This handout photo taken on October 6, 2023 and released by the Imperial Household Agency of Japan on October 20 shows Japan’s Emperor Emeritus Akihito (L) and Empress Emerita Michiko posing for a photo at the Akasaka imperial property residence in Tokyo. (Photo by Hiro Komae / Imperial Household Agency / AFP
Following the announcement by Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II of her plans to relinquish the throne, AFP looks at other memorable abdications over the past century:
– King Edward VIII: for ‘the woman I love’ –
The British public was stunned when their king of less than a year, Edward VIII, made the shock announcement on December 12, 1936, that he would abdicate in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Edward’s tumultuous love affair with Simpson had caused a major constitutional crisis, with the headstrong monarch insisting he wanted to marry the US…
