Treaty of Ribe an impossible task of raising 100,000 silver marks to redeem his country. Denmark had effectively been dissolved and the country was left without a king between 1332 and 1340. In 1340, King Valdemar IV of Denmark began a more-than-twenty-year-long struggle to reclaim his father's kingdom. Although eventually succeeding in regaining control of Zealand, Funen, Jutland, and the Scanian lands, he failed to obtain control of Schleswig, whose ducal House of Estridsen managed to continue its virtual independence. To gain influence over the province, Valdemar married Helvig of Schleswig, the only daughter of Duke Eric II of Schleswig. In 1372, he
Political status of the Cook Islands and Niue the Cook Islands' nationals are automatically New Zealand citizens, and both have New Zealand's head of state, Elizabeth II, as their own. On the basis of these arrangements, Prime Minister Helen Clark declared in 2001 that if the Cook Islands were to join the United Nations, the act would be interpreted by New Zealand as a declaration of independence, leading Cook Islanders to lose the right to New Zealand citizenship. This was reiterated by PM John Key in 2015. Some scholars have argued that this position by New Zealand places an effective limit on the ability of the Cook Islands