The telephone call reached Copenhagen in the autumn of 1938, and King Haakon VII of Norway wasted no time. His wife, Queen Maud, had fallen ill during one of her habitual visits to England and was now recovering from an abdominal operation in a London nursing home. The king hastened across the North Sea to be at her bedside, arriving on November 16th. The surgery had gone well, and the queen had survived it.
Four days later, on November 20th, she died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure at Appleton House, her English country home on the Sandringham estate. She was six days short of her sixty-ninth birthday. The woman who died that day had never wanted to be a queen. She had been born a princess of the United Kingdom, the favorite child of a future king, and she had spent the first years of her marriage hoping only for a quiet life in England.
How she came to wear the crown of Norway—and how she made that unexpected destiny her own—began more than half a century earlier, in the long shadow of Queen Victoria. Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria was born on November 26th, 1869, at Marlborough House in London, the third daughter and fifth child of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and his wife Alexandra of Denmark. Her father was the eldest son and heir of Queen Victoria, a man who would eventually sit on the British throne as King Edward VII. Her mother, the beautiful and popular Alexandra, was the eldest daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel.
Breaking with royal tradition, the Prince and Princess of Wales chose not to name their youngest surviving child after any close relative. Maud was simply a variant of the old German name Matilda, which traced its roots to Anglo-Norman history. Her middle names, though, honored the women of her family: Charlotte for her maternal great-grandmother, Princess Charlotte of Denmark, and Victoria for her paternal grandmother, the Queen herself. Maud grew up alongside her older siblings: Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale; the future King George V; Louise, later Princess Royal and Duchess of Fife; and her sister Victoria.
She and her sisters, who all inherited their mother’s auburn hair, were raised in a sheltered and protected environment. Their possessive mother smothered them with love, obsessed with keeping her daughters dependent on her and physically and emotionally close. Because of this controlling atmosphere, Maud and her two older sisters—collectively known as the Wales girls—struggled to socialize or relate to anyone outside the family. Their education was limited as well.
Her older siblings would later call their childhood oppressive and stifling, but Maud always looked back on it fondly and happily. She was, by all accounts, the rebellious child. Known for her tomboyish nature, her lively spirit, and her endless energy, she was the first British princess to openly ride a bicycle—much to the displeasure of her dignified paternal grandmother. She was her father’s favorite child, and the two shared a love of riding and sports.
Maud even earned the nickname “Harry” after one of her father’s friends in the Royal Navy, an admiral praised for his bravery during the Crimean War. The Wales family frequently traveled to her mother’s native Denmark for annual family reunions, where Maud came to know her Danish cousins, aunts, and uncles. Yet despite her closeness to her own parents and siblings, she was not fond of her Danish relatives—particularly her first cousin, Prince Carl of Denmark, the son of the future King Frederick VIII and Princess Louise of Sweden. Carl, three years Maud’s junior, struck his British cousin as immature.
In her teenage years, Maud fell in love with Prince Francis of Teck, the elder brother of her sister-in-law, Mary of Teck. Francis, just one year younger than Maud, was heavily in debt from mounting gambling losses. He could have benefited from marrying a princess of Maud’s status, but he had no interest in her and spurned her flirtations. She was also briefly enamored with Grand Duke George of Russia, a grandson of Tsar Nicholas I, though nothing came of that young crush.
Then, unexpectedly, Maud found love in the very cousin she had once dismissed. Prince Carl of Denmark had fallen in love with her in 1892, and in time she warmed to him, discovering he was less childish than she had believed. The two bonded over a mutual love of bicycling. In 1895, Carl proposed, and Maud accepted.
The couple knew that Carl, as only the second son of his father, was unlikely ever to wear the Danish crown. They could therefore expect to live peacefully and quietly in Maud’s beloved England. There was hesitation in both the British and Danish royal families about the union. The two were closely related by blood, and Carl’s mother had desperately wanted him to marry Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
But ultimately both families agreed, and the couple was married on July 22nd, 1896, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace. Maud was twenty-six; Carl was a few weeks shy of his twenty-fourth birthday. Their first years of marriage were peaceful, just as Maud had wanted. They stayed out of the spotlight at Appleton House on the Sandringham estate, a country house that Maud’s father had given her as a wedding gift.
Maud was so reluctant to leave England and her family that she and Carl were still residing there five months after the wedding. Finally, in December of 1896, the newlyweds packed up for Carl’s home of Denmark, where he had to perform his duties as an officer in the Danish Navy. They settled at Bernstorff Palace in Gentofte, not far from Copenhagen. But Maud never felt comfortable in her strange surroundings.
She traveled back to England as often as she could, especially when the bitter Danish winters set in. Less than five years after her marriage, Maud’s grandmother Queen Victoria died in January of 1901, and her father was crowned King Edward VII. Maud, now the daughter of a sovereign, gave birth to her only child on July 2nd, 1903, at Appleton House: a son named Prince Alexander. In June of 1905, the near-century-long union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting.
Norway began searching for suitable candidates for its newly independent crown. Because of Prince Carl’s descent from past Norwegian monarchs and his wife’s high status in the British royal family, he became the great favorite for the throne. After a plebiscite in November, in which seventy-nine percent of the Norwegian people voted in favor of Carl, the Danish prince formally accepted the crown. Carl arrived in his new kingdom on November 25th, 1905, accompanied by his wife and their two-year-old son.
Two days later, he took the oath of succession and was crowned King Haakon VII. Prince Alexander’s name was changed to Olaf, and he became the crown prince and heir to the throne. Maud, now Queen Consort of Norway at the age of thirty-six, did not change her name. She and her husband were both crowned in a coronation ceremony on June 22nd, 1906, at the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim.
Although Maud had never wanted to be a queen, and although Britain always held a special place in her heart, she recognized her importance as her husband’s consort in integrating her family into Norwegian culture and society. She made sure she and her husband were photographed in Norwegian folk costumes and engaging in winter sports like skiing. Like her mother, she used clothes and jewelry as tools to create a regal impression. Crown Prince Olaf was raised as though he were a native Norwegian, but Maud remained firmly British and never became truly fluent in the Norwegian language.
Her public presence seemed small and discreet. Behind closed doors, however, she held a firm grip over familial and ceremonial matters. The Norwegian people loved her for her dignified persona, her friendly nature, and her sophistication in matters of high fashion and style. The warm yet bashful Maud disliked some of the luxuries of being queen, but she performed all her royal duties with grace, efficiency, and care.
Every year, she visited England, always staying at Appleton House during these trips. Within the royal court, she was said to be forceful and dominant, even as her public role remained less visible. To her family and close friends, she was known as a humorous, friendly, and energetic woman. She took a special interest in charities, especially those involving animals and children, and she supported Norwegian musicians and artists.
During World War I, she founded Dronningens Hjelpekomité, the Queen’s Relief Committee, designed to help people suffering from the very trying conditions caused by the war. She also became active in the fight for women’s rights and promoted the welfare of single women. Maud became the last surviving child of Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark when her final remaining sibling, King George V, died in January of 1936. Her last public appearance in Britain came at the coronation of her nephew, King George VI, in May of 1937 at Westminster Abbey.
During the ceremony, the elderly queen consort of Norway sat with Queen Mary of Teck and her niece Mary, Princess Royal, in the official royal pew of the abbey. In October of 1938, Maud came back to England for another of her habitual visits. During her stay at a London hotel, she fell ill and was taken to a nursing home, where doctors performed abdominal surgery. On November 16th, her husband hastened to England to be by her side.
She survived the operation. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she died of heart failure on November 20th, 1938, at Appleton House. Maud of Wales, Queen Consort of Norway and a princess of the United Kingdom, was laid to rest in Akershus Castle in Oslo. Her husband survived her by almost nineteen years before his own death on September 21st, 1957, at the age of eighty-five.
He was buried beside her.
