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

Haakon automatically succeeded to the throne Friday after his father, King Harald, passed away peacefully earlier in the day.

The 53-year-old informed the government in a meeting that he would keep the same motto as his father and grandfather: "All for Norway."

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.'

"Everything will be fine with him when the time comes. It is reassuring to know that," the late King Harald said of him in a book.

"I am fortunate that it is Crown Prince Haakon who has to take over," Harald said, musing that his own father had probably been more worried about the succession

The tall, bearded and stately Haakon 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 before their wedding, 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 King Harald and Queen Sonja, who were keen to see him grow up among "ordinary" Norwegians.

After a stint in the navy, 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 with a heavy criminal record, including assault and cocaine possession.

Norwegians however 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.

Haakon's sister Princess Martha-Louise, a fan of alternative therapies, has repeatedly been accused of exploiting her royal 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 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, Haakon's wife Mette-Marit, underwent a lung transplant for pulmonary fibrosis that was diagnosed in 2018.

The Norwegian media had in February already published troubling revelations about Mette-Marit's friendship with Epstein in the early 2010s.

Even though the disgraced 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 said she had been "manipulated and deceived".

"When you get married, it's for better or for worse," Haakon remarked in March during a televised interview the gave 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.

Haakon has nevertheless "shown himself to be a man who remains steady in the face of a storm, and that is a very valuable quality in a monarch," Caroline Vagle, a reporter for magazine Se og Hor, told AFP.

"He has also had the best teacher he could possibly have had in his father," she added.

In a poll conducted in March, nearly eight out of 10 Norwegians felt that he would make a good king.

P.Ho--ThChM