Swedes flocked to bookstores last Thursday when an unofficial, tell-all biography of their king – the first of its kind in Sweden – went on sale, providing details of wild parties and affairs with young women.
Just hours after sales of the book titled Carl XVI Gustaf, The Reluctant Monarch began, the shelves were empty in a number of bookstores across Stockholm, and the publisher reportedly decided to print an additional batch of 20,000 copies.
“We had ordered in 100 copies, but they ran out in an hour or two,” Nicklas Bjoerkholm, the head of the Hedengrens Book Store in the heart of the Swedish capital, said.
“It’s quite unusual to sell so many books in such a short period of time,” he added.
But while Swedes rushed out to get the book, the king himself told reporters in southwestern Sweden, where he had been moose hunting, that he had not yet had time to read it.
“I cannot review a book I have not read yet,” the king, who is 64, said, acknowledging however that he had “seen a few of the headlines that have not been too nice.”
The three authors of the book, journalists Thomas Sjoeberg, Deanne Rauscher and Tove Meyer, claim to provide a picture of what the king “is like as a person and how he is perceived by the people in his entourage”.
They detail his youth and accession to the throne at the age of 27, but a large portion of the book’s 338 pages are dedicated to describing the king and his friends’ constant partying and playing around with young women.
It was “girls à la carte for the king gang,” the authors write, relying largely on anonymous sources to describe numerous indiscretions, including with Army of Lovers lead singer Camilla Henemark, who they say had a year-long affair with the monarch at the end of the 1990s.
“She knew Queen Silvia knew, but also that there was a risk that it wouldn’t stop there. She was afraid she would become Sweden’s most hated woman if her affair with the country’s monarch became publicly known,” the book says of Henemark.
The book also describes how Sweden’s head of state put himself in danger by partying at dubious clubs, one of them in Stockholm owned by an ex-con, reportedly one of the main sources for the book.
Anticipation ahead of the release had been building for weeks in Sweden, with rumours of the book’s scandalous content circulating but few actual details leaking out in advance.
There has been widespread speculation over whether the royal family or others mentioned in the book will sue the authors, who in turn have hinted to media they withheld the juiciest details from the public eye – for now.
The king said that after seeing the media headlines about the book he had talked with his family and the queen.
“We will turn the page and go on now, because as I understand it this is about things that happened a long time ago,” he said.
A Sifo poll published last week by public broadcaster SVT hinted that half of Swedes think journalists should not try to dig up dirt on the king’s personal life, while just 25 per cent said doing so was appropriate.