An announcement that made a lot of noise. On November 8, 2022, Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, fourth in line to the Norwegian throne, announced via her social media that she was renouncing her royal titles out of love. At 51, the princess decided to devote herself to her alternative medicine activities with her fiancé, a shaman named Durek Verrett.
“Every time someone in the royal family gets engaged, it creates a media storm. This time too. After discussions in the media last month, my fiance Durek Verrett and I have come to terms with the king, queen and the rest of the royal family to make certain adjustments”, she explained in the video and to continue: “I renounce my official functions and patronages of different organizations”.
This is not the first time that Märtha Louise has taken everyone by surprise, as revealed by Thomas Pernette and Virginie Megglé in their book Highness in distress, published by Flammarion in 2022. Already in 2002, she renounced “her predicate of royal highness to marry the writer Ari Behn”, with whom she was married until 2017. “The couple then publishes a strange work, written with four hands, on their love and the pilgrimage they have begun , hand in hand, in the Norwegian forests, before saying “yes”. The daughter of the monarch Harald V is not the only one who has decided to distance herself from her family and give up her royal titles. Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle had created controversy in 2020… Explanations.
In 2020, two years after their wedding and a year after the birth of their son Archie, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle relinquished their royal titles. An announcement which had also been made via their social networks: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will no longer use their title of Royal Highness as they are no longer active members of the Royal Family”, could we read in the press release published on January 18, 2020. Following this sensational announcement, rumors concerning a disagreement within the British royal family continued to swell.
Usually very discreet about their intimate life, the couple ended up giving an interview to the popess of American television, Oprah Winfrey. During this interview, Meghan and Harry had discussed several topics. They explained that since they had retired from the royal family, their son Archie did not benefit from any protection. The skin color of their son would also have been at the heart of the concerns of the family of prince Harry.
“Around the same time, we had a group conversation about Archie not getting security, not getting a title…And also there were concerns and conversations about his skin color when he was born,” Meghan Markle told the host. Isolated and abused by the tabloids, the ex-actress had had suicidal thoughts as she recounted in the rest of the interview. “I couldn’t see any solution. Look, I was really ashamed to have to say it at the time and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry in particular, but I knew if I didn’t say anything (she would hurt herself) I just didn’t want to be alive anymore… It takes a lot of courage to admit you need help.”
Since the disappearance of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry and his brother William have been reconciled, at the request of the new sovereign Charles III. A return to the royal family which could be understood in a few months since Harry should publish an autobiography which could once again set fire to the powder.
Like Prince Harry or Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, Imperial Princess Mako had her future all mapped out within the royal family. It was without counting on his meeting with a commoner and former classmate named Kei Komuro.
“In the Japanese imperial family, princes, men, have the right to marry a commoner. They do not lose their title for all that. On the other hand, when an imperial princess marries a commoner, she loses everything. We see again the misogyny of the Japanese imperial family”, explained the journalist Pierrick Geais for Paris Match in Jour J.
More in love than ever, she decided to get engaged with the latter in 2017, thus renouncing her royal titles. After their low-key wedding in October 2021, they flew to the United States to live away from the media fuss.
