The Norwegian court has buried two people in 15 days. King Harald V died on 27 August, and on Friday 11 September his sister, Princess Astrid, died as well. She was 94. Her last public appearance was at her brother's funeral - in a wheelchair, with a face that travelled around the world. Two days later she is gone too.

King Haakon VIII ordered the flags on the palace balcony lowered to half-mast on Friday and on the day of the funeral. His statement contains one sentence worth more than all the rest of the protocol language: "At 22 she had to take on the role of first lady after the death of my grandmother, Crown Princess Martha." At 22. Not by choice, but because her mother died in 1954 and somebody had to stand in that place.

The marriage that cost her the title

In 1961 Astrid married Johan Martin Ferner, an Olympic medallist. He was divorced from Ingeborg Heselberg-Meyer - and that was precisely the problem. The court stripped her of the royal style of address and her rights of succession to the throne. Not for a crime, not for a scandal, but because the man she wanted to live with had been married once before. They had five children and seven grandchildren. Thirty-eight years later that rule no longer existed in the same form in the same palace - but for her it was too late.

How many rules like this does the Balkans remember in its own families? Not by palace decree, but as an aunt who stopped coming to family celebrations and an uncle who "is not mentioned". The only difference is that with Norwegian royal families the stripping gets written into an official document.

The woman who held the house together when nobody else could

Astrid served as Norway's first lady through countless official trips and events, until her brother, then Prince Harald, married and Sonja took over the role. At court she is described as a person of sharp humour and even sharper memory - especially for the war years, which she recounted in detail. Among the people she met was Elvis Presley, during the filming of GI Blues.

The family said goodbye with a message that does not read like a court communiqué: "Dear mother, dear Princess Astrid: Thank you for being the best mother we could have had. Throughout your whole life you were there for us with love, wisdom and good humour."

With her goes the last living witness of King Olav V's era. Before her brother's funeral, Astrid went alone to the chapel where he lay - that photograph remained the quietest image of the entire day. Courts know how to organise ceremonies with eleven royal houses and over twenty world leaders. What they cannot organise is the order in which people leave.