Prince Joachim and Princess Marie Stay in U.S. After Queen Strips Kids’ Titles

Prince Joachim and Princess Marie of Denmark are extending their time away from home.

On Friday, Sept. 29, the Danish royal house announced that Prince Joachim “will be extended in his position as Defense Industry Attaché and Deputy Defense Attaché in Washington, D,C. until the end of August 2027.”

This means that the prince and princess, as well as their teenage children, Count Henrik, 16, and Countess Athena, 13, will continue to live in the U.S. capital, where the children have attended school for the past two years. Joachim, 56, also shares two older sons — Count Nikolai, 26, and Count Felix, 23 — with his ex-wife, Countess Alexandra.

The younger brother of King Frederik first took the position at the Danish Embassy in September 2023, following a major shakeup in the royal family.

One year prior, Queen Margrethe announced that she would be stripping Joachim’s children of their Prince/Princess titles, replacing them with “His/Her Excellency” and the count/countess moniker. The four children did maintain their places in the Danish line of succession.

In her unexpected announcement, the Queen shared that she wished to “create the framework for the four grandchildren to be able to shape their own lives to a much greater extent” without the responsibilities related to the Royal House of Denmark.

In a March 2024 interview with The Washington Post, Prince Joachim and Princess Marie admitted they had “complicated” feelings about how the Queen’s announcement was handled.

“We weren’t happy about the way it happened,” Princess Marie said. “But it’s a family thing. It’s complicated.”

In addition to their titles, Joachim and Marie also shared that they felt their children had lost their given names.

“It’s their identity since they were born,” Marie added. “So it’s more than just what people see as a title.” 

Regardless, Prince Joachim said in the interview, “We’ve moved on.”

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King Frederik assumed the throne in January 2024, following Queen Margrethe’s decision to abdicate, and there seems to be no bad blood between the brothers. In fact, in a June 2025 interview with TV2, Prince Joachim admitted that he had complicated feelings about whether or not to keep his family in the U.S.

“We have a desire to come home. But we also do not rule out the possibility of staying abroad,” he said. “Now we have to see. For now, it is on our radar. When the post here stops, we will return home.”

“We are each busy in our own way. The kids are at school, where they enjoy being challenged and have an ever-growing social circle, and I have my job,” Joachim continued. “We are our little nuclear family and enjoy it, and we make sure as much as possible that we also have time for each other.”

However, the prince acknowledged that Denmark will always be home, and living in the U.S. just isn’t quite the same.

“Overall, we can all feel it, and we can also feel it in the children, that it is at home in Denmark that we have our largest social base,” he said. “We can’t travel back and forth, after all, there is a six-hour time difference and an entire ocean in between. We take our time when we are home and enjoy it to the fullest. Perhaps that is the band-aid for being far away from home.”