The media is attacking the 65-year-old monarch with unprecedented fury. At the heart of the scandal is The Reluctant Monarch, a book released in November that for the first time put into print long-standing rumours about the private life of Carl Gustaf, who has three adult children with his German-born wife, Queen Silvia.
The book alleged that the king had a secret love affair in the 1990s and described how he and his friends frequented private night clubs in Stockholm where they were entertained by scantily clad women. It also claimed he visited exclusive strip clubs during foreign visits, in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics and in Slovakia in 2008, citing former employees of those establishments.
Carl Gustaf first addressed the allegations in a somewhat confused monologue to reporters at his annual moose hunt in November, saying his family was “turning the page.’’ He didn’t deny the allegations, which was seen by many as a partial admission. It might have been expected to end there. After all, the king was not accused of anything illegal and Swedes don’t get into a moral panic about extramarital affairs. But the question of strip club visits, frowned upon in Sweden’s egalitarian society, would not go away.
And suggestions the king may have spent hefty sums on such visits raised questions about whether the public should be provided more information about how the royal court uses its annual 122 million kronor (nearly $20 million) taxpayer-funded stipend.
In May, the story took a twist when Swedish Radio aired a secret recording in which one of the king’s friends, Anders Lettstrom, was heard discussing the scandal with a reputed gangland figure. Their conversation centered on Mille Markovic, a former night club owner and a key source in the book who claims to have pictures of the king’s entourage in compromising situations.
Swedish Radio broadcast parts of a conversation where Lettstrom wanted to know exactly what material Markovic had and how much it would cost to make him hand it over. In an interview Monday, Gustaf rejected any knowledge of Lettstrom’s contacts with criminals. He also denied having visited the specific strip clubs mentioned in the book. In answer to whether he had ever visited a strip club, the king asked the reporter to define what exactly he meant by one, then recalled a visit to a cabaret in Paris.
