The Royals with Roya and Kate - Bonus episode: The royal scandal rocking Norway

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

This episode comes from The Story, The Times’ daily news podcast.The British royal family isn't the only European monarchy in turmoil. In Norway the Epstein files have revealed intimate conversations between the Crown Princess and future Queen, Mette-Marit, and the paedophile after he was convicted. Meanwhile, her son, Marius Borg Høiby, is on trial facing charges on thirty-eight offences, including four counts of rape. If convicted, he faces up to ten years in prison. Could this be a fatal blow for the Norwegian royal family? And what does it tell us about the long tentacles of Jeffrey Epstein's influence in the palaces and parliaments of Europe?Image: Getty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Epstein files have exposed a royal scandal far beyond Britain. Today on the Royals, we're bringing you a bonus episode from the story, another podcast from The Times, which looks at allegations involving Marius Borguebe, the son of Norway's crown princess, and the mounting pressure now facing the Norwegian royal family, raising fresh questions about the monarchy's future in Norway. I'm Manvine Rana.

What a week it's been. The recent release of millions of pages of evidence from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation is drawing attention all over the world. Pictures appearing to show Andrew Mantatn-Winzer, crouched over an unidentified woman, are featured in the latest disclosure of files linked to the late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The scandal is also forcing Britain's Prime Minister to answer tough questions about his leadership. The new Epstein files have fueled outrage and fury in Western.

Westminster and beyond. The king was heckled on a royal visit because of his brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's, connections to Epstein. And the disgraced former Duke was moved out of his palatial former home. But the Windsors aren't the only royal family who appear in the files. Norway has been rocked by the correspondence the Epstein files appear to show between the crown princess and the convicted pedophile. And it comes at a time when the Royal House of Norway is already in the grip of a scandal.

A rape trial is rocking Norway's royal family. The son of the crown princess is in court accused of 38 crimes. If he's found guilty of the most serious crimes, he could face up to 10 years in prison. What has been going on? Struck by multiple scandals, can the Norwegian royals withstand the person? pressure. And what does it tell us about the long tentacles of Geoffrey Epstein's influence in the palaces and parliaments of Europe? The story this Sunday, Epstein and another royal scandal. This time, in Norway. Norway is a very small country, just over five and a half million people,

but also a very rich one, considerably richer than Britain, thanks to massive. resources of oil and gas from the North Sea, which they've managed a lot better than we have. That's Peter Conradi, Europe editor for the Sunday Times and our own in-house Norwegian royal family watcher. And it's also one of the seven countries in Europe, including Britain, which are a constitutional monarchy with a king, Harold, who's a second cousin once removed of our king, and he's Queen Sonia, who preside over the royal family and preside over the country. Peter, when you were there, was it cold? I feel like it probably would be. It was pretty cold when I was there. That was a couple of weeks ago. It got dark quite early.

I've also been there in the summer when it's absolutely wonderful, beautiful place. You've looked at the royal family in Norway before during your coverage. I mean, tell us a bit about your past covering the Royal House of Norway. Well, I mean, I'd like to say that the Norwegian royal family and I go back a long way, probably back a decade and a half. At the time I was writing a book about monarchy in Europe called The Great Survivors, which was trying to look at quite why monarchy has survived in several European countries apart for our own. And I got quite interested in looking at the Norwegian royal family at the time, not least because of the Crown Princess Meta Mettom. Married, the wife of Crown Prince Hawken, who had married into the royal family in 2001. And she, in a sense, was quite novelty because at the time she was an unmarried mother.

She had already a child by another man. Which is very unusual, obviously. It's that child, actually, that seems to have plunged the royal family back into the spotlight now. Just tell us a bit about the crisis the family is in now, why you were in Norway covering it, how it's being talked about. So I was in Norway because last Tuesday began the trial of that child, Marius Borgh, who is now aged 29, and he's in a trial which is due to last seven weeks in Oslo, the capital, and he faces 38 indictments, including four of rape.

Which is astonishing. How is that going down in Norway? Is there a sense of this being on the front page of every newspaper? Is it the great scandal? It's enormously damaging. I mean, you know, he's certainly not in the line of succession. He's not technically speaking part of the royal family as such, or in the formal sense of the world, or he's certainly not part of the royal house of Norway.

But he is the son of the crown princess. He was brought up by the crown princess and the crown prince, the future king, as part of the family alongside their two other children, which they went on to have after him together. And so, you know, he's an integral part of the royal family. And there he is, in a courtroom, on trial, accused of some of the most serious crimes that it is possible to be accused of. Tell us a bit about him.

As you say, he was the son of the Crown Princess before she got married, but he has grown up in the royal household. what do we know about him and just describe him too, because I've been quite struck by some of the pictures. He looks like a character from a book. If the first you saw of him was the kind of the sketches, the courtroom sketches that have appeared during the coverage of the trial, because in Norway, as in Britain, cameras are not allowed into trials,

you know, he casts a rather forlorn figure bespectacled, sitting there quite sheepishly, downbeat. It's a huge contrast. with the Marius whom Norwegians have come to know over the past few years, which is the absolute party animal. He loved going out with glamorous young women, be it influencers, models, television personalities. He was a frequent fixture in upmarket clubs,

in the sort of affluent west end of Norway. A real socialite, I suppose, you would call. him, and also as he's himself admitted, someone with a quite serious drug habit. He's been into rehab from time to time. So, I mean, in short, quite a troubled young man. There's the high life with models and influencers. And then, according to a book that was published last autumn, there was also links to the criminal underworld. I mean, tell us what we know about that. Norway, as people explain to me on my visit, is a very, very, very serious. small country and it's a kind of place where everyone knows everyone, particularly in Oslo.

And the kinds of clubs that Marius would frequent, not only were frequented by, you know, young, rich people like him, but also by drug dealers, by slightly older drug dealers, more serious drug dealers, people could hire up in kind of organized crime groups. The couple of investigative journalists who began to look into this saw that he was hanging out with some very, very dubious people indeed. It was the police as well, the Oslo Police, who noticed and began to get a little bit concerned at the company that he was keeping.

And on one occasion, they actually went to his mother and stepfather's residence, Skowcum, which is sort of on the outskirts of Oslo, and went to interview him informally and said to him, you know, essentially you should watch your step, young man, because it's kind of a friendly warning, but a suggestion to him that he should look a little bit more carefully at the kind of people he was keeping company with because it was potentially going to get him into trouble. It probably did because he has further run-ins with the police. Just take us back to the summer of 2024 when the police in a less friendly visit

a call to a flat that he's inhabiting. His legal problems really began in the early hours of the morning of August 4th in 2024. The Norwegian police were caught to a flat in Frogner, which is a upmarket kind of part of Western Oslo, over what was claimed to be a case of suspected domestic violence. Neighbours had been heard shouting going on, including one from a man who was heard to say, I want you to die. When those officers arrived, there was a knife embedded in the wall, there was a chandelier which was in fragments on the floor,

and most important of all, there was the victim who cannot be named, who was a young woman in her med 20s, who'd been hit in the face, she had been pinned down to the bed, and according to prosecutors, she had been repeatedly choked, so she couldn't breathe. I mean, that sounds horrific and not in any possible way the sort of context you'd imagine finding a stepson of the future king of Norway. What was the response in Norway when the news of that broke? It was shock, obviously.

Here was a very, very sordid case of alleged, and we must say alleged, because he's on trial, domestic abuse, violence and so on. You know, it involved not just any old Norwegian. it involved the stepson of the future king. The allegations didn't stop there. It feels almost as if that moment of publicity was the moment the floodgates opened. They did. This was reported by the Norwegian media.

And at that point, another woman called Julianne Snegastat, who's a model, an actress and an influencer, who had lived with Marius for almost four years, I think, from 2018, and had been seen in public within and be welcomed into the royal family, she said that she too, during the time they lived together, had been abused physically and psychologically by him and had been left deeply traumatised. And she did this, I suppose, characteristically on Instagram,

and she wrote, no woman should be exposed to this. I feel a real responsibility to speak out. And then another former partner, a woman whom he had lived with after Julian, and Snegastard, whose name was Nora Hochland, who is very, very well known indeed with Norway. She made her name on the Norwegian version of Love Island. She stars in a show called Girls of Oslo, which is a hugely popular reality TV show. She said that he had abused her both verbally and physically during the,

just over a year, they lived together repeatedly hitting her, strangling her, strangling her, kicking her, all these appalling examples of mistreatment, which were outlined in the indictment against him. So we had then essentially three allegations of quite serious physical abuse. But things got even worse after that. Following his arrest, he was released. Then he was arrested again the following month, which took us to September 2020. and then the third time, that November, being let out in the meantime each time, the police in the meantime had been looking through his phone,

looking through his stuff that he had on his computer and so on. And they found very, very alarming images, sort of still images and video, of him sexually assaulting women as they were lying unconscious. either asleep or drugged or maybe just drunk and passed out. This was all there. So their conclusion was that he had assaulted them and he had filmed what he was doing. And now the alarming thing is that these women in all four cases were not aware of what had been done to them. one of them, the first woman whom he's accused of having assaulted in this way,

you know, this happened at a party at his parents or his mother and his stepfather's estate in December 2018, a so-called after-party in the very, very early hours of the morning. This woman had gone there and had spent time with him, knew really nothing more about what had happened, but then more than five years later last February, a year ago or so, she was called in by the police. She wasn't given any reason why she was going to be called in or where she got to the police station.

They showed her the images of what Marius had allegedly done to her. And she was absolutely shocked and she was appalled. All of that had led to, as you say, a number of arrests. He was awaiting this big trial. And then he gets arrested again. Tell us about that. That is the most astonishing thing. thing because, you know, despite the seriousness of the allegations against the first woman we spoke

about, the woman that is known into the Norwegian media as the Frogner woman, he clearly has some kind of a hold over her because ever since, you know, this case first came to light, there being instances when he has tried to get back into contact with her, there's been a restraining order preventing him from doing so, but he is still attempted to do so. And on the most recent of these occasions, this was just 48 hours before he was due to go on trial when he was found to have gone around to her flat again for waving a knife at her and, you know, violating this restraining order. And that meant that rather than going every day to the trial from his home, He's going every day into the trial from a police cell.

And now that the trial has begun, I mean, just talk us through the complete charge sheet. Well, it's a very long charge sheet because there are 38 offences listed on it. But the principal ones are starting with the worst first would be the four cases of rape, three of physical and psychological abuse. There is a threat to a man to kill him. He's also been accused of transporting three and a half kilograms of marijuana. And there are also multiple traffic offences which are essentially him driving rather too fast on a motorbike in central Oslo.

Do we know how he's pleading? At the beginning of the trial, he denied the rape and he denied the various sexual abuse allegations. There was a slightly curious moment when it emerged that he'd actually googled his name and the word rape, just to understand precisely what he was accused of. Now, you know, this sounds, I think, crazy to a British audience because, you know, I think we all know what rape is. I think we should make clear that in Norway, the definition is slightly broader than the

one we would have in Britain. rape is any form of penetration. It is also almost automatic in a case when that takes place when the victim is asleep. So by definition, or has passed out or in any way as unconscious and therefore cannot give consent. So in a sense, perhaps he was wondering in doing this Googling was what he's accused of doing actually rape as such, certainly in all four cases, it does appear to have followed consensual sexual intercourse that he had with the women involved. And that's in all four four cases?

That is indeed, yes. Peter, there's obviously a lot of press coverage of the trial every day as it's happening. What have the royal family said about it? To put it mildly, this is a very, very sensitive issue for the royal family to handle. because on the one hand, this is the Crown Princess's son. On the other hand, he's accused of very, very serious offences. There are the views, the feelings of the victims that have to be considered. And above all, there has to be the perception that he is getting a fair trial.

He's not being treated any worse because of his links with the royal family, but also not getting preferential treatment. So, notwithstanding that, they have allowed themselves, to make some comments on the case. I mean, for example, traditionally in Norway at Christmas, there is a documentary about the royal family in which the various members are, you know, asked questions and talk about their year and so on. And Metamaret, the Crown Princess,

in the most recent episode of it, revealed that she and her husband had been very hurt by suggestions on the Norwegian media that they had somehow failed in their parental responsibilities, because she actually said what makes me most upset is being criticized for how we've handled this, that we haven't taken it seriously. I find that difficult. Now, as the trial itself has approached, they've become a lot more careful about it.

The Crown Prince Hawken said simply that he expressed sympathy for everyone affected by the case and acknowledged it's been very difficult for individuals and their families and stressed his confidence in Norway's judicial system. And how is it going down with the public? What are people in Norway saying about this trial and what do they make of the royal family in light of it? It's, as you would imagine, getting huge, huge media coverage in Norway and it's not just the Norwegian papers which have been covering it.

There are, I think, 200 journalists in total are credited to the trial. Huge numbers from Germany, from other continental European countries where they tend to take a closer interest in other countries' royal families than we do. But it is a very, very big deal indeed. And it's not positive, clearly, for the royal family. And what could happen to him if he is found guilty? What are the potential consequences? Well, the potential consequences are very serious, indeed.

He could face up to 10 years in jail. Coming up, the public may have been shocked by the scandal-ridden trial of Marius, but then the Epstein files were released, shifting the spotlight onto his mother. We'll have more in just a moment. Peter, to understand how big a scandal this is, I suppose we really need to understand a bit more about the Norwegian world family and their place in Norwegian life. Give us the potted history. So the Norwegian monarchy or the House of Gluckburg, as I think we should call them properly, is relatively new by European standards. They've only existed since 1905. So before that, Norway was part of a dual monarchy.

with Sweden, but it was the junior partner in that dual monarchy. The Norwegians finally had enough in 1905. They broke away and they said, right, we're going to be completely independent. We're going to be a country of our own. We want a monarch of our own. They looked around. They found a Danish prince. Where do you look when you're looking for a king?

Yes. Do you advertise? When you sort of, it's a rather 19th century kind of thing. I mean, you could ask, you know, where did the Belgians get a king from in 1830? Where did the Greeks get a king from several years later? It used to be often sort of German princely families would provide the wanted monarch. But in this case, they went for a Dane. And he took the throne of Norway in 1905 as King Orkin the 7th,

Because before they'd been ruled by the Swedes, they had kings of their own. Tell us a little bit about the current king and queen. So the current king is Harold V, who is the grandson of Hawken. Hawken himself managed more than 50 years on the throne. Harold is not doing badly. He's been there since 1991. He is married to Sonia. They're both aged 88.

They're in fairly good form, but... Obviously, at 88, they're not going to be there forever. They're scaling down their duties. A lot of those duties are being taken over by the heir. Hawken, who is 52 and is married, as we've already discussed with Meta Marit. Hawken has an elder sister who he kind of overtook and it was him that became king rather than her becoming queen. She's Martha Louise, who is quite a controversial character in her own.

right. And then to complete the picture, there are Crown Prince Hawken and Metamaritz two children, Ingrid Alexandra, who is 22, and her younger brother, Svara Magnus, who is 20. Ingrid Alexandra is so far, thankfully, as far as I can see, has not put a foot wrong. She's at the moment studying in Australia. She's only one year into a least three-year course, so she's a little out of the picture. But it was, I think, notable that she was back a few weeks ago in Norway during what her summer holidays from her Australian University playing quite a big role going on a big trip up to the north of the country. She is ultimately the next in line to the throne after her father. She's starting at the age of 22 to play a role in the royal house.

and, you know, also she's clearly an asset. She's young, she's beautiful. You know, she's a complete credit to the family. And you can see why they'd need that right now because at the same time as her stepbrother is on trial, there is another whiff of scandal hanging around the royal family, and that's with the release of the Epstein files. Peter, just tell us a bit about the Crown Princess Meta Mary

who you mentioned earlier and how she fits into that. Yeah, I mean, this is something that in a sense no one was really expecting to emerge. I mean, it was known that Metamarrate had had some dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier. But the full extent of this relationship that has emerged since the latest dump of the Epstein files is, is just absolutely extraordinary. It appears that she was introduced to Epstein in 2011 by a mutual friend, a man called Boris Nikolich, who was a long-time advisor to Bill Gates,

the Microsoft founder. Nicolich apparently has been mentioned nearly 15,000 times in the Epstein files, so he's, you know, was clearly very, very close to Epstein. So it appears from these files on February the 28th, 2011, Boris Nicalich sends an email to Epstein in which he says he has a girlfriend who he wants to introduce him to. Later that year, she and Edstein start to talk to each other by email. Peter, I know you've been going through the exchanges. from what we can see, how close were they?

I've been looking through the various messages that were exchanged by email between Epstein and Metamarratt, which came from her official royal email account, which is quite staggering. And, you know, they're very chatty, they're not overtly sexual. I would consider them to be a little bit flirty. There's certainly the kinds of exchanges that you would only have with some of the opposite sex if you knew them very well indeed.

If one were in such a situation like that, perhaps one's partner might wonder quite about the nature of the relationship with that other person. One of them from Jeffrey Epstein begins, what is the weather like? I'm on my wife hunt. Paris is proving interesting, but I prefer Scandinavians. Shortly afterwards, Meta Marit gets back to him and she says, freezing, snow yesterday, Paris good for adultery, Scandie's better wife material. But then again, who am I to talk? Slightly self-deprecating, slightly flirty. There's another message which, in retrospect, seems immoral arming, which is in 2012, she asks Epstein.

about some wallpaper that she's planning to buy for Marius, her son, who was at age 15. And she asks him, and I quote, is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15-year-old son's wallpaper? You know, one looks at all these messages which are flying backwards and forwards. They're being very frank with each other about their feelings about what they've experienced. I mean, on one occasion, she sort of writes to him and says, ah, boring wedding was like some kind of old movie where, you know, the characters are not hanging around for much long, for much long. I mean, they're oddly worded like that, pretty bad English on both sides.

He talks about coming to Norway, and she says, I'll be there. As free wife, i.e. almost as part of his search for a wife, I doubt a German aristote with a weird hat would be marriage materials so she's kind of joking with him about finding him a wife it's just it's all extraordinary kind of stuff with those messages coming to light now just as her son is standing trial the messages like the one about is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 year old son

will look particularly bad having spent Christmas saying people shouldn't be asking about the way we raised him. How is all of this going down in Norway? It's going down very, very badly indeed. It's not just these revelations, but it's also the way now that people are looking at the reaction of the Paris to the first indication some time ago, which was in 2019 of a kind of a link between her and Geoffrey Epstein.

And the way in which the palace at that time really tied to play down. I mean, at the time they said he'd met him a few times, there were always other people present, and that, you know, any contacts they'd had were broken off in 2013. You know, but it since transpired from this latest dump of documents that, you know, it was a much closer relationship than they'd claimed in the past, that they'd met on a number of occasions, that she'd actually borrowed his house for several in Florida, for several days. He wasn't in Florida at the time, but she and a female friend had stayed there four days. He arranged for a dentist, for her to visit his dentist to get her teeth whitened. You know, all that kind of stuff is embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing is an email that has emerged this time around that she wrote in October 2011, in which she wrote to Epstein, quote, Googled you after last email, agree, didn't look too good. It didn't take much Googling in October 2011 to understand quite how serious the charges were against Epstein. So she seems to continue a friendship even when she knows that he's an alleged paedophile. Does she continue after his conviction? She continued contacting him, emailing him until 2013 and quite possibly into 2014. You know, by which time. it was very clear to everyone quite how toxic he'd become. What has she said about it? Has she addressed the issue?

She has addressed the issue, but not in very great detail. And the time we're speaking now, she has said merely, I must take responsibility for not checking Epstein's background better and for not understanding quickly enough what kind of a person he was. but, you know, it is hugely damaging. The popularity of the Norwegian royal houses not surprisingly plummeted like a stone. You know, trial of Marius already sent it down badly.

It's gone down even more with these latest revelations. And it's, you know, from about 70% popularity a year or so ago, we're now down to a new low of, I think, 53% according to the late poll that I've seen. Wow. So it's really plummeting. It is indeed, yes. Is there a sense that this is a really fragile moment for the royal household?

Could Norway consider an alternative future as a republic? I mean, this is a very, very bad time for Norwegian monarchy. And there's no getting away from that. I suppose the only thing that they've got going in their favour is that Hawken, the Crown Prince, is himself untainted. by the scandal. He also was not a friend of Epstein's. He met him once. It was in the Caribbean.

That was when he was with Metamarit, and they claimed that it was a coincidental kind of meeting. So, you know, he is there as the heir to the throne. There have been no suggestions that he has in any way misbehaved and so on. But he is going to succeed to the throne. One expects fairly soon, because his father is 80. he will bring with him. His wife, she will, under the current rules, become queen.

So there is a big question mark about her suitability for that. And what we also have a mention, which is casts an even further shadow over the royal family, is the very severe medical problems that Metamarite is suffering from. I mean, she is, it was revealed a few years ago that she suffers from pulmonary fibrosis, which is a very, very serious and potentially terminal lung disease, which is the kind of disease which minors, people who've been exposed during their professional work, tend to get, or more prone to get, but normally much, much later in their life than the metamarrate, who is only 52. It was announced by the head of her medical team that there is a very, very strong likelihood

that she is going to need a lung transplant. And if she doesn't have the lung transplant relatively soon, her chances of survival are not good indeed. So all this is happening simultaneously, all that, you know, one would understand or one would expect, would generate a considerable degree of sympathy for her. Yet along come these Epstein revelations and that sympathy, I think, is rapidly evaporating. And Peter, you know, having been there, having spoken to people, people who've followed this story, for years, people who watch the royal family on a daily basis. We are seeing the Epstein files across the world have, you know,

lead to a reckoning, a moment where people don't just look at the pomp and pageantry of power. They look at the sort of darker forces that sometimes exist behind it. Is this Norway's moment of understanding that they are part of that global picture? If one looks at the history of monarchy in Europe or across the world, you know, it does take very, very dramatic events for a country to decide that it wants to get rid of its monarchy and it wants to become a republic. I think Norwegians would think very, very carefully before they say we are going to abolish the monarchy. We want to become a republic. You know, there is a republican movement there, but it still is not particularly noisy. it's not taking huge advantage of the problems that the royal family faces.

But on the other hand, the way that all these crises have come together is clear that they are going through an extraordinarily difficult period and that some very, very serious action is required on behalf of the royal family just to improve their image to try and relaunch themselves or just do something to seize the initiative and to win favour back from the public. That was Peter Conradi, Europe editor for the Sunday Times. You can find his long read on the scandal unfolding in Norway online at the times.com. The producer and sound designer today was Dave Creasy.

The executive producer was Kate Ford. If you'd like to get in touch, we're at the story at the times.com. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.