The China Mail - Norway's new King Haakon, popular face of shaken monarchy

Haakon automatically succeeded to the throne Friday after his father, King Harald, passed away peacefully earlier in the day. He is due to swear an oath before the government later Friday.

He has increasingly seen his family's affairs plastered across front pages: his wife's lung transplant, revelations about her ties to convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a rape conviction against his stepson, and the escapades of his eccentric sister and her American self-proclaimed shaman husband.

Haakon, a tall, bearded and stately 53-year-old, is as modest and measured as most Norwegians -- reflecting a society that shuns opulence and ostentation.

Married to Mette-Marit, a commoner who was a single mother, Haakon has focused his attention on issues that concern many of his generation, including environmental protection and fighting racism and homophobia.

"It's important that we protect who we are and for Norway to be a country where we're allowed to love and be with whoever we want," he said the day after a bloody attack against the gay community in Oslo in June 2022.

Born on July 20, 1973, the prince attended state-run daycare and schools, in line with the wishes of his parents, King Harald and Queen Sonja, who were keen to see him grow up among "ordinary" Norwegians.

After secondary school he spent three years in the navy, where he served primarily as an officer on a torpedo boat.

He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in political science at the University of California in Berkeley and a master's in international politics at the London School of Economics.

- Scandals -

Haakon is a fan of skiing, surfing, and windsurfing, as well as music.

It was at a 1999 music festival at Kristiansand, in southern Norway, that he met his future wife, whose tumultuous past made headlines in the Scandinavian country.

At the time, Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby was a single mother of a young son named Marius, the fruit of an earlier relationship with a man who had a heavy criminal record, including assault and cocaine possession.

"My teenage rebellion was stronger than most people's," she acknowledged to reporters ahead of her August 2001 marriage to Haakon.

Norwegians quickly saw beyond her wild past. The couple went on to have a daughter expected to one day be queen, Ingrid Alexandra, born in 2004, and a son Sverre Magnus, in 2005.

But storm clouds were building on the horizon.

His sister Martha-Louise, a fan of alternative therapies, has repeatedly been accused of exploiting her princess title for commercial purposes.

She made headlines again by marrying a self-proclaimed shaman, Durek Verrett, in 2024, described as a dangerous "charlatan" by his critics.

Then his stepson Marius, whom Haakon has always treated like his own son, was arrested in August 2024 and sentenced to four years in prison in June 2026 for rape and assault. He has appealed.

Just days before the conviction, Marius' mother, Haakon's wife Mette-Marit, underwent a lung transplant for the pulmonary fibrosis with which she was diagnosed in 2018.

That came just months after the Norwegian media in February 2026 published troubling revelations about Mette-Marit's friendship with Epstein in the early 2010s.

Even though the American financier had already been convicted of soliciting a minor, Mette-Marit had been in frequent contact with him, their emails indicating a close relationship.

She later said she had been "manipulated and deceived".

"When you get married, it's for better or for worse," Haakon remarked in March 2026 during a televised interview with the couple about the Epstein revelations.

The scandals have tarnished the royal family's image and weakened its support in the Scandinavian country, though it remains broadly popular.

S.Wilson--ThChM