When she married her prince, the press across her home country called her ‘Cinderella’. Now, the royal bride who defied critics to build a regal fairy tale has become Queen of Norway but the fairytale stopped some time ago now for the most controversial consort in Europe.
Queen Mette-Marit of Norway has lived one of her toughest years so far and now the spotlight falls on her again as she becomes consort.
The new Queen of Norway is still recovering from a lung transplant which took place earlier this summer after she became seriously ill with pulmonary fibrosis, a condition she was first diagnosed with almost ten years ago. Her doctors put her forward for the operation after coming to the conclusion she had only a year to live.
Meanwhile, her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, was sentenced to four years in prison this summer after being convicted of a number of offences including two counts of rape.
And it’s also been revealed that she had a friendship with convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Queen Mette-Marit never had an easy ride into royalty. Her past was controversial when her relationship with Haakon became known – she had enjoyed the so called ‘party scene’ in Norway which included drug use. However, an emotional interview ahead of her wedding in which she broke down in tears and said sorry changed everything.
She became nicknamed the ‘Cinderella of Kristiansand’ after her homeplace and as she adopted popular causes, including support for people with HIV and promoting literacy, she found a niche in royal life. She was also a very modern Crown Princess, taking to Instagram almost as soon as it launched. Her support for Norwegian fashion and industry gained her more fans. Her diagnosis with pulmonary fibrosis, in 2018, also led to sympathy.
However, the first cracks in the fairytale appeared in 2024 when she mysteriously turned up late to the Paris Olympics. While her husband was cheerleading the nation’s athletes in the City of Light, Mette-Marit stayed behind for a few days. It later transpired this was the same time that her son, Marius, was under police investigation.
At this year got under way, her name appeared in the Epstein papers. The extent of her friendship with convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, became clear as her name appeared many times in documents released in the United States. One of the most damaging parts of the information now made public about the friendship between Mette-Marit and Jeffrey Epstein is that their relationship developed after he was convicted of sex offences in 2008. The papers showed that Mette-Marit stayed at Epstein’s Miami home in 2013 for four nights.
There were also other embarrassing revelations including an email in which she described a royal wedding as boring.
Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, took the unprecedented step of commenting on the behaviour of a senior member of the country’s royal family. He said Mette-Marit had shown ”poor judgement” in her past contacts with Jeffrey Epstein.
In the aftermath of the Epstein papers, one of Norway’s biggest broadcasters,TV2, ran a poll asking if Mette-Marit should become Queen of Norway. Almost half of all respondents, 48%, said no. Those saying yes totalled 29% with 24% still undecided.
It followed questions from constitutional historians about whether the wife of the heir to the throne could or should one day be her country’s queen after the revelations of the past days.
Norway’s royal family has always been popular, in large part due to King Harald V and his father, King Olav. When Harald, father of Crown Prince Haakon, celebrated his silver jubilee in 2016, some opinion polls put his popularity at over 90%. Even now, the royal family averages 70% in popularity rankings. However, King Harald was always a major factor in that.
Now, Mette-Marit is Queen of Norway and her eldest son is serving his sentence under house arrest at the home of his step father, the King of Norway and head of state for a whole country.
King Haakon VIII’s eldest child with Mette-Marit is heir to the throne and becomes the first Crown Princess in Norway’s history. Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra as she is now known is a popular royal but at 22 years old is just beginning a career that will one day take her to the throne of Norway. And that’s a throne that now faces a queen with a controversial past and present, a Cinderella for whom the fairytale ended long ago.
