- Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit's emails with Jeffrey Epstein have sparked controversy in Norway
- Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store has urged the princess to explain her exchanges with Epstein
- Mette-Marit's son faces 38 criminal charges including rape and assault in an ongoing trial
Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit's life was once the stuff of fairytales, but rape charges against her son and her friendship with convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have seen it turn into a nightmare.
The tale of the single mother from humble beginnings, whose chance encounter with Crown Prince Haakon propelled her to the heart of the monarchy, won the affection of Norwegians.
But her frequent exchanges with Epstein, published since the release of new Epstein documents and seized upon by Norwegian media, have exposed an unsuspected relationship that has shocked the Scandinavian country.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store has urged her to explain the many emails she and the US business tycoon exchanged between 2011 and 2014 -- more than a decade after her marriage to Haakon.
Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution, died in 2019 by suicide while in jail awaiting trial for sex crimes against minors.
Commentators in Norway have even questioned whether Mette-Marit, 52, should be queen. In a poll published on Tuesday by TV2, 47.6 percent of respondents said she should not become queen, while only 28.9 percent backed her.
In 2012, when Epstein told her he was in Paris "on (a) wife hunt", she replied that the French capital is "good for adultery" and "Scandis (are) better wife material".
In 2011, three years after his first conviction, Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein that she had "googled" him, adding "it didn't look too good" and ending the sentence with a smiling emoji.
In 2013, she stayed at his Florida home for four days.
"I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing," she said in a statement sent to AFP by the royal palace on Saturday.
The revelations have stained the princess' reputation, at a time when she is dealing with a trial against her 29-year-old son from a relationship before she married the crown prince.
Marius Borg Hoiby is to appear in an Oslo court on Tuesday on 38 charges, including raping four women and assaulting ex-girlfriends. He risks up to 16 years in prison if found guilty.
Hoiby was arrested again on Sunday on suspicion of assault, making threats with a knife and violating a restraining order. He was remanded in custody for four weeks.
The princess will not attend the trial, having planned a private trip.
Troubled youth
Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby was born on August 19, 1973 to a journalist father with alcohol abuse problems and a bank clerk mother in the southern town of Kristiansand, in Protestant Norway's "Bible Belt".
She once described herself as "the most conscientious teenager in the world" until she turned 16 and went to Australia for a year abroad with her school.
The transformative experience saw her break free and reinvent herself.
Upon her return to Norway, she shaved her head, got engaged to a man who introduced her to Oslo's house music scene -- where she experimented with hash and ecstasy, according to an unofficial biography -- and at 24 gave birth to Marius, after a brief romance with another man.
"My teenage rebellion was stronger than most people's," she acknowledged to reporters ahead of her August 2001 marriage to Crown Prince Haakon.
"I was part of a scene where a lot of boundaries were... crossed," she said.
Health woes
She had met the crown prince two years earlier at a music festival.
Her CV was thin at the time, but the striking young waitress won the prince's heart. The Norwegian people, who, seeing her reserved demeanour in public, quickly looked beyond her wild past.
She is far from the only member of the Norwegian royal family to have made waves. King Harald, now 88, had to wage a major battle to be allowed to marry a commoner.
Mette-Marit and Haakon have two children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 22, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 20.
But behind her orderly appearance and perpetual smile hangs an ominous dark cloud.
In 2018, the royal couple revealed that Mette-Marit was suffering from a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable disease that causes scarring of the lungs and shortness of breath.
The condition has at times required her to lighten her royal duties or cancel engagements, and will likely see her undergo a lung transplant at some point.
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