January 17, 2024, 10:34 GMT
Updated 1 hour ago
Image source: Getty Images
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Queen Maria and King Frederik make one of their first public appearances as the new Danish monarchs
Three days after his appointment as King of Denmark, Frederik X published a book seemingly out of nowhere.
The book came as a surprise to Danes and the national media responded by hastily live-blogging it.
The King's Word promises Frederik's thoughts on topics such as Denmark's place in the world and his relationship with his wife, Queen Mary.
Frederik was crowned king on Sunday after his mother Margrethe II abdicated on New Year's Eve.
According to reports, The King's Word has already surpassed last year's bestseller on online bookstore Saxo. A Saxo spokeswoman told Danish media that within hours of the publication being announced, the book was selling 25 copies per minute.
The book costs up to 250 Danish kroner (£29; €33.50) and is around 110 pages long.
It was written with Jens Andersen, the author of Frederik's 2017 biography, and is based on interviews conducted over the last year and a half.
In one section, Frederik says that as a child he had difficulty accepting that he would become King of Denmark, saying he “just wanted to be like all the other boys my age.”
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Copies of The King's Book flew off the shelves when news of its publication broke Wednesday morning
“I remember my 18th birthday as something akin to the end of the world. It felt like everything that was fun and exciting was now coming to an end. Luckily that wasn’t the case,” says Frederik.
Later in the book, the king also reportedly talks about his faith, saying that he and his Australian-born wife pray with their children every evening.
He also talks about family life, saying that his father – Prince Henrik of Denmark, who died in 2018 – was “very patriarchal” and “tried to pass this pattern on to his two sons”.
Frederik says: “I have learned a lot from having a wife who reminds me from time to time that of course I am not always right and that my words are not automatically believed just because I am a man in the house. “”
An estimated 300,000 people turned out on Sunday to watch King Frederik X succeed his mother as Danish monarch.
Blinking back tears, Frederik told a cheering crowd outside Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen that he hoped to become “a unifying king” in the future.
His mother Margarethe II abdicated after 52 years on the throne.