OSLO — Marius Borg Hoiby, the 29-year-old son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, admitted in court to a yearslong life of excess fueled by “an extreme need for recognition” but denied raping a woman at the royal family’s Skaugum estate in 2018. He is on trial in Oslo District Court for 38 alleged offenses, including four rapes and multiple assaults against former partners. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charges and faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted.
Breaking down in tears as he addressed the court for the first time, Hoiby said he struggled with his identity as the son of a future queen. “I’m mostly known as my mother’s son, not anything else,” he said. “And that manifested itself in a lot of sex, a lot of drugs, and a lot of alcohol.” He has no official role within the Norwegian royal household and has previously acknowledged problems with substance abuse.
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The trial’s opening testimony centered on a woman who alleges Hoiby raped her in the basement of the Skaugum estate outside Oslo in December 2018, during an after-party where, according to Hoiby, his parents were upstairs. She told the court the pair had a brief consensual sexual encounter that she ended, and that she later learned of images and video on Hoiby’s phone that police said showed him having sex with her while she was asleep — footage she said she had no memory of.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she testified. “I couldn’t believe that Marius would do something like that to me. It’s a betrayal and a shock.” Describing “a big black hole,” she said the images made her suspect she had ingested something without her knowledge. “Look at my face: do I look conscious? You can clearly see that I’m totally unconscious. It almost looks like I’m not breathing,” she said, adding she now believes she was drugged. The defense noted she previously told police she did not think she had been drugged.
Hoiby told the court he did not recall the exact sequence of events that night but maintained the sex was consensual. “I’m not in the habit of having sex with women who are not awake,” he said, acknowledging that the woman appears to be asleep in the images.
Prosecutors allege a pattern in which the four alleged rapes occurred after consensual sex, often following heavy drinking when the women were not in a position to defend themselves. The defense argued Hoiby “perceived all of the acts as perfectly normal and consensual sexual relations.” His testimony is scheduled to continue Thursday during the seven-week trial.
The case, which legal observers have called the most damaging scandal to confront Norway’s modern monarchy, has shaken an institution typically defined by discretion and broad public support. Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Crown Prince Haakon do not plan to attend the proceedings. The palace said the crown princess has postponed a private trip abroad.
Hoiby, raised by the crown prince couple alongside Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 22, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 20, has been a tabloid fixture for years. Norwegian media have reported he associates with gang members and “notorious criminals,” and he said in August 2024 that he had struggled “for a long time with substance abuse.”
The trial unfolds as Mette-Marit, 52, faces intense scrutiny of her own following the unsealing of U.S. documents that shed light on her past friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She also lives with an incurable lung disease that could require a transplant in the future — pressures that underscore the private turmoil encircling the royal family as a deeply public legal battle plays out in the Norwegian capital.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
