King Friedrich's reign was one long crisis. The king's initial response was to rein in the feuding parties, keep the situation fluid, and allow events to unfold without undue bloodshed. This cautious reaction hardened insensibly into policy, and the policy pleased no one. Subjects could only view the king's rule from their own narrow vantages. Commoners said he gave the lords too much power. The lords rejected the king's attempts to placate commoners. Holsteiners exploited their proximity to the throne. Danes regarded them and their duke as aliens, outsiders speaking a foreign tongue. Hanse towns said Friedrich favored the Netherlands. Merchants in the Netherlands resented every concession extracted by the city of Lübeck. The Catholic clergy turned against the king because he tolerated Evangelical preachers. The preachers said he kowtowed to prelates of the old church. Very few understood that the king was up against problems without solutions.

Friedrich was fifty-two years old, an old man by the standards of the sixteenth century, and he had grown accustomed to living with intolerable constraints. As the son of a German noble house he had, according to custom, claimed a provision equal to that of his brother Hans; as the younger son he had had to settle for less, much less. He had continued to press his claims for the undivided duchies, for Norway, for parts of Denmark, but without much expectation that his claims would be met.