I really agree with this. So true. I think people have been so hard on her. What young person doesn't go out get drunk, do an E or something and jsut dance the night away? Big deal if she did. she shouldnt' have to apologise for it. Even if its royalty. They still **** on a toilet as well!
http://www.andtheylivedhappilyeverafter.com/72.htm
A real prince
"Your soul sparkles with light. Everything we do with love comes alight. Mette-Marit, I love you."
These are hardly the words you'd expect to hear coming from a Crown Prince after his very public and very elaborate royal wedding. We're so used to chaste little pecks from far-off balconies and stories of the abject misery that surrounds stiffly formal royal unions that most such weddings are dismissed as the dull and loveless political matches that they usually are. But when Crown Prince Haakon of Norway married the love of his life, a single mother named Mette-Marit Tjessem Hoiby, on Saturday, there was hardly a dry eye in the entire country.
Theirs is a fairy tale romance if one ever existed, not for the spectacular ceremony conducted at Domkirke Cathedral in Oslo or for the cheering thousands who lined the route to wave to the young couple, or for the dream-like world from which the new bride and groom will govern Norway someday. It's a fairy tale because of the incredible obstacles this couple has had to overcome to simply be together and for how much each has had to suffer to arrive at this day.
Mette-Marit is not some sheltered and decorous princess brought up to sip her tea elegantly and converse meaninglessly at galas - she is an "ordinary woman", with as much to regret in her past as anyone does. And no one has let her forget it. She is a commoner, and apparently has a "wild" past - she had a child through a brief affair with a drug addict, a child who will have no official standing in the royal household but who stole the hearts of the entire country and his new step father all the same. She used to "party", whatever that means, and on the eve of her wedding, the newspaper announced that someone has incriminating video and photographs of her, which are incriminating, I assume, because they show her naked or engaging in sex or who knows what else. She was also a waitress, which instead of signifying someone who works and supports herself seems to translate as "low class" to the Norwegian monarchy. For these reasons, the king and queen were quite alarmed when their son, the Crown Prince Haakon, openly moved in with her and then announced that he would marry her, whether anyone liked it or not. So alarmed, in fact, that the prince's father, King Harald of Norway, chose his son's wedding to deliver a soul-baring speech in which he welcomed Mette-Marit into the royal family but also took the time to remind her that he and his royal wife had initially been very unhappy about their son's choice of bride.
And for these reasons, even her wedding day was fair game for those who wanted to make good and sure she realized just how magnanimous everyone was for tolerating her presence. The days leading up to her wedding were so filled with media interviews in which she had to admit, for the umpteenth time, that she had led a "dissolute life" that when the wedding day finally came, the emotional stress of it all reduced her to tears every time someone - the king, the bishop who married her, you name it - commented on how brave she was for choosing to say yes to an "unknown future", implying, perhaps, that a common little tramp like her might not be on this magic carpet for long and so she'd better not get too comfortable. Imagine hearing those inspiring words on your wedding day.
The thing I find interesting - or depressing, depending on which way you look at it - is how eager so many societies are to continue living under a monarchy, as though "royal" families are somehow more special than the rest of us, and how willing they are to be judged by these people in terms of character and morality. I fully understand the human desire for a hero to worship, but in my estimation, heroes are formed by the depth of their character, the heroic nature of their actions, the achievements and accomplishments of their life - not by the arbitrary appointment of this person over that person as some sort of divine "royal".
How is it that some king can stand up and announce publicly that he's proud of the way his new daughter-in-law pulled herself up out of the mud, since he wouldn't want any of that mud dripping onto the marble floors of his palace? Who is he to hold up his standards - those of a fairy tale existence untouched by the realities of life, an existence he lucked into by being born to the right people - as some sort of unimpeachable perfection that mere mortals like her shouldn't have the impudence to aspire to?
From the looks of it, Crown Princess Mette-Marit did live what she calls "a dissolute life", but more importantly, she got herself out of it. She developed character and embraced morality, she decided she wanted better for her son and strove to improve her life and his. She met someone she fell in love with and decided to face the barrage of insults and innuendo that would surely come her way because of her past, and marry him anyway. She has demonstrated intelligence, grace, charm, patience, stamina, strength of character and determination, not to mention how highly she values her son and her husband - but some guy wearing a red satin sash and a gold thing on his head has the right to play holier-than-thou and judge whether she has lived up to his arcane and artificial standards?
While it's true that King Harald had some kind words for her and praised her for having risen above everything, it bears remembering that it was he, and people like him, who presented her with obstacles to rise above in the first place. It demonstrates a lack of tact and decorum and plain old fashioned manners to constantly remind someone that you only grudgingly tolerate their origins - in fact, it is the exact opposite of what "regal" and "noble" and "gentle" are supposed to connote.
I'm very glad Prince Haakon chose to follow his heart, and I do believe in the end his parents are glad too. To be fair, his father did praise him for having the courage to ignore protocol and marry for love. Perhaps these royals have learned a lesson from some of the very people sitting in the audience at the wedding - Prince Charles for example, and his much-maligned and, of course, absent lover Camilla Parker Bowles. Perhaps the Prince Haakon figured out, as the rest of us did, that marrying yourself off to some virginal doe for her bloodlines and her child-bearing hips, all in the name of some outdated throne that you'll probably never sit on anyway if your mother has anything to say about it, can only lead to disaster. Anyone who witnessed the farce of a marriage that Diana and Charles lived through - or who has observed that, however much the press
likes to savage Camilla' s lack of physical beauty, she and Charles are obviously in love and have been forever, and should have just gotten married thirty years ago when they wanted to - will agree that this business of sacrificing your heart and your romantic life for your country or your family's rigid caste system is one of the most heartbreaking things a person can experience.
I'm sure that whatever troubles Mette-Marit and Haakon had to endure in the months leading up to their wedding will be more than made up for by the sumptuous life they are embarking on, but it is still a shame that they had to endure anything at all. I admire them both for their temerity and their dedication to each other in the face of adversity, but what I find the most heartwarming about their story is how simply and beautifully they illustrated that marriage is about love, and it is more valuable than any crown, any country, any social code. I suspect theirs will be one of the longest-lived of the high-profile marriages, and certainly one of the happiest. At the very least, they have resurrected the romance of marriage, and touched the hearts of everyone who used to believe that marriage was a wonderful thing, and everyone who wants to still.