From reluctant prince to king: Who is Norway’s new monarch?

Haakon — who comes to the throne as two major scandals batter his family — struggled for years to accept his status, Reuters writes.

“Yes, I was a royal, but I did not want to talk about it … ​At school it made me anxious,” he wrote in his 2023 autobiography “Haakon”, recalling his days in a state primary in the 1980s.

Over the years, he grew ‌into his role, becoming Crown Prince in 1991 and taking on more royal duties as his father’s health failed. On Friday he took on the crown itself following the death of King Harald.

As a child, he preferred to stay out of sight “because that is when things went wrong. Attention, other people could have that,” he wrote.

He decided not to try to follow in ​his father and grandfather’s footsteps to England’s University of Oxford, and enrolled instead at the University of California, Berkeley.

He wanted to be “as far away as possible” from his home. Other ​attractions were California’s music scene․

Soon after his return to Norway in 1999 he met his future wife, Mette-Marit, at a music ​festival.

When the relationship became public, the media jumped on the fact that she was a commoner and a single mother.

That furore died down after King Harald — who had also married a commoner, Queen Sonja, despite his own father’s objections — publicly welcomed her into the family.