STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II announced Sunday that she plans to abdicate after 52 years and hand the throne to her son, Crown Prince Frederik.

The queen, Europe’s longest-serving monarch, announced during her New Year’s address that she would step down on January 14, the anniversary of her own accession to the throne at the age of 31 following the death of her father, King Frederick IX.

Margrethe, 83, said the back surgery she underwent in early 2023 had led to “thoughts about the future” and when she should pass on the responsibilities of the Crown to her son. “I have decided that now is the right time,” she said in her speech.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen paid tribute to her in a statement and expressed “a heartfelt thank you to Her Majesty the Queen for her lifelong dedication and tireless commitment to the Kingdom.”

Margrethe is the “epitome of Denmark,” Frederiksen’s statement said, and “over the years has expressed with words and feelings who we are as a people and as a nation.”

The 6-foot-tall, chain-smoking Margrethe is one of the most popular public figures in Denmark, where the role of monarch is largely ceremonial. She often walked the streets of Copenhagen virtually unaccompanied, winning the admiration of Danes for her warm manners and talent as a linguist and designer.

An avid skier, she was a member of a Danish women’s air force unit as a princess and took part in judo courses and endurance tests in the snow. Margrethe remained tough, even as she got older. In 2011, aged 70, she visited Danish troops in southern Afghanistan wearing military overalls.

As monarch, she traveled all over the country, regularly visiting Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the two semi-independent territories that are part of the Danish Empire, and was greeted everywhere by cheering crowds.

Denmark has Europe’s oldest ruling monarchy, whose lineage goes back to the Viking king Gorm the Old, who died in 958. Although Magrethe is head of state, the Danish constitution strictly precluded her involvement in party politics.

But the queen was apparently very knowledgeable in law and knew the content of the laws she was supposed to sign.

From a young age she received lessons in French and English as well as Swedish from her mother. In addition to archaeology, she studied philosophy, political science and economics at the universities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Cambridge as well as at the London School of Economics and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Frederik André Henrik Christian has been the heir to the Danish throne since his birth on May 26, 1968.

He is the eldest son of Queen Margrethe and her late French-born husband Prince Henrik, who died in February 2018. Frederik, 55, has a younger brother, Prince Joachim.

From the age of 18, he acted as regent when his mother was outside the kingdom and carried out official duties, shaking hands with thousands and receiving foreign dignitaries.

The queen’s announcement came just a few sentences at the end of her wide-ranging New Year’s address, in which she reflected on the “turbulence and unrest in the world” amid wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and the climate crisis.

But she also thanked the people of her country for “the warmth and hospitality that I encounter everywhere in Denmark.”

While the Prime Minister heaped praise on the Queen, he also looked to the future.

“In the new year, Crown Prince Frederik will be proclaimed king. Crown Princess Mary becomes queen. The kingdom will have a new ruler and a new royal couple,” he said in his statement. “We can look forward to all of this knowing that they are ready for the responsibility and the task.”