His contemporary, Frederik, was born just a few months later in Copenhagen on 26 May 1968, to the then Princess Margrethe, oldest daughter of King Frederik IX and heir to the throne, and Prince Henrik. When his mother announced her abdication during her New Year’s Eve address in 2023, Frederik succeeded her as King of Denmark.
And it isn’t just these two Kings who share remarkably similar birthdays: their wives, too, are just months apart in age, with Mary born in February 1972, and Letizia in September that same year.
Engagements and wedding days
The then Crown Prince Felipe of Spain and Letizia Ortiz, pictured just after announcing their engagement in November 2003
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Continuing their almost eerily similar trajectories, Frederik and Felipe proposed to their wives – neither of whom had any previous connections to the royal family – in the same year, and married on almost identical dates. After meeting the TV journalist Letizia Ortiz Rocosolano in 2002, Felipe proposed to the Spanish beauty in November the following year with a 16-carat diamond ring. The couple married on 22 May 2004 in the Almudena Cathedral, in a grand ceremony that saw scores of royals from all over the world attend, and over 25 million Spaniards watch the event on television.
Frederik, meanwhile, met the Australian Mary Donaldson at the Slip Inn in 2000, during the Olympics in Sydney. The royal was at the bar with his brother, Prince Joachim, his cousin, Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark, Princess Märtha Louise of Norway – and none other than Felipe, then Prince of Asturius, who knew Mary’s flatmate and played Cupid.
Crown Prince Frederik and his bride Princess Mary on their wedding day in May 2004
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