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Due date: October 2005
It was what royal watchers had been waiting to hear for nearly a year – Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik and his Australian-born wife, Crown Princess Mary, would welcome their first child in October 2005.
The pregnancy was revealed in April, days after the couple – renowned for their shows of affection in public – were photographed exchanging particularly romantic looks during a visit to the World Expo in Japan.
Amid the country's joy, the royal pregnancy triggered a more serious discussion of Danish constitutional law in regard to the throne. The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, quickly revealed he wanted the rules of succession, which currently state that male offspring take precedence over female, to be amended to allow the couple's first born, boy or girl, to ascend to the throne.
The law, which once ruled that only men could become monarch, was changed in 1953 to allow Queen Margrethe – the eldest of three girls – to accede after the death of her father, King Frederik IX.
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