Queen Sonya
In a rare interview, she talks about her strokes of fate
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In an interview, Queen Sonja speaks more openly than ever about private setbacks. King Harald’s wife remembers the difficult early days of their relationship and the trauma of their miscarriages.
Sonja Haraldsen met and fell in love with King Harald, 86, then Crown Prince of Norway, in 1959. But their relationship encountered resistance, their love was repeatedly put to the test. The reason: Today’s Queen Sonja, 86, was a commoner. This caused great displeasure among the people, the government and King Olav, †87, the prince’s father. The couple had to wait almost ten years before they could get engaged. Harald is said to have even threatened to remain single forever and thus without a chance of a legitimate heir if he did not receive permission to marry the trained seamstress. On August 29, 1968, Sonja and Harald finally walked down the aisle.
But with her marriage, the now 86-year-old was confronted with other problems. She was under pressure to carry a future heir to the throne. Two years after the wedding, Sonja suffered a miscarriage. A terrible stroke of fate, which the Norwegian queen is now talking about in an interview with the newspaper “Verdens Gang”.
Queen Sonja: “It was so cruel”
In July 1970, to celebrate King Olav’s birthday, Sonja and her husband Harald were guests on the royal yacht “Norge”, which was based in Hankø. At that time, the 32-year-old was in the first trimester of pregnancy when bleeding suddenly started at night. Sonja revealed this in 2016 in the NRK documentary “King and Queen for 25 years”. Now she remembers the traumatic moment again. “I was pulled down the side of the ship and hospitalized in Fredrikstad,” she told Verdens Gang, adding, “It was so cruel because there were so many strangers standing there and welcoming me.”
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“The most intimate things were revealed in public”
She also reveals that she lost another child two years after her first miscarriage. “I had two miscarriages and the most intimate things were revealed in public,” she points out. It was incredibly difficult for her that the media found out about her most tragic moments and reported on them. “It was absolutely horrible because it was a media storm when you had to get out of there,” she continues. “Of course it was a difficult experience. But then it went well.”
About a year after her first miscarriage, the queen became a mother: Princess Märtha Louise, 51, was born in 1971. Prince Haakon, 49, saw the light of day in 1973. Looking back, Sonja wishes she had spent more time with her children.
“I regret not spending enough time at home with the kids”
Because she had to fight for a long time to be taken seriously in the palace and to get her own office. It took years before she was able to assert herself. That was not only an immense expenditure of energy, but also robbed her of time with her children. “I certainly should have used the space much better,” she explains now. “I regret that I didn’t spend enough time at home with the kids because I was torn between two things, too,” she says, adding: “A place where you had to assert yourself, and then at home on the family front. That’s something that happens to a lot of women.”
Sources used: vg.no, “King and Queen for 25 years”