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He was born a Danish prince named Carl, and might have lived an ordinary royal life — but in 1905, when Norway dissolved its union with Sweden and went looking for a king, it chose him. He took the old Norse name Haakon, and he took it seriously.
His test came on 9 April 1940. When the Germans invaded and demanded he appoint the collaborator Quisling, Haakon refused — telling his government he would abdicate before he would sanction it. The 'King's No' became the spine of Norwegian resistance. He fled north and then to London, an old man speaking to his occupied country down a radio wire, and never once signed his nation away.
After exile he came home: in June 1945 his ship came up the Oslofjord and a whole nation came down to the water to meet him. When his long life ended in 1957 he was laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum cut into the rock of Akershus — among the kings of the country that had chosen him. The Danish prince had come home for good.