As regent, he took part in the conduct of government by attending council meetings, but he was afflicted by alcoholism and most of his rule was dominated by able ministers who were influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

Although Frederick V wasn't personally interested in cultural affairs, his first wife was, and the public entertainment and freedom of expression that had been banned during his father's reign was again permitted.

[2] Frederick was the last Danish prince to be born in the then antiquated and overextended Copenhagen Castle,[3] which dated from the late 14th century, and had assumed a monstrous appearance and started to crumble under its own weight after several extensions.

Demolition of the castle began in 1731 to make way for a more adequate royal residence, the vast Baroque style Christiansborg Palace, from where Frederick would eventually reign.

The young prince was baptized the following day in the Crown Princess's Bedchamber by the royal confessor Christen Lemvig, and was named after his grandfather, King Frederick IV.

However, Söhlenthal did not succeed in influencing the spiritual development of the Crown Prince, as he was an overly gentle and weak character, and in 1738 he was dismissed from his position as hofmeister.

In 1730 the king entrusted the significant and well-educated privy councillor Iver Rosenkrantz supervision of Crown Prince Frederik's upbringing, but this had no influence on the actual teaching.

[12] In 1743, a dynastic marriage was negotiated between him and Princess Louise of Great Britain, the youngest daughter of King George II and Caroline of Ansbach.

[16] As for the Crown Prince, after having been presented with a portrait of the princess and finding her exterior appealing, and having been told of her amiability, he declared himself willing to marry Louise, all the more so as he too could see that the political circumstances made the marriage desirable.

However, Louise only partially succeeded in taming her husband's licentious behavior, and not even in the first period of the marriage did he manage to stay away from the orgies to which he had become accustomed, and continued his debauched lifestyle.

[19] On 6 August 1746—the day before his parents' silver marriage festivities—his father died at the age of 46 at Hirschholm Palace, the royal family's summer retreat north of Copenhagen.

On 4 September the following year, they were anointed in Frederiksborg Palace's Chapel, the traditional place of coronation of Denmark-Norway's monarchs during the days of the absolute monarchy, on the island of Sealand north of Copenhagen.

[20] Frederick V's accession to the throne brought about a great change in life at the Danish court, which now became far more festive and acquired a more easy-going tone than under his strictly religious parents.

[21] Almost as a sign of the new times, the heavy iron chains that had previously surrounded Christiansborg to keep the people at distance disappeared, court life regained its luster, and the palace's halls and salons once again became the setting for balls and social gatherings.

Frederick's main interest was primarily the arts of war that rivalled the anti-military attitudes that characterized his counsellors; he enjoyed hunting and stayed often at the Jægersborg Dyrehave estates.

Although the king, as regent, took part in the conduct of government by attending council meetings, he was afflicted by alcoholism and most of his rule was dominated by very able ministers such as A. G. Moltke J. H. E. Bernstorff and H. C. Schimmelmann.

These men marked his reign by the progress of commerce and the emerging industry of gunpowder plant and cannon foundry in Frederiksværk, built by Johan Frederik Classen.

The country remained neutral even for the duration of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), despite its proximity to combatants Russia and Sweden, an act which undoubtedly shaped the perception of the period as a happy time.

And in 1754, the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen was also founded under his name and officially inaugurated on 31 March 1754, his 31st birthday.

[19] Queen Louise died suddenly on 19 December 1751 at Christiansborg Palace, predeceasing her husband by fourteen years and causing great impact on the royal family and the court's life, where she was adored.

[22] Moltke then drew the king's attention to Duchess Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, daughter of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and sister-in-law to Frederick the Great of Prussia.

After having made some additional investigations and met with satisfying answers, the king expressed himself willing to marry her, and the wedding took place at the chapel of Frederiksborg Castle on 8 July 1752.

"[25] After lying in state with great pomp at the chapel at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, he was interred next to Queen Louise in Roskilde Cathedral on the island of Zealand, the traditional burial site for Danish monarchs since the 15th century.

On 1 August 1771, five years after the king's death, an equestrian statue of Frederick V dressed in the garb of a Roman emperor by the French sculptor Jacques François Joseph Saly was unveiled in Amalienborg Square in Copenhagen.

In February 2021, Frederick V came suddenly to the focus of a historical-political controversy when a group of radical artists removed a bust of the King and sunk it in Copenhagen Harbor, in protest of Denmark's role in the Atlantic slave trade during his reign.

[26] Frederick V appears in the early part of The Visit of the Royal Physician (Swedish: Livläkarens besök), a 1999 historical novel by Per Olov Enquist, which mainly deals with his son Christian VII.

As depicted in the book, Frederick's contemptuous and overbearing attitude to his son had a significant part in causing the mental instability which characterized Christian's life and reign.