King Haakon VIII Ascends Norwegian Throne Amid Royal Family Scandals

King Haakon VIII has inherited the Norwegian throne after the death of his father, Harald V. Many in Norway believe he has big shoes to fill.

King Harald was immensely popular with ordinary Norwegians, as shown by his consistent high polling and the outpouring of emotion in the lead-up to his death.

Haakon is the fourth king to head Norway's modern monarchy, since it was restored in 1905 after the country gained independence from Sweden.

Among his first duties as monarch, he led an extraordinary cabinet meeting where he announced his royal title and adopted his father's motto "Everything for Norway".

Many commentators believe he is well-placed to follow in his predecessors' footsteps.

As crown prince, Haakon worked closely with his father as he carried out his royal duties and in recent years was handed more responsibility, increasingly acting as regent while Harald was ill or absent.

"I am so lucky that Crown Prince Haakon is the one who will carry this forward," King Harald wrote of his son in his biography The King Tells.

Historian Trond Norén Isaksen tells the BBC that Haakon will be a different type of king to his father, but no less respected.

"King Harald... [was] very charismatic, he [had] a great sense of humour, which everyone appreciates, and Haakon is a bit more reserved, a bit more like his mother.

"But in recent years he has also become a bit more relaxed and opened up a bit and showed a bit more of his sense of humour... he has been pulling enormous weight for many years given his parents have become older and his wife has been ill."

Haakon is a great-great-great-grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria.

His daughter Ingrid Alexandra, 22, now becomes the crown princess and heir to the Norwegian throne.

Haakon was ahead of his older sister, Princess Märtha Louise, in the line of succession.

The constitution was changed in 1990 to give women the right to inherit the throne, so Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra is in line to be Norway's first female head of state since the 15th Century.

Haakon has become the king at a turbulent time for Norway's royal family.

The monarchy remains broadly popular among Norwegians and has been long praised for its modern outlook.

But in recent years it has been beset by scandal.

Only this year, Haakon's wife Mette-Marit, now Queen of Norway, has apologised for several years of ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and her son has been convicted of rape in a high-profile trial. Marius Borg Høiby, who was born from an earlier relationship, is appealing against the conviction.

Born in 1973, King Haakon is the youngest child of the late king and Queen Sonja.

By Haakon's own admission, he struggled at times to accept his royal status in his early years.

"Yes, I was a royal, but I did not want to talk about it... ​At school it made me anxious," he wrote in his 2023 autobiography, recalling his days in a state primary school in the 1980s.

He became crown prince in 1991 at the tender age of 17, following the death of his grandfather King Olav V.

Unusually for a royal, he was educated at local state schools before embarking upon a four-year-long naval career, graduating from the Norwegian Naval Academy in 1995.

He decided not to follow his father and grandfather to Oxford University, instead flying to California to enrol at the University of Berkeley, where he studied political science.

Soon after his return to Norway, Haakon met his now-wife Mette-Marit at a music festival in her home city of Kristiansand in 1999.

She was dubbed by the press as the Cinderella of Kristiansand - a reference to her humble beginnings.

"What we two found together was so strong that I could not let it go," the then-Crown Prince Haakon said of Mette-Marit ahead of their wedding in 2001.

But their relationship was not without controversy and there was a fierce public debate in Norway from the moment Haakon first announced they were dating.

Some commentators even warned at the time that their relationship could spell the end of the Norwegian monarchy, with comparisons being made to the infamous union between American divorcee Wallis Simpson and British King Edward VIII which led to his abdication in 1936.

Queen Mette-Marit was not the first commoner to marry into the Norwegian royal family - the late King Harald had already broken with tradition by marrying Queen Sonja three decades earlier.

She was, however, a single mother to a four-year-old child whose father had served time for a conviction of cocaine possession.

The royal couple's co-habitation in an Oslo flat had also drawn criticism from the conservative Lutheran Church of Norway - though polls from the time showed most ordinary Norwegians did not care about either.

What many Norwegians did question, though, was whether her former party lifestyle was one compatible with that of someone married to the future king.

In an emotional interview three days before their marriage, Mette-Marit publicly apologised for her "wild past" and condemned drug use after reports that drugs were taken at parties she attended in Oslo during the 1990s.

She did not say whether she had taken them herself.

It was seen as something of a turning point. She won the affection of ordinary Norwegians and for years has been seen as the embodiment of a modern monarchy capable of shaking up convention.

The couple have two children together, Ingrid and Prince Sverre Magnus.

Several polls conducted earlier this year found nearly half of Norway's population felt the crown princess could not become queen, even though it was always bound to happen.

Two days after her son's trial came to an end, Mette-Marit received a lung transplant, eight years after her initial diagnosis.

Her doctors will not declare her stable until a year after the transplant, and the new king will face a difficult period of succession as he continues to support her.

Caroline Vagle, royal correspondent for Se og Hør magazine, says in regards to Epstein the most important thing the royal family can do is be "completely open about what actually happened, and not allow public speculation to take on a life of its own".

"But I also don't think we should overestimate the impact of one or two difficult cases," she says.

"What will ultimately matter is how the royal family handles them, and how Haakon and the next generation manage to build on the trust that Harald has earned over a lifetime."

Tove Taalesen, royal correspondent for Nettavisen, believes the scandals will be challenging but Haakon is "very much ready for the task".

"I'm sure that in the future he will be respected and loved, similar to King Haakon VII, King Olav V and also King Harald V."

Haakon's reign begins in the backdrop of these scandals, and how he navigates them might come to define his monarchy.