in the Duchy of Schleswig as a prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a junior branch of the House of Oldenburg which had ruled Denmark since 1448. Although having close family ties to the Danish royal family, he was originally not in the immediate line of succession to the Danish throne. Following the early death of his father in 1831, Christian grew up in Denmark and was educated at the Military Academy of Copenhagen. After unsuccessfully seeking the hand of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom in marriage, he married his double second cousin, Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel, in 1842.
In 1852, Christian was chosen as heir presumptive to the Danish throne in light of the expected extinction of the senior line of the House of Oldenburg. Upon the death of King Frederick VII in 1863, Christian acceded to the throne as the first Danish monarch of the House of Glücksburg.
The beginning of his reign was marked by the Danish defeat in the Second Schleswig War and the subsequent loss of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg which made the king immensely unpopular. The following years of his reign were dominated by political disputes, for Denmark had only become a constitutional monarchy in 1849 and the balance of power between the sovereign and parliament was still in dispute. In spite of his initial unpopularity and the many years of political strife, in which the king was in conflict with large parts of the population, his popularity recovered towards the end of his reign, and he became a national icon due to the length of his reign and the high standards of personal morality with which he was identified.
Christian's six children with Louise married into other European royal families, earning him the sobriquet "the father-in-law of Europe". Among his descendants are King Frederik X, King Philippe of Belgium, King Harald V of Norway, Grand Duke Guillaume V of Luxembourg, King Charles III of the United Kingdom, and King Felipe VI of Spain.
Early life
Birth and family
Christian IX was born between 10 and 11 a.m. on 8 April 1818 at the residence of his maternal grandparents, Gottorf Castle, near the town of Schleswig in the Duchy of Schleswig, at the time a fief under the Crown of Denmark. Born as a prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, he was the fourth son of Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, and Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel. He was named after his mother's cousin Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark, the later King Christian VIII, who was also his godfather. Together with his wife, Caroline Amalie of Augustenborg, he had traveled from Augustenborg to Gottorp so that he could hold his godson at the christening, which was held at the end of May in the chapel of Gottorp Castle.File:Prins Vilhelm 1785-1831.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Prince Christian's father Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, from 1825 Duke of Glücksburg
Prince Christian's father was the head of the ducal house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, a junior male branch of the House of Oldenburg. The family descended from King Christian III of Denmark's younger son, John the Younger, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, whose grandson Duke August Philipp severed his ties with Denmark and emigrated to Germany where he acquired the manor of Haus Beck in Westphalia, after which the lineage was named Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck. His sons and their descendants went into Prussian, Polish and Russian service, until his great-great-grandson, Prince Christian's father, again went into Danish military service, where he was stationed in Holstein. It was there that he had met and married Prince Christian's mother, who was a daughter of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, an originally German prince, who, however, had grown up at the Danish court and had married King Frederick V's youngest daughter, Princess Louise of Denmark. Prince Charles had made a career in Denmark, where he was a Danish field marshal and Royal Governor of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
Through his father, Prince Christian was thus a direct male-line descendant of King Christian III of Denmark and an agnatic descendant of Hedvig of Holstein, mother of King Christian I of Denmark, who was the "semi-Salic" heiress of her brother Adolf of Schauenburg, last Schauenburg duke of Schleswig and count of Holstein. As such, Prince Christian was eligible to succeed in the twin duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, but not first in line. Through his mother, he was thus a great-grandson of Frederick V, great-great-grandson of George II of Great Britain and a descendant of several other monarchs, but had no direct claim to any European throne.
Childhood
Initially, the young prince grew up with his parents and many brothers and sisters at his maternal grandparents' residence at Gottorf Castle, the habitual seat of the royal governors of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. However, in 1824, the dowager duchess of Glücksburg, widow of Frederick Henry William, the last duke of the elder line of the house Schleswig-Holstein-Sønderborg-Glücksburg, who had himself died in 1779, died. Glücksburg Castle, located a little south of Flensburg Fjord, not far from city of Flensburg, was now empty, and on 6 July 1825, Duke Friedrich Wilhelm was appointed Duke of Glücksburg by his brother-in-law, King Frederick VI of Denmark. Duke Friedrich Wilhelm subsequently changed his title to Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and thus founded the younger Glücksburg line.Subsequently, the family moved to Glücksburg Castle, where Prince Christian was raised with his siblings under their father's supervision. The Duke wrote to a friend: However, Duke Friedrich Wilhelm died of a cold that had developed into pneumonia at the age of just 46 on 17 February 1831 and, at the Duke's own discretion, scarlet fever, which had previously affected two of his children. His death left the duchess widowed with ten children and no money. Prince Christian was twelve years old when his father died.
Education
Following the early death of his father, King Frederick VI, together with Prince William of Hesse-Philippstal-Barchfeld, a close friend of the Duke, became legal guardians of Prince Christian and his nine siblings. That same year, Prince Christian wanted to be educated as a naval officer, but during King Frederick VI's visit to Gottorp in 1831, shortly after Duke Wilhelm's funeral, the king agreed with his mother that Prince Christian would be sent to Copenhagen to receive an army officer training. Subsequently, in 1832, the year after his father's death, the 14-year-old Prince Christian moved to Copenhagen to be educated at the Land Cadet Academy, where he stayed at the house of Colonel Linde, the head of the Land Cadet Academy. He received private lessons at the academy and was rarely with the other cadets. On the other hand, the sonless royal couple took good care of the boy, as Queen Marie was his mother's sister and King Frederick VI his mother's cousin. Also, in 1838, Prince Christian's eldest brother, Duke Karl of Glücksborg, married the king and queen's youngest daughter, Princess Vilhelmine Marie, which further strengthened the bonds between them.In 1835, Prince Christian was confirmed in the Garrison Church in Copenhagen. The following year, after completing his military education, he was appointed rittmeister at the Royal Horse Guards and was then housed in the Royal Horse Guards Barracks by Frederiksholms Kanal in central Copenhagen. There he lived under simple conditions until King Frederick VI in 1839 granted him a home in the Yellow Palace, an 18th century town house at 18 Amaliegade, immediately adjacent to the Amalienborg Palace complex, the principal residence of the Danish royal family in the district of Frederiksstaden in central Copenhagen, where he came to live until 1865.
From 1839 to 1841, Prince Christian studied constitutional law and history with his half-cousin Prince Frederick William of Hesse-Kassel at the University of Bonn in Germany. It was there that in December 1839 he received the news of the death of his benefactor King Frederick VI and the accession of his mother's cousin, King Christian VIII. During the holidays he went on various excursions in Germany and also traveled to Venice. In 1841 he returned to Copenhagen. On the way home, he paid a visit to the court in Berlin, where he rejected an otherwise flattering offer from King Frederick William IV of Prussia to join the Prussian Army.
Becoming the heir presumptive
Marriage
As a young man, in 1838, Prince Christian, representing Frederick VI, attended the coronation of Queen Victoria at Westminster Abbey. During his stay in London, he unsuccessfully sought the hand of the young British queen in marriage. Even though she chose to follow her family's wishes and preferred to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the young queen had a good impression of her third cousin Prince Christian, who 25 years later would become father-in-law to her eldest son, the Prince of Wales.Instead, Prince Christian entered into a marriage that was to have great significance for his future. In 1841, he was engaged to his second cousin Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel. She was the daughter of Prince William of Hesse-Kassel, who was a Danish general and the governor of Copenhagen. Prince William was married to Christian VIII of Denmark's sister Princess Charlotte of Denmark, and Louise was thus the new king's niece and was closely related to the royal family. Like Prince Christian himself, she was a great-granddaughter of both Frederick V of Denmark and Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel, and thus his double second cousin. Their wedding was celebrated on 26 May 1842 in her parents' residence in Frederick VIII's Palace at Amalienborg. The bride and groom took their bridal tour to Kiel in the Duchy of Holstein, where they visited Prince Christian's older brother, Duke Karl of Glücksburg, and his wife, Frederick VI's daughter Princess Vilhelmine Marie, who had not been able to attend the wedding.
Louise was a wise and energetic woman who exercised a strong influence over her husband. After the wedding, the couple moved into the Yellow Palace, where their first five children were born between 1843 and 1853: Prince Frederick in 1843, Princess Alexandra in 1844, Prince William in 1845, Princess Dagmar in 1847 and Princess Thyra in 1853. The family was still quite unknown and lived a relatively modest life by royal standards.