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.
You can have a President without having a Presidential system - like, for example, Germany - were that post is mainly being a figurehead/top-diplomat with mainly the power of shaming parliament when they go overboard with some laws, both not actually able to block it, possible with some limited power to dissolve parliament and call new elections.
Basically it’s the same thing as a modern day monarch in a Democratic nation, except that people actually get to chose who gets the post, if they turn out to be bad at it they get replaced after 4 years rather than being there for life and they don’t actually own a massive chunk of wealth for historical reasons (like, for example, the British Royal Family).
I’ve lived under Presidential systems (Portugal) and Constitutional Monarchies (The Netherlands, Britain) and vastly prefer the former: the latter is especially fucked up in Britain were the Royals actually have real power (to block laws) - if seldom used - and are the cornerstone of a well entrenched system of patronage and class segregation which is far beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere in Europe, though granted in The Netherlands The Royals were a lot closer to normal people - to the point that before becoming King the current ruler used to work as a pilot for KLM - than in Britain.