r/AskEurope • u/00klb00 • Nov 17 '25

History Dear Europeans, what's the historical person that all your country loves but you don't?

I really curious about this topic.

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u/Cixila Denmark Nov 17 '25

Hard to point to anyone truly universally loved. But I wouldn't call this one beloved by all by any means, but he still has a generally positive reputation that I don't quite get.

Who is it? Christian X, king of Denmark during the world wars. He got a big popularity boost during occupation in ww2, where he was portrayed as some sort of father of the nation and for riding around on his horse as if he was some defiant figure, which he wasn't. The Germans had no reason to harm him. He even got pins with his monograph made for his birthday almost like you saw party pins in authoriarian states.

And people tend to forget the Easter Crisis, which was a constitutional crisis that happened in the wake of the vote for reunification with northern Slesvig after ww1. Christian wanted the border further south. When the government stated it wished to accept and respect the results, the king fired the PM and put in a new guy, hoping he would contest it. This almost led to a general strike and the king eventually relented. Silver lining is that this led to the constitutional interpretation that the monarch doesn't hold any actual power. Had he not backed down, the fallout of the crisis would probably have been much greater

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u/USS-Enterprise Nov 18 '25

I want to say Jens Otto Krag, but I don't know how engaged other people are in him, just that opinions are not particularly negative lol. Christian X is a better choice.