DENMARK — With the imminent abdication of Queen Margrethe of Denmark, all eyes will be on Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, 51, who will become the new queen consort.

Born Mary Donaldson, she will step into her new role on Jan 14, making history as Denmark's first queen consort to have been born in Australia.

This comes after Queen Margrethe II, 83, announced her abdication in a New Year's TV address, citing health reasons behind her decision.

Her son, Crown Prince Frederik, 55, will take over the throne to become King Frederik X, while his wife, Crown Princess Mary, will become Denmark's Queen Consort.

Unlike British royal tradition, there will be no formal crowning ceremony for Prince Frederik. Instead, his accession will be marked by a simple announcement at the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen.

From commoner to princess, here is everything you need to know about Crown Princess Mary.

1. She met Crown Prince Frederik in a pub

The fateful encounter has been dubbed a modern-day fairy tale. A real estate manager at that time, 28 year-old Mary Donaldson found herself chatting to “Fred” — or Prince Frederik — at a pub in September 2000.

The Danish royal was in Sydney for the 2000 Olympics. It was a while later into their conversation before she found out about his identity and that she had been talking to the Crown Prince of Denmark, heir to the 1,000-year-old Danish throne.

“The first time that we met or shook hands, I did not know he was the crown prince of Denmark,” Mary said in a 2003 interview with 60 Minutes Australia. 

“It was perhaps half an hour or so later that someone came up to me and said, ‘Do you know who these people are?’”

She gave him her number and he rang her the next day, or so the story goes. 

“From the very first moment that we started talking,” Mary said in the interview, “we never really stopped talking.”

2. She had dreams of becoming a veterinarian 

Born in Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, Mary is the daughter of a mathematics professor and an executive assistant. 

As a child, Mary had a laid-back, dressed down style, so much so that national newspaper The Australian had hailed Mary as their “flannie queen living a fairytale dream” in a front-page article. 

Flannie is an Australian slang for flannelette shirts, which Mary was fond of as a young person. 

“I was a T-shirt-and-shorts girl, known to go barefoot,” she told the Financial Times in an interview.

Like most Australians, she attended public school and took up extracurricular activities like horse riding and sports.

She studied law and commerce in college and moved to Melbourne, then Sydney, to pursue a career in advertising, and then later on moved to real estate.

“I don’t recall wishing that one day I would be a princess,” she told reporters shortly after the couple became engaged in 2003. “I wanted to be a veterinarian.”

3. How she learnt Danish

How did Crown Princess Mary learn Danish, a notoriously difficult language to master? 

Before she got married to Crown Prince Frederik, Mary took “princess lessons” taught by Frederik’s head of court, Lord Chamberlain Per Thornit, which included intensive language and history courses, according to Vogue. 

The princess impressed Danes with her ability to learn the Danish language quickly, which reflected well in the polls. 

Crown Princess Mary is hugely popular amongst the Danes, with an 85 per cent approval rating in a recent poll conducted by Denmark public radio station, DR. 

“One could say that she has been so popular that it has even been necessary in recent years to downplay her role a bit. So she wouldn’t risk overshadowing the crown prince, who is the one destined to be the reigning monarch at some point,” Lars Hovbakke Sorensen, an expert on the Danish royal family, told The New York Times.

4. The big royal wedding

On May 14, 2004, the pair married at the Copenhagen Cathedral, in the nation’s capital.

Crown Princess Mary wore a long-sleeved ivory silk wedding dress with a 5.8 metre train by Danish designer Uffe Frank and an Irish lace veil.

Her father, John Dalgleish Donaldson, walked her down the aisle in a Scottish kilt, a nod to their Scottish heritage.

Crown Princess Mary’s parents immigrated from Scotland to Australia before her birth — where she spent most of her youth.

After the ceremony, the newlyweds rode to their reception at Christian VII’s Palace on a horse-drawn carriage, where they waved from the balcony and kissed in front of cheering crowds.

“The joy and the strength you give me is like the sun in the daytime which, with its radiance, melts all doubts and darkness on earth,” the prince said during his reception speech. “And like the moon at night, you shine with a watchful and delicate beam of gentleness.”

And who said fairytales don’t come true?

5. She has four children with Crown Prince Frederik

Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik have four children: Prince Christian, 18, Princess Isabella, 16, and 12-year-old twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine.

When Queen Margrethe steps down on Jan 14, the couple’s eldest child, Prince Christian, will receive a title change to Crown Prince, becoming next in line for succession. 

Born in 2005, Prince Christian recently celebrated his 18th birthday in a lavish gala in October last year at the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, which was attended by royals all over the world.

He is currently completing his final year of secondary education at Ordrup Gymnasium, a public high school in Denmark.

The other siblings are also attending various Danish schools.