Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.
The files include scores of emails traded between the two, suggesting they were in contact from 2011 to 2014, the Norwegian daily VG reported. Mette-Marit married the future king of Norway in 2001.
The revelations come at a sensitive time for the royal family. The trial of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby for rape is due to begin on Tuesday. He was born from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon
Høiby is facing 38 charges, including the alleged rape of four women as well as alleged assault and drug offences. If convicted he could face up to 16 years in prison. Høiby has denied the most serious charges, including those of sexual abuse.
Mette-Marit and a scandal. I’ve heard that before.
I was told that royal families are all ceremonial and that they don’t have any real power, but we keep finding them embroiled with people who have real power.
Really makes you think.
Money==power. Monarchs roll in money.
No times 2. Monarchs don’t really roll in money, and to elaborate let’s dive into your first statement, and why it’s off. Money is only really power if you have the freedom to buy with it as you want. Monarchs have very little freedom of any in that regard. Often you’ll find that the vast majority of the so-called appanage comes with a note of exactly what they should pay for. Like, paying for renovations of buildings you don’t appreciate living in and stills being told to live in it. Agreed, they do live a rather decent lifestyle, and there’s no reason to feel sorry for monarchs’ financial setup, but it comes at a hefty price of a lifetime commitment to no freedom in some regards. Personally I really appreciate the royal family in Denmark. The Danish king is a wise, highly trained military man, who also is a father driving his kids to school in a flatbed bicycle. It’s just good PR for a country to have a king (and queen) like that.
In theory, yes. In our country, our royal family has an undisclosed amount of money, get an undisclosed amount of money from the taxpayer and has a number of other sources of income as well. One of the nephews of the king has a huge real estate business built upon his family money.
Fucking parasites.
Any social influencers of this level obviously have indirect power and anyone who claims otherwise is delusional.
That being said, I do think it’s possible that ceremonial representation can be beneficial. I’d love states start electing purely ceremonial roles more as it’s a really powerful social tool for uniting people and can be done right.
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How can one man be so infuriatingly involved in so much corruption globally? I just want to live in peace, urgh
Mossad wants dirt on everyone
But not russians?
The only russians to pop up in the files are informants or business partners, nothing else.
There is, however, quite a bit of dirt on various Israelites.
They’ve released less than 1% of the files. Still plenty of things we have yet to see.
That is good for your goal to live in peace if we take it seriously though. Catching so many corrupt and vile people at the same time is a great thing.
Fair point, but I have my doubts we’ll take it seriously, considering our collective response so far to world altering events such as Climate Change, Panama Papers, etc.
The world really is run by a cabal of pedophiles.
Who knew
I’ve heard that this is so bad that it might be the end of the royal family in Norway.
Damn, I wish! I’m against all kinds of kings.
Why?
They have decorational value, nothing else.
Imagine you have some decorational vases on your mantle. They cost you an extraordinary amount of money each year, but you like them and they’re family heirlooms. But then one vase starts spewing the most insane conspiracy theories that make everyone uncomfortable, one shills dangerous health advice for money (despite you paying its salary), one is facing multiple accusations of sexual assault, and has been indicted for rape, and one it turns out is heavily in the Epstein files. Would you reconsider if those vases were worth paying a ton of money every year that could be used to better yourself or others?
I mean, yeah, these specific vases have to go, but I wouldn’t reconsider the idea of having vases based off of that.
No? You’re saying you wouldn’t even consider spending the exorbitant amount of money it cost to maintain those purely decorational vases on something else? Like saving for your retirement or your kid’s retirement, setting up community gardens, beefing up your home security, funding medical research, etc?
No? You’re saying you wouldn’t even consider spending the exorbitant amount of money it cost to maintain those purely decorational vases on something else?
Well, I like vases. People like vases. Some vases being shitty doesn’t make ALL vases shitty.
And let’s not pretend like the “royal whatnot” upkeep is a major amount of money on a country’s scale. Sure, looking at it itself it seems like a lot, but removing, for example, the UK royal family in its entirety wouldn’t even be noticeable in the overall budget. They cost UK taxpayers around £510 million, whereas the 2025 budget spending was £1,244.9 billion. You’d lower it to £1,244.4 billion. That’s peanuts.
The issue - on that scale - isn’t the funding itself, it’s that the overall spending of taxpayer money is extremely inefficient.
Thank you for partaking in this conversation in good faith. This is a good conversation.
That being said, I absolutely hate that attitude. When you look at it as a percentage of annual spending you are right. When you look at it per capita you’re right, for the UK it’s only £7 per person if my math is right.
That perspective is an extremely privileged one. How many lives could be saved every year with that money? How much good could be done?
We agree that the overall spending and allocation of taxpayer money is inefficient. The difference that I see in this conversation is that you’re throwing up your hands and saying “the problem is too big, welp better not do anything about it”, while I’m saying “This is a great step in the right direction that can help people now”.
Can you give me some reasons to keep the royal family, rather than reasons not to get rid of it?
That perspective is an extremely privileged one. How many lives could be saved every year with that money? How much good could be done?
OK, let’s assume we do it your way - eliminate the entirety of the Royal Family funding, because they’re “useless”.
Let’s say the NHS is able to save 34 more lives per year (NHS 2025 budget is £204.7 billion, UK’s population is 69 million, the extra £510 million equates to just about enough money for 34 extra people - maths super simplified, ofc, but I think it’s good enough to show the scales we’re talking about).
Now - there’s a bunch of jobs some of the Royals do (representative, mostly) that now need to be done by others on a regular employment contract, but let’s ignore all that.
We get 34 extra lives saved after eliminating what is essentially a large piece of history and culture, large part of which is available to the public.
So… why stop there? Why not eliminate all museums? Bah, kill the entire DCMS - their budget was a whopping £2.29 billion for the 2025/26 financial year! That’s around 140 extra saved lives if that budget was pushed to NHS!
You see what I’m getting at?
Can you give me some reasons to keep the royal family, rather than reasons not to get rid of it?
Royal families in democratic monarchies often serve similar purposes as the president in countries like Germany or Poland. It’s the Chancellor/Prime Minister who has any actual power, but there’s still a mostly representative President. The president, other than being an extension of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also often has the power of veto (in the case of Poland: they can send a proposed to be analysed by the Constitutional Tribunal to verify legality), as part of the three-way checks and balances, and has the right of legislative initiative.
To my knowledge, all of this is also true about the UK King. Sure, they’re not electable, but clearly the people of UK don’t have a problem with that (approval rates in the 60s with only around 30% being strongly against).
The idea to “save lives” by eliminating a large chunk of culture and history, as well introducing the need to heavily reform how governance in the UK works (which usually means immense costs to implement) would be easier (and cheaper) to achieve by just reforming the NHS.
It’s the same case as in the US - it’s not the lack of money that’s the problem here. People always complain that US prefers financing their war industry than healthcare, but that’s just completely not true - their military gets around 4% of the federal budget while their healthcare gets 16%. Throwing more money at that bonfire won’t help save people - you need to start by putting the fire out and then cleaning up!
Thank you for partaking in this conversation in good faith. This is a good conversation.
Cheers!
Sounds like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
A lifetime of living without consequence where your every whim is met creates dangerously broken people
What happened here is actually worse somehow. Mette marit was a “commoner” known on her circles as a fun party/rave girl. The usual drugs included. She had a son (Marius) with someone from that walk of life. He had the chance to turn 8 or 9 i think before having the title of “royalty” thrust uppon him at the same time his single mother got swept away on all sorts of royal adventures.
Not hard at all to see how that can fuck you up royally.
Edit: just remembered she had a sextape from the good old days, and since it was only of interest to us Norwegians and the internett wasn’t as big as it is now they’ve managed to scrub it. Or that might just have been rumors, but I’m like 80% sure i saw it at one of the early 2000’s LAN parties.
Parasites.
He was first sentenced in 2008…
That part is the most insane to me. She actually looked up Epstein’s past after he had just signed that plea deal for child prostitution in 2011 and then replied with a smiley… And then called him “soft hearted”, “sweetheart” and “very charming” and used him as a mentor for how to raise her son. That is beyond poor judgment.
Looks bad until you realise how afraid of confrontations Norwegians are
The fact that Mette-Marit was a single mother and the fact that Høiby’s father was a convicted felon created controversy. TV 2 later wrote that “merely by existing, Marius Borg Høiby was seen by many as a scandal for the royal family.”
He sure lived up to their expectations. Well cheer up guys, at least he can use your tax money to hire himself the best lawyer available.
How can “the most democratic country” have a monarchy?
Probably for the same reason we still have one in the Netherlands, where a large part of the country can’t comprehend abolishing the monarchy because “it’s tradition” or “because they do important diplomatic work” (ie brown-nosing other politicians for an idioticly high salary)
Ik vondt de enige gechillte Nederlander ;) Groeten vanuit Duitsland! (Grapje, ik weet dat niet iedereen Rutte of Wilders in het achterste wil neuken)
The US doesn’t have a monarchy, but we ended up with a king anyway.
What has the US to do with this?
Epstein.
To point out that having a democracy and not having a monarchy doesn’t mean much, practically speaking.
Yeah, it’s the respect to the right constitution that makes or breaks it
I’m guessing it’s like the UK where they have a monarchy but they don’t actually have any real power.
Well, aside from the usual rich person power of being able to commit all sorts of crimes and get away with it.
Powerful or not, inherited leadership is undemocratic.
Wait until you find out about hereditary peers…
Not even just the hereditary peers - there are also the 26 Anglican bishops, and the politically appointed lords, eg Mandelson. Senators for life, basically.
Tradition is a hell of a thing
The dominos start to fall
Not a Norwegian, but I would hope so.
As a Norwegian, I would be perfectly fine with seeing the monarchy abolished whenever the passing of our current monarcs occur.
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all the NONCE kings and princes had ties with epsteins MS kung fu master.
Norwegian here, and I don’t think it’s gonna change a whole lot. Well, not for her, at least.
Personally I don’t care enough about them, and I don’t get the impression anyone under 60 care that much either, neither positive or negative. Her husband is genuinely a nice person, so is her father in law (yes, I’ve met them both). Her son is a scumbag, though. (And he almost ran into me on a bicycle when he was 5 or so!)
So if anyone wants to litigate against her, I’m not gonna stand in the way, but for now this looks mostly like a case of “Should’ve known better”, something several government officials have publicly stated.
Just to clarify my stance on monarchy: Conflicted. In theory it does make sense to have someone who can veto everything on behalf of the state if the government goes weapons grade guano. However, the apolitical nature of a monarch pretty much stand in the way of this. And on the other hand, I’m not a big fan of inherited power.
But all in all, I don’t really care that much. Larger portions of my taxes go to stupider things.While I agree that having an independent body from the main political organ makes sense, I feel like a monarchy isn’t a great symbol to have in the first place
And what’s going to stop future scandals from happening? Or consequences for them? If a future king does something bad, we can’t exactly fire them and replace them with someone else, as that’s not how a monarchy works. We only got one tool, and it’s to abolish the monarchy. It doesn’t feel like great checks and balances
Generally I am against inherent power. And a monarchy is the peak of that, as you simply are in a position of power by having a lucky birth. It is true that lucky births happen constantly and are everywhere, especially if you get born in norway, but it feels wrong to actively support it.
It just doesn’t really feel like a system that has a place today. Though I do also realize that there’s problems with having a president or the like as well. But generally I support more democracy, not less.
And also as a final note like, if this went hidden for so long until the files got released, I wonder what other stuff got hidden as well? I mean, we got pretty much directly lied to here back in 2019
I’m just uncomfortable with systems that enforce a hierarchy. I think we could do with less of that
They can definitely replace the monarch. Remember it’s a constitutional monarchy where the monarch has only ceremonial power. The throne has been given to the current royal family by the people. The people can take the crown away if they want to. Parliament just needs to amend the constitution. Also the monarch can be encouraged to step down if they are embroiled in a scandal.
Also monarchs are just humans their heads can be chopped off like any of us. They should never forget what happened to their cousin during the French Revolution.
Who would replace the monarch though?
At that point it’s literally just an appointed minister by another name. And I’d rather have the position taken by someone who doesn’t live in a literal castle
And yes, I know it’s a constitutional monarchy, I live here :)
Yeah at that point it will just turn into a republic. But nothing is stopping Norwegians to go into that direction except tRAdiShyUn and decades of brainwashing.
But that’s literally what I’m arguing for though…?
The problem is this voting power is held by someone just because he/she is the child of someone, not because they can actually wield it responsibly. This is the whole reason monarchy was abolished.
Her son is a scumbag
when he was 5
Thoughts on the monarchy aside, I think it’s a little unfair to judge someone based on how they acted as a really young child
My assessment was not based on that one incident from when he was five.
Yup, I see that now. I agree, he’s a scumbag
And that’s why you shouldn’t white-knight random people you don’t know
Oh go fuck yourself. From the way it’s written it’s not unreasonable to think they’re talking about the kid running them over at 5 years old. Turning out to be a douchebag later doesn’t make it OK to judge a 5 year old.
No one is judging anyone except you.
False. I’m judging you to be a moron.
God forbid we’re unfair to this guy https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norway-crown-princess-son-rape-trial-marius-borg-hoiby/
Ok, fair. I didn’t know about that
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Possibly, but that excuse doesn’t fly for contacts following his first conviction in 2008:
[…] was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.
That was well before the above mentioned email contacts.
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With your justification, nobody should be working for HSBC, Meta, Google, Apple etc. […]
You are so close.
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Good thing my queen is a decent women with nice, well educated kids. I has to suck to have parasites like this live at your expense.
All monarchs are parasitic scum.
I was kidding but in all seriousness, I have a dual Polish-Spanish citizenship. The last Polish president (2 terms, 10 years in office) was an useless, partisan idiot who help destroy the justice system and blocked everything the government tried to pass. He was recently hired by the Heritage Foundation and is now spewing pro-Trump propaganda in Polish media. The newly elected president is a ex football hooligan idiot who, again, is blocking any progress to help his opposition party. The office or president in Poland is abused and is harmful to the democracy. Most of Polish presidents elected since the office was created were either drunks, idiots or hacks and embarrassed the office and country they are supposed to represent on countless occasions.
In the meantime, the Spanish king is not aligned with any party and is limiting his work to purely representative functions and occasionally mediating between the parties. He’s well educated, speaks foreign languages and knows all the protocols. He’s nothing but professional. His daughter, the princess, from the youngest age is getting all the education she will need to represent the country with honor and dignity. (Yes, the old king was an old drunk and pervert but he had enough common sense to resign when the scandals started surfacing).
The office of the Spanish King costs the taxpayers like 10% of what the president costs the Poles.
I know there’s a good middle ground where people elect smart, professional people to represent them and you have the best of two worlds but if I had to choose I’m taking well educated King over drunk President every time.
Guillotine the educated king and the drunk president as far as I’m concerned. If the king’s really so smart he’ll renounce his title when the guillotine comes out and the bloodshed can be avoided, so it’s a win all around.
I’m sure there are great solution that work in fantasyland. Here, in the real world, we have to work with what we have and in my experience, a King with little actual power works better than politically nominated president.
Today’s liberals are so deep in the “end of history” bullshit that they actually believe the very concept of a revolution is “fantasyland”
I couldn’t have satirized your position better if I’d tried.
It’s not the concept of revolution that’s “fantasyland”. It’s the idea that in Europe we will guillotine democratically elected presidents and constitutionally established monarchs. If that’s you plan for changing the system: good luck! Here in reality we simply realize that this is not going to happen and if it did, it woult not result in a system that’s better for anyone.
Norway’s Crown what? Are they from the past or something?
The constitutional monarchy is from 1814, but our real political power is democratically elected every 4 years. There is a significant minority who wants a republic instead, but most of us like having an unpolitical symbolic head of state to do the speaches, diplomacy and ribbon cutting that we can (mostly) all get behind. It’s the same system as in Sweden and Denmark.
We almost had a king instated in 1917 in Finland. The right wing party Kokoomus was desperate for a boot to lick.
It don’t want to should sound disrespectful to the finish language, but kokoomus sounds like the villain of a Mario spinoff.
Sounds like Kokusnuss, so coconut in German.
Are you truly so ignorant?
Just as a good few other European countries, yes. Most definitely yes.
And America now.
A lot of Europe has monarchs. Yes, the french and American mind struggles to comprehend this, but they just don’t ger rid of them
