God news from the frozen north! Our Princess Mary is slowly — very slowly — winning the hearts of Scandinavian royal-watchers. A real-time online poll in Danish tabloid Extrabladet has rated the various princesses scattered across the frozen isles, and our Mary didn’t come last.

When the polls closed at 11pm Mary was running at 12.7% out of 14,000 votes, up from a start of 7.4% when it opened at nine pm.

The clear winner was Swedish heir apparent Crown Princess Victoria with 44%, with her sister Madelaine running second at 28%. Mary was a fairly distant third, but deserves kudos for beating two actual Scandinavians — Norwegian princess Mette-Marit (8.3%), wife of the crown prince Haakon, and Märtha-Louise, daughter of King Harald.

The former is a one-time single-mother whose ex-boyfriend was a stoner, and the latter has basically withdrawn from royal duties, hence the low ratings.

Wooden-spooning was Denmark’s Princess Marie, Mary’s sister-in-law, married to Frederick’s brother, on 2.3%, easily explained by the fact that she’s French.

“Skulle hun ikke være god nok? Det mener svenskerne ikke,” asks Extrabladet of Marie.

“Shouldn’t we kick her in the skull? The mean Swedes say yuk” — or, more pedantically — “Wouldn’t she be good enough? The Swedes don’t think so.”

Meanwhile Danish radio reports on the Australian media’s reports that Mary and Frederick will be spending the northern winter in Australia, noting somewhat sniffily that Mary has announced plans to take Prince Christian and Princess Isabella “hjem”, with their father, Frederick, and the royal couple’s pets, the “kronsprinsparrets”.

No, hang on that is the royal couple. As you were.

In other Danish-Australian news, every paper is leading with “Albrechtsen: jeg er ikke bitter”.

Albrechtsen is not bitter. News to us.