Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 22, second in line to the Norwegian throne and the country’s future queen, started at the University of Oslo today after cutting short her studies at the University of Sydney and returning to Norway when her mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, underwent a lung transplant last month, per GB News’s confirmed reporting published Thursday. She will be treated as any other student on campus, with no media presence permitted during her academic activities. This is the arrangement that applies to her between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., at which point she resumes being second in line to the throne.
Mette-Marit, 52, has suffered from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic liver disease, since her diagnosis became public in 2018. She has also been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive lung condition, and the lung transplant she underwent last month represents the most significant medical intervention in a health journey that has reshaped the Norwegian royal family’s public schedule for years. Mette-Marit’s health struggles have been managed with a transparency that most European royal families do not practice, with the Norwegian royal household issuing updates on her condition and treatment that the British Palace, for example, would handle with considerably more opacity. The transplant was announced. The recovery is ongoing. Ingrid Alexandra returned from Australia when it happened.
The princess had been studying at the University of Sydney when her mother went into surgery. She flew back. She spent the weeks of recovery at home. She enrolled as an exchange student at the University of Oslo, which will allow her to continue her Social Sciences coursework from the Faculty of Social Sciences while remaining in Norway near her family. The Norwegian royal household confirmed her enrollment in an official statement, noting she would receive no special treatment during academic activities, which is the statement that simultaneously acknowledges she is a princess and describes how that will not affect her attendance record.
Britain’s Royal Family is managing a cancer-managing King, an unnamed baby in Lisbon, a brother exile situation, and a grandfather under police investigation. Norway’s Royal Family is managing a queen who had a lung transplant and a princess who came home. Both families are managing.
When the heir to the throne flies home from Australia because her mother needs a lung transplant and then starts university on Monday, what exactly is the royal schedule for?
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