A Royal Pair: The Un-Fairy Tale Romance
Prince Haakon of Norway may be a direct descendant of Queen Victoria, but he shares little in common with this staunch monarch. Instead of going to Balliol College in Oxford, as did his father, King Garald V, Haakon was a fun-loving young man on campus at the University of California at Berkeley.
When it came to taking a bride, as he did in Oslo on August 25, 2001, he shocked conservative Norway, challenging one of the world's most tolerant and enlightened societies. Crown Prince Haakon married Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby (whom he called "the love of my life"), an unconventional royal pairing. The prince had never been married before, but the princess and future queen of Norway was a divorcée and mother. The couple lived together before marriage in the palace with her 3-year-old son by a previous marriage to a convicted cocaine supplier.
Before marrying the prince, Mette-Marit had a "well-known past in Oslo's dance-and-drugs house-party scene," as the Oslo press so delicately phrased it. It was rumored that pressure was brought on the young prince by conservative elements to give up a claim to the throne, eerily evocative of Edward VII's decision to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Warfield Simpson in the 1930s. It is said that Haakon considered renouncing the throne but decided to maintain his status as the heir apparent. "I think this is where I'm supposed to be," he finally said to the press, ending months of speculation.
King Harald was supportive of his son's decision. The future king himself spent a decade trying to persuade his own father, Olav V, to sanction his marriage to his commoner childhood sweetheart. (The present Queen Sonja was born a shopkeeper's daughter.) Olav himself had also intervened when his daughter, Princess Märtha Louise, was cited as a correspondent in a divorce proceeding in London.
The wedding has come and gone, and there is no more talk of revolution at this "scandal." As Ine Marie Eriksen, a law student from Tromsø, explained, "Why should Prince Haakon and Mette-Marit live by rules of the 18th century? That would take away the very thing that the Norwegian people like about our monarchy."
Since their marriage, the royal couple have had two children -- Princess Ingrid, born January 21, 2004, and Prince Sverre Magnus, born December 3, 2005. In 1990 the Norwegian constitution was altered, meaning that the eldest child, regardless of gender, takes precedence in the line of succession. The law is not retroactive, however. That means that Crown Prince Haakon is in line for the Norwegian throne, not his sister, Princess Märtha Louise (born 1971). Haakon was born on July 20, 1973.
