The news that Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby, has been detained pending a rape verdict is a reminder that even the most progressive monarchies are not immune to the sordid tales that have dogged their predecessors. That the British royals have expressed ‘deep concern’ is predictable: the House of Windsor, ever the primus inter pares of European royalty, cannot resist casting a shadow of moral authority over a fellow throne’s domestic troubles. But let us not feign surprise.
The Norwegian monarchy, like its British counterpart, is a relic of an age when bloodlines mattered more than behaviour. Today, we force these institutions to pretend they are paragons of virtue, when history shows us they are merely lucky survivors of centuries of debauchery. The difference is that the Victorians were honest about their hypocrisy; we pretend we have none.
The fall of Rome was not marked by a single rape scandal but by the slow erosion of public trust in those who ruled. Perhaps the Norwegian royals should take note. Perhaps the British royals should look inward, for their own house has its share of skeletons.
But they won’t. They will continue to issue statements of concern, as if that absolves them of their own complicity in the myth of the virtuous crown.
