Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit secretly travelled to India in order to care for infant twins born to the surrogate mother of a gay palace employee unable to get a travel visa, the palace said today.
Armed with a diplomatic passport that granted her immediate access, the future queen jumped on a plane in late October when the employee, who is also a friend, and his husband were unable to travel to care for their newborns.
"For me, this is about two babies lying alone in a New Delhi hospital," Mette-Marit said in a statement. "I was able to travel and wanted to do what I could."
She did not alert Indian authorities and spent several days with the babies at the Manav Medicare Centre, where staff assumed the wife of Norway's Crown Prince Haakon was a nanny.
While the princess was away, her name continued to appear in the official palace calendar and her absence from a parliamentary dinner was not explained.
A relative of the two fathers eventually took over from Mette-Marit and the fathers received a visa in November, when they brought the babies back to Norway, the palace added.
Surrogacy is a hotly debated issue in Norway and the government discourages Norwegians from paying...
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