King Frederik the 9th of Denmark showing off his many tattoos, ~ 1946-1950

16 comments
  1. It was actually very common for Victorian and Edwardian era monarchs to have tattoos, they weren’t seen in quite the light that they are in the modern era. Famously, Tsar Nicholas II had a Chinese dragon on his right forearm.

    Charles XIV of Sweden never permitted surgeons or doctors to see him shirtless for the entirety of his life, it wasn’t until his post-mortem that they discovered why- he had, in his younger, revolutionary days (before he had been transplanted into Sweden as a foreign king), had “death to kings” tattooed on his chest.

    That latter “fact” probably isn’t true, but is certainly widely repeated.

  2. This man scuttled the entire danish fleet, in the middle of the night, when the nazis wanted to commandeer them during the occupation.

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