Norway braces for verdict in rape trial of crown princess's son Høiby

When three judges in courtroom 250 deliver their verdict at Oslo District Court early on Monday, Marius Borg Høiby - the son of the crown princess of Norway - will find out the extent of his sentence.

Høiby, 29, will appear via video link because of unspecified health reasons, almost three months after his trial came to an end on 40 charges, including four counts of rape. He denies the most serious offences but admits some of the lesser charges involving drugs and traffic offences.

Prosecutors say he should be given seven years and seven months in jail, whereas his defence lawyers believe he should serve a year-and-a-half.

Høiby, whose mother married into the royal family when he was four, has been in custody since the start of February.

Police detained him shortly before the trial began on suspicion of assault and violating a restraining order involving an ex-girlfriend.

Repeated attempts by his lawyers to have him released have failed.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit is very ill, and only last week an appeal court turned down a bid for Høiby to be allowed out so he could be with her. She has been placed on a lung transplant list little over a week ago, and has since been seen visiting her son in prison with Crown Prince Haakon.

Theirs is a picture of a family in turmoil. Mette-Marit's doctors have made clear the general rule for anyone placed on the transplant list is because they believe the patient has only a year to live.

There is profound sympathy for the crown princess as this extraordinary case draws to a close. The mood is rather different from the start of the trial, which was shrouded in public anger because of a series of revelations that documented her three-year friendship with disgraced late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

She has halted public engagements and now wears a nasal tube to help her breathe.

But that sympathy has not put an end to questions surrounding the future of the royal family, which for months has been in the middle of a perfect storm. There is little Norway's popular King Harald, 89, and Queen Sonja can do.

Høiby was never a member of the royal family but the boy nicknamed "Little Marius" did grow up alongside his royal siblings, and a substantial jail term would cast a shadow over all of them.

Throughout the trial, Norway's future king and queen kept their distance from Oslo district court, and Crown Prince Haakon tried to balance "support for Marius in the situation he finds himself in" with understanding for the women giving evidence in the case and their families.

The four women that Høiby is alleged to have raped were able to maintain their anonymity and photos of them and the defendant were banned by the court.

But the court decided that anonymity did not extend to a former girlfriend and well-known influencer, Nora Haukland, who he denies abusing, as well as hitting and choking her.

As the only identifiable woman in the case, footage of her leaving court after giving evidence naturally hit the front pages.

For a high-profile trial reliant on court sketches, Haukland's was one of the few faces the public was able to see.

The prosecution alleges the four rapes took place when the women were either asleep or incapacitated following consensual sex with Høiby, who denies the charges. Intercourse was involved in one of the alleged rapes.

Prosecutors are seeking three years in jail for one rape charge, and two years each for the other three, although Norwegian sentences do not run consecutively.

In this case it will not necessarily be clear how the judges come to a total sentence, explains May-Len Skilbrei, professor of criminology at the University of Oslo.

Prosecutors are seeking convictions on 39 of the 40 charges, and a number of the counts involve psychological as well as physical abuse of ex-girlfriends.

Several of the charges relate to one woman in particular, who became known as the "Frogner woman", because of the upmarket area of Oslo where she lives.

Høiby has partly admitted serious bodily harm and abuse in her case, but he denies "sexually offensive filming" of either her or any other women without consent.

The charges he does admit to involve trafficking 3.5kg of marijuana, driving without a licence and reckless driving, and one count of breaking a restraining order.

A few days before the verdict he was moved to Ila prison and detention centre outside Oslo.

As he will hear the sentence on Monday via video link, there is unlikely to be any of the drama from early on in the trial when he broke down in tears opposite the judges, blaming his excesses on his "extreme need for affirmation" and the fact he was "known for being mamma's son".

His reaction on screen will be visible only to those inside the courtroom and two overflow rooms.

The verdict will bring an end to a story that dates back to Høiby's initial arrest in August 2024, but it does not solve a family problem that was identified in a TV interview more than 20 years ago by King Harald's late elder sister, Princess Ragnhild.

Høiby was six when she said of the crown prince and princess: "When they have a child, poor Marius will be nothing."

And the wider scrutiny of the royal family will not go away.

"Things cannot go on as they are, they just can't. This is an institutional crisis, and it's a huge crisis of trust," says Peggy Simcic Brønn, professor emirata at BI Norwegian Business School and a specialist in reputation and public relations.

"There's going to be furore internationally in this coming week and, if they just cover their heads and run away, it's just going to compound it."

Finding the right response may prove even harder now, with Mette-Marit's health failing.

The future king and queen did try to react to public pressure in March over her friendship with Epstein between 2011-14. But some commentators felt her TV interview raised more questions than answers, when she said she "didn't know he was a sex offender or a predator".

There will be no more joint interviews for now, and there will be no celebration in August of their silver wedding anniversary, either.

The royal house says the next update on her condition will only take place once a lung transplant has taken place.

Many Norwegians will look to Crown Prince Haakon to take a lead.

But he has curtailed his engagements to be with his wife. He did not travel to Stockholm on Saturday to attend the king and queen of Sweden's golden wedding anniversary, and on Friday he did not attend the regular cabinet meeting with King Harald.

Any focus on rebuilding the reputation of the royal family may have to wait.