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Crown Princess Mary of Denmark’s oldest son Prince Christian teamed up with his dad Crown Prince Frederik for a rare joint engagement this week. The father-son duo visited the Danish esports—form of competitive video gaming—team Astralis on Wednesday, May 20. The royals were on hand for the team’s training day in Copenhagen. Dressed in a red hoodie and dark pants, the 14-year-old future King participated in a series of exercises with Astralis players, including jumping rope and doing lunges with a medicine ball.
The Danish Royal House noted that mental health and physical health are “essential for athletes when they have to think clearly in competitions for a split second and analyze, communicate and respond under pressure.” While esports is competitive gaming, the palace stated that much of their preparation takes place away from computer screens and instead with physical trainers, sports psychologists and dietitians.
Astralis also shared photos from the royal visit on their respective page writing, “Today, we had the immense honour of meeting His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik and Prince Christian to talk about Astralis as well as physical and mental health in esports. #ToTheStars 🇩🇰.”
Christian’s engagement came two days after he and 13-year-old sister Princess Isabella returned to school. The Prince and Princess, along with their younger siblings Princess Josephine and Prince Vincent, were attending Lemania-Verbier International School in Switzerland earlier this year. However because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Danish royal children’s studies abroad were cut short. In light of the pandemic, Mary and Frederik’s kids were homeschooled. Vincent and Josephine, both nine, returned to school last month as Denmark began to ease COVID-19 restrictions that were put in place to stop the spread.
On Tuesday, the Danish Royal House shared a picture that the Crown Princess took of her four children walking with their backpacks. “Yesterday our two oldest children started school, so now we are happy that all four children are back in school. I think they have been good at dealing with what has been a very different everyday life,” Crown Princess Mary wrote. “But they are happy to return to all that they have missed: the teaching, their peers, the teachers, the neighborhoods - in short, a school life that provides the structure of everyday life that children have found that they appreciate.”