He is the third child and younger son of King Frederik X and Queen Mary, the sixth grandchild and youngest grandson of Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik, and the older twin brother of Princess Josephine.

At noon on 8 January, a 21-gun salute was fired from the Sixtus Battery at Holmen Naval Base in the Port of Copenhagen and from Kronborg Castle in Elsinore in North Zealand to mark the arrival of the royal children.

[7] Prince Vincent wore the royal christening gown which was made for his great-great-grandfather, King Christian X, in 1870, while his sister wore a gown found among Queen Ingrid's belongings.

[9] His godparents are his maternal uncle, John Stuart Donaldson; his father's first cousin, the Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (then the Hereditary Prince); his mother's lady-in-waiting, Caroline Heering; and friends of his parents, the King of Spain (then the Prince of Asturias), Count Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille and Baroness Helle Reedtz-Thott.

[citation needed] Under the old system of male-preference primogeniture, Vincent would have displaced his elder sister Isabella in the line of succession; with the new law, he comes directly after her instead.