Woman of the Month: Queen Margrete

Queen Margrete from Margrete: Queen of the North

Three months into 2024 and I’m already struggling to fill these posts. But luckily, I watched this film just last night and Queen Margrete more than met the qualifications for a worthy Woman of the Month.

There are plenty of stories out there concerning women who have to chose between their careers/personal ambition and their families/pursuit of love, but seldom has that conflict been placed in the context of a 14th century queen who rules subtly but firmly behind her adopted son, King Erik, and has worked her entire life to form a lasting peace between Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Now at age fifty, her life’s ambition is about to come to fruition, with leaders of all three countries pledging support for the Kalmar Union. I honestly can’t think of another film that revolves around a woman of her age and power, in a (relatively speaking) accurate historical setting, grappling with a moral crisis like the one presented here. Because just as the treaty is to be consolidated, a young man returns to court, claiming to be Margrete’s long-dead son Oluf.

If true, this would make him heir to the Danish throne, and a threat to Margrete’s life’s work.

Should she act as a mother or as a queen? Emotional complexity is derived from the fact that after fifteen years, she barely recognizes the man claiming to be her son, and has since replaced him in her heart with her great-nephew Erik, who is himself starting to act on the resentment he’s long harboured against her for uprooting him from his childhood to become her heir, not to mention the power she still holds over the court.

Trine Dyrholm delivers a fantastic performance as Margrete: she’s authoritative but not overbearing; unsentimental but not cruel. Poised, self-contained, shrewd and charismatic, she walks and talks like a queen, yet interestingly, never comes across as ruthless despite what she’s called upon to do. She is a mother, but she is also a leader, and the struggle to balance the two states never ends.

Thankfully, she’s spared any anachronistic “girl power” moments in which she vents her frustration at the oppressive nature of the patriarchy – instead, the film shows us how she has to tread carefully so as to not emasculate her adopted son, to continually stroke the egos of the men that surround her, and to never come across as too weak or emotional during the public trial of her supposed son. The difficulties of being a woman in a man’s world is apparent in every scene she moves through, and it’s all demonstrated without being commented upon.

When she makes her final choice, it’s to protect her true child – not Oluf, not Erik, but the Kalmar Union. But there’s nothing triumphant or “yaas queen!” about it. The last words her son speaks to her are: “you weren’t strong enough,” to which she replies: “no, I was too strong.” Despite the conflict and regret in her heart, she’s uncompromising, and the film makes sure we’re aware of the aftermath: that the Kalmar Union lasted over one hundred years, and that the bond between the three countries that lasts to this day can be largely attributed to Queen Margrete.

But like a lot of rulers, she (or at least this fictionalized account of her) had to pay a bitter price for it.