Questions are now being asked in Norway about her failure to realise the toxic nature of maintaining contact with Epstein, and about the role of her advisers when she was corresponding with him via an official royal email account.
“It seems that nobody has been thinking. Where are the counsellors, where’s the royal court and where’s the foreign office?” says Ole-Jørgen Schulsrud-Hansen, a historian and royal correspondent for Norway’s TV2.
He believes the monarch has managed to distance itself from the imminent court case, with the argument that the princess’s son is a private citizen, but that is not the case for Mette-Marit: “She’s never a private citizen, she’s always the crown princess and what she’s doing in a private capacity or official capacity it will always redirect back to Norway – or ricochet.”
Mette-Marit is the future queen of Norway, and she has a prominent role in society as patron of several organisations including the Red Cross.
She is also suffering from pulmonary fibrosis and her doctors are preparing to put her on a list for a lung transplant.
When Mette-Marit married into the family as a commoner, her son was already four years old.
