On Wednesday, Norwegian prosecutors asked that Marius Borg remain in custody with an electronic tag for another four weeks. The measure expires on 7 September and he will not appeal it. His lawyer Petar Sekulić says his client still maintains there is no risk of reoffending, "but given the situation with the upcoming funeral, he accepts remaining in custody". Read that sentence again. A man who has spent months asking to be released suddenly agrees on his own to stay locked up - in exactly the week the country buries its king.

Marius Borg is 29 and the son Queen Mette-Marit had before she married. He has been in custody since the beginning of February over the risk of further offences against his former girlfriend. In mid-June he was sentenced to four years in prison on 34 counts, two of them rape; he was acquitted on two other rape charges. The verdict is not final. Despite all of that, in the days after Harald V's death he was among those who carried the king's coffin.

This is where law and family collide, and the Norwegian police found a solution that in the Balkans would have been front-page material for weeks. The police granted him a series of releases: on 27 August, the day before the king died, he visited him at the National Hospital after his condition suddenly deteriorated. He was then permitted to be at the royal estate of Bygdøy and at the Royal Palace, to carry Harald's body to the chapel together with Haakon, Ingrid and the other grandchildren.

Police lawyer Oda Karterud explained it in an email to Norwegian media: "Generally speaking, there is a possibility of release under electronic monitoring for various reasons. It is not unusual to grant leave on the death of a close relative." The wording is impeccable, and that is exactly why it is worth noting. What applies to every prisoner in Norway applies here to a man with not a drop of royal blood, who is a grandson in everything but lineage.

Marius was also given permission to attend the state funeral on Wednesday, 9 September. That day Oslo will fill with heads of state and foreign delegations coming to pay their respects to a monarch who reigned for thirty-five years and to greet the new king. Among them, with a tag on his ankle, will be a convicted man - because his family decided that is where he belongs.

The most interesting thing in the whole story is not Marius, but that the system did not pretend to be deaf. The Norwegian state neither pardoned him nor hid him. It keeps him locked up, and lets him bury the man who raised him. Would that balance even be possible here - or would it instantly turn into a party press release?