The Royal Court has forcibly denied claims in a new book that Denmark's Queen Margrethe II is considering abdicating.

Head of Royal Communications Lene Balleby says there is no truth either to the claim of a pending abdication or to suggestions that the Royal Consort Prince Henrik has plans to move permanently to the Château Cayx near Cahors in his native France.

“There is no truth in this. There are no deliberations of that sort,” Balleby tells Ritzau.

“The Royal Consort has no plans to move from Denmark. Already in connection with the Prince’s 70th birthday he said that in the long term he would like to spend more time at Cayx. That is the development we are now seeing,” she continues.

PICTURE CAVALCADE: See pictures of Queen Margrethe

Reported in the tabloid B.T., the book by author and journalist John Lindskog suggests that the Royal Consort Prince Henrik, who is 75, has such a yearning for his native France that he plans to move to the Château de Cayx. The book goes on to suggest that Queen Margrethe, who will be 70 in April 2010, would abdicate in order to move with her husband.

No abdication
But in a previous book, author Annelise Bistrup quotes Queen Margrethe as saying that: “Being Queen is a profession, a job, a position, an office that one cannot put aside when you come home from work. It is there all the time. And it is there all your life. For me, it is a responsibility that does not include abdication. It is a task one has been given and taken upon oneself, and one does not relinquish it because it would perhaps be convenient personally to be shot of some of it,” Queen Margrethe was quoted as saying.

Another royal observer and author of two books on the royal family Trine Villemann says Queen Margrethe ‘would never abdicate to follow (Prince Henrik) to the vineyard’.

“Our Queen has always put duty highest. And it has had both private and personal costs. But she has always been willing to pay the price. I cannot see why that should have changed,” Villemann tells politiken.dk.