King Harald V of Norway passes away, and his son succeeds him.

King Harald V of Norway passed away at the age of 89 following hospitalisation due to an uncommon blood disorder. The Norwegian Royal Palace confirmed the passing of the oldest living king in Europe on Friday.

He is immediately succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Haakon, who is anticipated to rule as King Haakon VIII. On Thursday, thousands gathered outside the palace to lay flowers for the monarch after royal family members paid him a visit. Officials had warned that the king’s condition had become “extremely serious.”

On August 17, Harald was admitted to the hospital due to haemolytic anaemia, a disorder marked by an unusually quick breakdown of red blood cells that causes exhaustion and dyspnoea. Harald, the 35-year-old heir to the Norwegian throne, has experienced a number of health issues recently, necessitating the installation of a pacemaker and a reduction in his official schedule.

But he had always ruled out abdicating, reasoning that he swore a lifelong pledge before the Norwegian parliament. The first king to be born in Norway since the fourteenth century was Harald. After his father, Olav V, passed away in January 1991, he ascended to the throne and oversaw decades of oil-driven prosperity.

He was born close to Oslo in February 1937. While his father and grandfather, Haakon VII, sat out the war in Britain, his mother fled with him and his sisters to Sweden and eventually the United States when the Nazis seized Norway. After Anders Behring Breivik’s bombings in 2011 killed 77 people, Harald made a statement that garnered him enduring public admiration. He told the mourning, “I remain convinced that the belief in freedom is stronger than fear.”

However, his passing coincides with a difficult period for the monarchy, since records released in January revealed that Crown Princess Mette-Marit had corresponded with infamous US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein years after his sentence.

Marius Borg Høiby, her 29-year-old son and stepson of the future King Haakon, received a four-year prison sentence in June for two counts of rape and thirty-two additional offences, including domestic abuse.