Abdications in the modern age: crowned heads who have retired in recent years

Queen Margrethe II has become Denmark’s first monarch to abdicate in nearly 900 years and handed over the throne to her son, who is now King Frederik X.

Margrethe always maintained during her 52-year-reign that she would not quit, but back surgery and other ailments left her unable to undertake as much as she could in the past.

“Time takes its toll,” she said, announcing her plans to abdicate in a New Year address that stunned the kingdom.

But as life expectancy grows ever longer, even a schedule of symbolic duties can be exhausting in a monarch’s later years. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II stuck by a commitment she made as a young woman to devote her life to service — and reigned for 70 years before her death in 2022 at the age of 96.

“Abdication has become more common because people are becoming older and older,” said Lars Hovbakke Sorensen, a Danish historian and lecturer. “Therefore, we have more old monarchs in Europe and (thus) older crown princes and crown princesses.”

He cited as an example Britain’s King Charles III who took over after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died when he was 74.

Here is a look at some sovereigns who have handed over their thrones to their younger and more energetic heirs in recent years.

– Akihito of Japan

Akihito had devoted his three-decades long reign to making amends for a war fought in his father’s name while taking the aloof monarchy closer to the people. His era was the first in Japan’s modern history without war.

He had prepared his nation for the move by expressing a wish years earlier to abdicate while he was still well and capable. He won overwhelming public support for stepping down from a role with symbolic but no real political power, and the nation celebrated the imperial succession.

The emperor emeritus is 90 years old.

– Juan Carlos of Spain

He had once been so popular that many Spaniards would say that they were “not monarchists, but Juan Carlists”. Those who remember him in his younger years recall the key role he played in ensuring Spain’s safe transition from decades of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship to a modern constitutional monarchy.

It helped that a pliant press covered up his long history of affairs and indiscretions.

His relations with the Spanish public began to crack in 2012, when the former patron of the World Wide Fund for Nature injured himself on an elephant hunting trip in Botswana while his subjects back home were living through a full-blown economic crisis.

Some Spaniards began to wonder if it was time for Spain’s third republic of the past 150 years.

Juan Carlos left Spain in August 2020 amid investigations into his involvement in alleged financial wrongdoings. Spanish prosecutors had to shelve their case after concluding that the alleged misconduct, involving millions of euros in undeclared accounts, happened when Juan Carlos had legal immunity as king.

His behaviour is widely viewed as a public embarrassment that tarnished the crown, and King Felipe has tried to rebuild the reputation of the House of Bourbon. Felipe renounced his inheritance from Juan Carlos and stripped him of his state-provided subsidy in 2020 in a groundbreaking move to distance himself from his father.

– Beatrix of the Netherlands

In explaining her decision to hand over the throne to her son, King Willem-Alexander, she said she believed it was time to pass responsibility to a new generation.

Beatrix was quickly followed in her abdication by her Belgian counterpart, King Albert II, and not long after that by Spain’s Juan Carlos.

Abdication is the norm at the egalitarian House of Orange. Beatrix’s mother – Juliana – and her mother’s mother – Wilhelmina – all stood down and eased into retirement.

– Albert II of Belgium

The move in 2013 ended nearly two decades of steady reign over a country divided between northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking southern Wallonia.

He was the first king to voluntarily abdicate since Belgium gained its independence in 1830.

Before his abdication, King Albert II fought rumours that he had fathered a daughter out of wedlock, although several years after his retirement he recognised the artist formerly known as Delphine Boel as his daughter and she became recognised as Her Royal Highness Princess Delphine.

– Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar

At age 61, he stressed the importance of shifting leadership to more youthful hands.

The move was viewed as an indirect acknowledgment of the demands for reforms opened by the Arab Spring, which began in 2011 with successful revolutions ousting leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and spread across the Arab world.

His decision to retire went against a tradition among the Gulf’s other ruling dynasties of power being surrendered through death or palace coup.

– Pope Benedict

Though he was not a king, a pope has the robes and many other trappings of royalty – and more real power than many monarchs in the world today.

Benedict cited declining health due to old age when he took the decision to retire at the age of 85. He lived another decade, dying just over a year ago at age 95.

Benedict chose February 11 2013 – a Vatican holiday, with a routine audience with his cardinals – to make the historic announcement in Latin that he would become the first pope since Gregory XII in 1415 to resign.

He largely lived out his pledge to spend the rest of his life in prayer and meditation in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.