Early modern issues of royal heraldry and territorial claims have reemerged in contemporary international politics. The King of Denmark is changing his coat of arms, provoking surprise among European political analysts and historians.

The Guardian reports that “The Danish king has shocked some historians by changing the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland and the Faroe Islands – in what has also been seen as a rebuke to Donald Trump.”

The new coat of arms foregrounds symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, in a direct response to President-elect Donald Trump’s recent statements suggesting that the United States purchase Greenland.

“Less than a year since succeeding his mother, Queen Margrethe, after she stood down on New Year’s Eve 2023, King Frederik has made a clear statement of intent to keep the autonomous Danish territory and former colony within the kingdom of Denmark.”

The new design removes the symbol of three crowns from the Danish royal coats of arms, a perceived shift in Scandinavia political culture.

“Ever since the peace treaty of Knäred in 1613, which ended the Kalmar war, Sweden was ‘forced to accept the Danish king’s rights to use the Swedish symbol of the three crowns,’ said Dick Harrison, a history professor at the Swedish University of Lund, making its removal from the Danish coat of arms now ‘a sensation.'”

According to The Guardian, “The [three crowns] symbol survived the huge defeats in the wars against Sweden in the 1640s and the 1650s, the loss of Norway in 1814, the loss of Schleswig to Germany in 1864, the transition to modernity, the loss of Iceland and the German occupation in world war II,” he said. “Thus, from the point of view of history, the fact that King Frederik X has decided to remove the symbol is a sensation.”

Royal politics and monarchical states continue to shape modern international relations in many ways. We need to understand the long history of royal politics and territorial claims to decipher aspects of contemporary international politics.

The Guardian reports on the King of Denmark’s new coat of arms.