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.
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?