Princess Athena of Denmark, daughter of Prince Joachim and Princess Marie, held her confirmation as a low-key private ceremony at a Lutheran church in Washington, where the family has lived since Joachim took on diplomatic assignments for Denmark. The fifteen-year-old princess, dressed in a simple white dress with an open crest, looked exactly like everything else - calm, natural, without the ceremonial apparatus.

The contrast with her cousins' confirmation is obvious. When the twins Vincent and Josephine held theirs in Copenhagen just 15 days earlier, four reigning monarchs attended along with a long line of prominent godparents. Athena had her parents, three brothers and the pastor. That was it.

This is where the wider context kicks in: back in 2023, Queen Margrethe decided that her grandchildren - Joachim's children - would lose their royal titles. Today they carry the styles "counts and countesses of Monpezat". Joachim publicly stated that Denmark remained their home, but the family lives in America.

Athena's confirmation looked less like a royal occasion and more like a family moment - and one can ask whether that was precisely the point. Sometimes modesty is not a lack of glamour, but a deliberate choice.