It was love at first sight. A fairy tale come true. When Harald of Norway, who passed away on Friday at the age of 89, and Sonja Haraldsen met in the summer of 1959 through a mutual friend, their destiny began to be written in different colors. Both were 22 years old. Their love story, which they kept secret for two and a half years, became a series that premiered in February of last year on Amazon Prime.
Their romantic relationship was known only to their closest friends. When a Norwegian newspaper published the name of the prince's first great love, a rift occurred in the palace, as it was well known that King Olaf V would not approve of a morganatic relationship and intrigues began to break the relationship. "They tried to lure him into the sweet trap of Irene of Greece, Princess Tatiana Radziwill, or Benedicta of Denmark," wrote Sabine de la Brosse in a report for Paris Match in 1968. Sonja was a commoner, the daughter of a prosperous merchant, while Harald descended from ancestors as notable as King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, King Frederick VIII of Denmark, and Oscar II of Sweden.
While the future monarch received the necessary education and carried out official trips abroad in preparation for ascending to the throne in the future, Sonja studied English, French, and art history at the University of Oslo and, following her father's advice, also obtained a diploma in cutting and sewing which she further perfected in Switzerland.
Despite the palace's reservations, as well as those of the Parliament and the Norwegian people, the young couple secretly lived their love. However, the conflicts between the king and the prince became more frequent as neither would give in. In 1964, the palace issued a statement affirming that the heir would not marry a commoner, while the Prime Minister, Einar Gerhardsen, warned that this situation could plunge the monarchy into a constitutional crisis.
Sonja was devastated. Hounded by the media, she ended up broken and attempted suicide in March 1965. She went to France to work as a nanny but they soon reunited. Harald threatened to renounce the throne. Every effort was made to avoid the major scandal that rocked the British monarchy in the 1930s when Edward VIII abdicated the throne for love of Wallis Simpson, an American commoner who was divorced.
The prince eventually agreed to ascend to the throne, but he threatened his father with remaining single, which would have created a serious problem in the succession. Faced with such a dilemma, Olaf officially announced the wedding on March 18, 1968. After nine years of a tumultuous courtship, Harald and Sonja got married on August 29 of that year at Oslo Cathedral. It was the first morganatic marriage in European monarchies. In 1971, their daughter Martha Louise was born, and two years later, Haakon. The succession was secured.