At the end of last January, the alarms in the Norwegian court jumped: King Harald, who this February 21 turns 85, presented Covid symptoms after being in contact with an infected.
Fortunately, it was a simple catarro and everything was in a great scare, since it has very deteriorated health: in 2003 it was diagnosed with a bladder cancer, in 2005 it was operated at the open heart to implant a coronary valve that in 2020 there was
Replace, and in 2021 it was also operated on the knee, being forced to use crutches several months.
Thirty years he fulfilled on the throne on January 17, 2021 Harald, first sovereign born in Norway for more than 500 years.
The arrival of him into the world was an event for his parents, Olaf V and Marta of Sweden, because he was the long-awaited male after two girls, Princesses Ragnhild and Astrid, and supposed the continuity of the Glücksburg dynasty.
In the Second World War, his father was exiled with him in London while his mother and sisters of him agreed in the United States;
But finished the contest, he returned to his homeland, to study Bachelor at the Oslo Cathedral College and later enter the military academies.
In 1957, his father climbed the throne after Haakon VII, grandfather of Harald, who was proclaimed with 20 years Prince heir: High, blonde, blue-eyed, Olympic in sailing and future king, was the “Golden Single” of the
European courts and object of desire of most marriage princesses.
Also of his mothers, especially of Queen Federica of Greece who loved him for his first-born Sofia: “I know there were many interests to get married, encounters, they became Cáballas … but the result of that forced pairing was null
“He came to acknowledge Queen Sofia, who seems to Harald yes to Tilín.
The first attempt was a trip from the Greek monarchs to Norway in 1958 with its first-born: there Sofia and Harald took over the covers after starving a dance together, but the thing did not come down.
New attempt was the dance that the following year was organized in the Danish castle of Fredensborg, and although Harald did not take the step, it served to emerge the chemistry between Ana María de Denmark and Constantine, future Greek monarch.
The Federica Queen did not give up and in the summer of 1960 she invited the Norwegian heir to Corfu, summer residence of the royal family, where Sofia and Harald were captured walking along the beach and sailing together.
This time the commitment was made for granted, but again it was frustrated, according to the Point magazine of Vue, for economic reasons: King Paul requested the Helleno Parliament 50 million francs as a dowry to marry his daughter Sofia, but he was only awarded
Half, which made Harald’s father change his mind.
Maybe it was the excuse, because the reality had a woman name: Sonia, to which Harald met in a camp when both were 15 years old.
She was owners of a clothing store for men in Oslo, where Sonia worked as a seamstress, although she later graduated in fashion design.
In 1959, as he rumored his wedding with Sofia from Greece, Harald was already a boyfriend of Sonia, so he dared to confess the father of him he was in love with another woman.
When Olav V he learned about him, he was the girlfriend, he exploded: “I will not allow a seamstress to be a queen of Norway.”
He sent him to study Oxford, where she studied economic, political and history until 1962, in which there was a dramatic event: it seems that Sonia, whom her parents sent to Switzerland, had an attempt of suicide.
Harald ran by his side and hung up his studies in England, starting to work in a shipping company.
In 1968, after a decade of relationship, he threatened his father to give up the throne if he did not let him marry Sonia, so OLAV V consented.
On August 29, 1968, the link in the Oslo Cathedral took place, for the first time in history a future Norwegian monarch was married a plebeian.
“You know better than anyone I feel and better than no one you understand what this moment means”, were the words he directed Sonia after “yes”.
That day the Norwegian monarchs, who after 53 years of marriage are still very close, settled above what in the current Royals generations is normal: marrying for love.
There are even those who think they have had the sleeve too wide with their children.
Marta Luisa, born in 1971, was married in first nuptials with the controversial writer Ari Behn, father of his three daughters Maud, Leah Isadora and Emma, but divorced in 2016 and in 2019 he committed suicide. Now she plans to marry Durek Verrett,
A Californian shaman.
Haakon, the future king, born in 1973, was married in 2001 with Mette-Marit Tjessem, a single mother of turbid past, so much that the father of her son and former boyfriend of her was in jail for drug trafficking.
Today, however, she is well accepted by the Norwegians and next to her children of her Ingrid, the heiress, and Sverre Magnus form a Modelian family.
