24 Comments
User's avatar
air dog's avatar

Really hard to follow this story. Lots of different people are referred to only as "Hoiby", with no easy way to differentiate who exactly is being discussed. There's also a guy named "Marius", whose last name is unstated (but I bet it's Hoiby!). Marius seems to be important to the story, but I can't tell what his relationship is to anybody - except that the prince's bride was his mom.

A few more hints would be very helpful.

Expand full comment
Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's avatar

Good point. The first block quote about Høiby is about the mother, and the second about the son, who has his mother's last name. I have inserted a "[Marius, the son]" to clear it up.

Expand full comment
DayByDay's avatar

I remember Matte Marit also was a drug addict just from Norwegian media. I dont think you included that.

Expand full comment
DayByDay's avatar

I found it easy but I am Norwegian so…

Expand full comment
Anne Frütel's avatar

As the history of royals across the centuries does not exactly testify of their non-agressive or peace-oriented life strategies, one could even interpret it as another variant of assortative mating.

Expand full comment
Mushkelji's avatar

Interesting to note whether the loss of royal authority has become so great that parents no longer can even control their children and who they marry. In any other era, there would have been some sort of veto it blows my mind that with something as monumental as a royal lineage that these prince/princesses have a free hand to be reckless.

Also is that guy literally the black Rasputin?

Expand full comment
Colcestrian's avatar

An insistence on "equal marriage" for members of European ruling families was never universal, and became fossilised only from the later mediaeval period onward, along with formal lines of succession. Before acquiring the flattering epithet of "William the Conqueror", Duke William of Normandy was commonly known as "William the Bastard", and his mother was reputed to have been a leather-worker's daughter of Falaise. Peter the Great of Russia was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine I, who had been born Marta Skowrońska, supposedly to a pair of runaway serfs. In its dying days, the institution of Monarchy is abandoning the exclusive, caste-and-status-bound customs of former times, which have come to be seen as anachronistic and even offensive, and reverting to the earlier pattern of "I'm the king and I'll have any woman I want".

Expand full comment
Ghost of Rurik's avatar

There are very good reasons for royal endogamy, which is unfairly discredited as “incestuous”. The consequences of marrying a low-class commoner are much worse than the potential consequences of marrying your 3rd cousin.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

That Princess Maria Luisa and Durek Verrett story has some kick-ass Scandal Sheet value. Verrett sounds like the biggest occultist fraud--and the most successful status climber--since Jose Lopez Rega.* Durek Verrett is like someone who watched the film Six Degrees of Separation in 1993, said "hey! I could do that!" and found out that the game could actually work. That it was possible for someone to bluff their way to the top. The stakes in Verrett's story are relatively low compared to, say, bluffing ones way into a US Presidency. But as with Lopez Rega, Verrett pretty much started from scratch.

*https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/argentinas-forgotten-guru/

I've read a lot of history. Enough to learn that while most unscrupulous grifters fail, it isn't uncommon to find con artists successfully faking their way into the good graces of the wealthy. ex. https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/walter-kirnrsquos-lsquoblood-will-outrsquo-a-true-tale-of-glitter-and-gullibility/

So to me, the disconcerting part of this story isn't Verrett himself. I'm reserving my dismay for the gullibility of the prestigious names that I find praising him with the blurbs for his book. Gwyneth Paltrow, okay--but Paul Hawken? Really? https://shamandurek.com/spirit-hacking/

As the quoted praise refers only to the book, I'm presuming that's mostly how Verrett's CV references know of him. And, well, I dunno. New-age buzzword esoteric shamanistic self-help books are just not that great. I could write that shit if I felt like it. So could AI. The curriculum core of self-help books was written long ago, and in my reading, the cream of the classics--like Lao-tzu, and the Stoics--paid approximately no mind to appeals to the occult as means of self-improvement. But there's this yearning for a shortcut. A way to game the system.

Text doesn't induce suggestibility nearly as effectively as video, but it is an edited product, and it can be edited to tell people what they want to hear, while hitting the desired note about the character of the author. The unwary can be persuaded by finding what they want to hear in a narrative that deserves more scrutiny. In that regard, the previously linked personal Wikipedia page includes some positively deal-breaking red flag warnings. Personal testimonies, by multiple people including family members, claiming to have been burned by him, or refuting his frequently extravagant claims.

One of the best features of Text is that it isn't the vanishing act that video tends to be, leaving the viewer only with a "takeaway". Text allows easy and precise line by line review, questioning, and comparison with other texts. Claim-checking, fact-checking. Assessing the credibility of witnesses. Beneficial for skeptical reflection and critique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durek_Verrett

May the best Text win.

Durek Verrett's pitch is "Be Your Own Damn Guru." Which requires walking the other way from someone claiming to teach how to do it. Whether the lessons are Verrett's introductory rate of $10, or his premium level, a private lesson at $2000 for a 1-hour session.

Expand full comment
DC Reade's avatar

I've done a little reading on the topic at hand. It should be noted that the history of European royal dynasties reveals not only a high index of consanguinity in the official offspring, but in many cases a lot of unofficial offspring as well, from mistresses, and dalliances. Also, a disproportionate amount of Gayness in the royal lines. Also Freemasonry. Does that run in families, I wonder?

I've less well versed in the details of the European aristocracy--the Gotha, the Black Nobility, etc. An interesting historical examination, for someone with access to primary sources in a well-stocked library...

Expand full comment
Realist's avatar

I am one-quarter Norwegian. My paternal grandfather was born in 1870, Sondre, Oppland, Norway. He immigrated to the United States in 1880. I'm sure my Norwegian ancestors are spinning in their graves.

Expand full comment
The Anti-Gnostic's avatar

She moved them to LA as soon as she could to get back into the film industry and they no longer undertake royal duties.

Expand full comment
Dronom!'s avatar

It’s black 🤢

Expand full comment
Bob Thebuilder's avatar

His name is DUrek. Must be someone else.

Expand full comment
Daniel's avatar

Hey,

Emil O. W. Kirkegaard .I know you're an expert on mental health.Could I ask you about this study?It claims when you control for a mood.The disparity between conservatives and liberals in mental health disappears entirely is this true https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12043138/

Expand full comment
Reid's avatar

I feel like this post is missing a conclusion. It hints at it, but doesn't quite wrap everything up. My interpretation is basically this:

Occasionally, a member of the royal family will have a desire to marry a peasant. This is correlated with other dysgenic desires for mate qualities, like low status, antisocial behavior, or otherwise being a thumb in the face of their parents. The desire itself is not super heritable, especially if the royal's eventual mate is more conformist in desires. However, if the desire comes to fruition, the offspring are likely to have negative traits. These traits are not inherently a product of non-royal genes (depending on the definition of peasant, some of them would perhaps be a product of that), but a product of the traits of peasants who are attractive to royals (i.e. antisociality in the cases presented here). As it's desirable for the royal bloodlines of the world to be better, it would be better if royals with this desire were prevented from fulfilling it.

Expand full comment
Reid's avatar

I’m surprised as any to find myself standing up for Meghan Markle, but I think her degree is actually useful. She majored in theater and international relations. International relations is obviously useful for someone marrying into a royal family, who hasn’t been tutored in such their whole life. Theater is useful, as the principal role of a royal consort (or even member of the royal family) in this day and age is to be an entertainer on the public stage. Learning how to emote for a distant crowd, about lighting and recitation, etc. is directly relevant to her socially-productive(?) profession. While for almost anyone this degree would be useless, it genuinely makes sense for her.

Expand full comment
Eric Rasmusen's avatar

Are all European royal families rotten? Are all European aristocratic families rotten? When did this start?

Expand full comment
Frank L Marchi's avatar

I went on a school trip to Washington DC with Derek. His dad was an architect and remodeled my parents’ house.

Expand full comment