The future King Frederick VI was born between 10 and 11 p.m. on 28 January 1768 in the Queen's Bedchamber at Christiansborg Palace, the royal residence in central Copenhagen.

[5]The young prince was baptised already two days after the birth on 30 January at Christiansborg Palace by the royal confessor Ludvig Harboe, Bishop of Zealand, and was named after his late grandfather, King Frederick V.[6] His godparents were King Christian VII (his father), the dowager queen Juliana Maria (his step-grandmother) and his half-uncle, Hereditary Prince Frederick.

[6] At the time of Crown Prince Frederick's birth, conditions at the Danish court were characterized by Christian VII's increasing mental illness, including suspected schizophrenia expressed by catatonic periods.

Therefore, the Queen also fully approved the harsh education recommended by Struensee for the Crown Prince, who was perceived as weak and needed to be strengthened physically and mentally.

While Struensee was in power, the young Frederick was raised at Hirschholm Palace following an interpretation of the educational approach advocated by Rousseau in his famous work Émile.

After Crown Prince Frederick was declared of legal majority and assumed the regency in 1784, the Danish royal court started to make inquiries to arrange a marriage for him.

There was speculation that he was to marry a Prussian princess, a choice supported by his step-grandmother Juliana Maria and her brother-in-law Frederick the Great.

At the death of his father, Frederick finally ascended the thrones of Denmark and Norway in name also as their seventh absolute monarch at the age of 40.

He stayed with Napoleon in order to protect the exposed situation of Norway, which was dependent on grain imports and had become the target of Swedish territorial ambitions.

He expected the wars would end with a great international conference in which Napoleon would have a major voice, and would help protect the crown's interests, especially in Norway.

[14][15] After the French defeat in the Napoleonic Wars in 1814 and the loss of the Norwegian crown (as a result of the Treaty of Kiel), Frederick VI carried through an authoritarian and reactionary course, giving up the liberal ideas of his years as a prince regent.

[citation needed] Censorship and suppression of all opposition together with the poor state of the country's economy made this period of his reign somewhat gloomy, though the King himself in general maintained his position of a well-meaning autocrat.

On 23 February 1827,[17] he granted a Royal Charter[18] giving Serampore College in Danish India the status of a university to confer degrees.

[19] After the discovery of the Haraldskær Woman in a peat bog in Jutland in the year 1835, Frederick VI ordered a royal interment in an elaborately carved sarcophagus for the Iron Age mummy, decreeing it to be the body of Queen Gunnhild.