Everyone who knew Harald V well said the same thing about him. Family came first. Norway’s king understood the demands of his job, but he never let that role eclipse the parts of his life that had nothing to do with protocol. He welcomed Mette-Marit into the royal family despite fierce public criticism. He never let Princess Martha Louise‘s exit from official royal duties — prompted by her engagement to Durrek Verrett — damage his bond with either of them. In fact, Verrett has spoken openly for years about how close he and the king were.
On September 9, at Harald’s state funeral in Oslo Cathedral, the grief on Mette-Marit and Verrett’s faces said more than any tribute could.
Queen Mette-Marit arrived at the cathedral by car alongside the newly widowed Queen Sonja. Still recovering from a lung transplant, Mette-Marit held back tears through the funeral, seated in the front row of the church between her mother-in-law and her husband, King Haakon.
A brutal year, capped by an impossible week
© Getty ImagesThis funeral lands at the end of a year Mette-Marit would probably like to forget. On top of her health crisis, questions swirled around her future as queen after her name surfaced repeatedly in documents connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein. Harald addressed the controversy in an official speech, with listeners interpreting it as an explicit statement of support for his daughter-in-law. It wasn’t the first time she’d needed it.
Mette-Marit’s marriage to the then-crown prince was never an easy sell to a country whose more traditional corners considered her unsuitable for a future queen. Harald understood that fight better than most: he’d lived a version of it himself in his marriage to Queen Sonja, a commoner, and faced his father’s opposition for years. He didn’t put his son through the same ordeal. “Mette-Marit, you are an exceptional woman. You have great inner strength,” he said in his wedding-day speech, welcoming her and her four-year-old son, Marius Borg, into the family.
A shaman says goodbye to “dad”
© AFP via Getty ImagesDurek Verrett’s grief was just as visible. He arrived at the cathedral with Martha Louise’s three daughters — Maud Angelica, Leah Isadora and Emma Tallulah — while their mother walked beside her brother in the funeral procession from the Royal Palace.
There had been real doubt over whether Verrett would make it at all. He underwent a kidney transplant of his own days before Harald’s death, at the same Oslo hospital where the king was being treated, after years of dialysis. In the end, his recovery held up enough for him to say goodbye to his father-in-law in person. He’d already done it once online, posting a tribute to Harald within hours of the news breaking. “I love you, dad. I’ll miss the good times we shared,” he wrote.
The nickname wasn’t a slip. “I’ve always called them mom and dad,” he told Aftenbladet. “In African tradition, your partner’s parents become your parents too once you become part of the family.”
“It’s a sign of love, closeness and respect. That’s simply how it’s always been between us. They’re like my own family, so it feels natural to call them mom and dad.”
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