At the end of the summer, Norwegians thought they had hit rock bottom. They learned with horror for the first time, on August 4, of the arrest of Marius Borg Høiby, son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit, suspected of having attacked his girlfriend. Then, on August 31, they attended, stunned, the highly controversial marriage of Princess Märtha Louise, eldest daughter of King Harald V and Queen Sonja, to American Durek Verrett, a self-proclaimed shaman, suspected of quackery. However, the worst was yet to come: Marius Borg Høiby, 27, was remanded in custody on November 18, before being released on November 27. He is accused of two rapes, one of which was documented by a video found by police on his mobile phone.
Initially cautious, Norwegian royal specialists now admit that the situation is serious: “This is the biggest crisis [qu’ait connue la monarchie] since 1905 and the country’s independence”, believes Caroline Vagle, a reporter for the magazine Se og Hør. TV2 commentator Ole-Jørgen Schulsrud-Hansen explains: “It is the other side of the coin when you have a family at the head of the State. Everything that affects the family affects the institution, and vice versa. »
For those, still a minority in the country, who dream of seeing Norway become a republic, these serial scandals reveal above all “the problems inherent to the monarchical regime”, observes the deputy of the Socialist Left Party, Andreas Sjalg Unneland: “It’s a kind of lottery. We can only hope that the members of the royal family behave well and that there is luck with those who are born or marry there. »
Alcohol and cocaine
In the family photo, Marius Borg Høiby occupies a special place: born in 1997 from a relationship between Mette-Marit, then a waitress, and Morten Borg, a financial analyst convicted in the early 2000s for possession and use of narcotics, the young man has no royal blood. But her mother, who married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, became the future queen of Norway. Although this union was controversial at the time, it was eventually accepted by Norwegians as a sign of modernization of the monarchy.
Raised in the opulence of palaces, Marius Borg had led a dissolute life since finishing his high school years in 2016. In 2017, he was fined for possession of cocaine at a music festival. His problems with the law ended there. Until August 4: Suspected of having physically attacked his girlfriend the day before, in an apartment in the elegant Frogner neighborhood of Oslo, he was arrested for the first time. A few days later he made an act of contrition. In a press release addressed to public broadcaster NRK On August 14, he admitted the facts, while ensuring that he had acted “under the influence of alcohol and cocaine” and claimed to suffer “various mental illnesses”.
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