Princess Ingrid's parents had met in Egypt, in the winter of 1904-05, and were married at Windsor Castle on the 15th July 1905. Their marriage marked the first union between the British and Swedish royal houses since 1406. They and the five children Princess Margaret bore - Princes Gustaf Adolf, Sigvard, Bertil and Carl Johan, and Princess Ingrid - lived in apartments in the Royal Palace in Stockholm, in a mansion at Ulriksdal, near the capital, and in a summer residence, Sofiero, at Skane, in southern Sweden.
The Crown Princess of Sweden died on May 1, 1920, when Ingrid was 10. The Crown Prince married, in 1923, his late wife's second cousin, Lady Louise Mountbatten, daughter of the 1st Marquess of Milford Haven. Princess Ingrid was educated in Sweden, but along thoroughly English lines, mapped out in London by Queen Mary. Her attitudes and interests would be very much those of a British princess; in particular, she was keen on sport - riding, swimming, skating, skiing and lawn tennis. She spent long periods of her youth in England, staying with her adoring grandfather, the Duke of Connaught, at Clarence House in London, and in Surrey at Bagshot Park. In 1928 Princess Ingrid made her first appearance at Court in Stockholm, and came to England for her first London season.
Until his marriage to the beautiful Swedish Princess, the tall Crown Prince of Denmark had been a regular officer in the Danish navy. He had worked his way up from cadet to rear-admiral - and had collected a variety of tattoos on the way. He was also a good pianist, and a gifted amateur conductor, especially of the Royal Theatre Orchestra. It had been planned that Crown Prince Frederik should marry his cousin Princess Olga of Greece, niece of King Constantine I of The Hellenes. However, after the wedding had been twice postponed, the betrothal was broken off. Apparently Princess Olga liked the Prince, but had been disconcerted when, during their courtship, he had unscrewed one of his teeth and placed it on the table between them.
King Christian is said to have been a domestic tyrant, a stern and unbending figure whose two sons went in dread of him. But Princess Ingrid, used to dealing tactfully with stiff-necked old gentlemen at the Royal Court in Stockholm, stood up to her father-in-law and won his affection. This would prove an invaluable asset when, due to the King's incapacity during the Second World War, the Crown Prince found himself acting as Denmark's Regent. The young couple's principal residence was a palace at Charlottelund, where a kennel was built for the Crown Princess's black Scottie dog Humpty. Their first child, HRH Princess Margrethe - known, like her grandmother Margaret, as Daisy - was born in Copenhagen on in 1940, one week after the German invasion of Denmark. Princess Ingrid wheeled the baby in her perambulator through the capital's streets, in symbolic defiance of the occupying forces.
Two more daughters followed during the occupation years, HRH Princess Benedicte and Princess Anne-Marie. After education at home with British and French governesses, the princesses attended schools with other children. King Christian X died on the 20th April 1947 and the next day the Crown Prince was proclaimed King Frederik IX from the balcony of the Christiansborg Palace. When Queen Ingrid joined the King on the balcony, he kissed her publicly in front of the crowd. The King's reign coincided with one of the greatest and swiftest periods of change in the history of Denmark. The country became a modern country, which meant altogether new demands on the monarchy and its ability to adjust.
Tactfully supported by the Queen, King Frederik IX with a definite sense of the requirements of the day carried through the change of the monarchy from a distant, elevated institution to a general, symbolic image of the levelling out of class distinctions, which was a result of the modernisation of society. The King's behaviour was cheerful and straightforward, and he possessed the gift of being able to deal with all people with natural friendliness and warmth without jeopardising the inherent dignity of a monarch. He was helped in this through his training as an officer of the navy with its binding but informal environment, which he felt strongly related to all through his life. Before he became King, he had acquired the rank of Rear-Admiral and he had had several senior commands on active service. In addition, with his great love of music the King was an able piano player and conductor.
Due to the relaxed and loving tone in the Royal Family, which the King and Queen in contrast to previous tradition were prepared to give the public an idea of, the Royal Family in the reign of Frederik IX became a popular reflection of the typical Danish family as it developed in line with the modernisation of society. Shortly after the King had delivered his New Year's Address to the Nation at the 1971/72 turn of the year, he fell seriously ill. His death on the 14th January 1972, following a short period of illness was felt as a great loss by the Danish population, which to an unprecedented extent had taken the King and his family to heart. After King Frederik’s death in 1972, Queen Ingrid continued to live at Fredensborg Castle, and to take part in the life, public as well as private, of the Danish royal family. She died on the 7th November 2000.
Queen Ingrid lived to see ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She was grandmother to ten European Princes and Princesses: Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Joachim of Denmark; Princess Alexia, Crown Prince Pavlos, Prince Nikolaos, Princess Theodora and Prince Philippos of Greece; Hereditary Prince Gustav, Princess Alexandra and Princess Nathalie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. At the time of her passing, Queen Ingrid was already great-grandmother to five great-grandchildren: Princess Maria Olympia, Prince Constantine Alexios and Prince Achileas Andreas of Greece (children of Crown Prince and Crown Princess Pavlos); Prince Nikolai of Denmark (son of Prince Joachim and Princess Alexandra of Denmark) and Count Richard von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth (son of Princess Alexandra zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and her husband Count Jefferson-Friedrich von Pfeil und Klein-Ellguth).
