When a royal family is going through its hardest year, good news becomes rare and therefore all the more precious. Norway's Queen Sonja has nonetheless delivered one such piece: her daughter-in-law, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has successfully come through a lung transplant.

At the opening of an exhibition in Kristiansand, the queen briefly addressed local media about her daughter-in-law's condition. "It's simply fantastic. It's fantastic that it went so well," Sonja said. Behind those few words lies a long struggle - Mette-Marit has battled progressive pulmonary fibrosis for years, an illness that forced her to use oxygen and to cut her official duties to a minimum.

The transplant comes in a year the Norwegian court will struggle to forget. Alongside the health crisis, the family is also going through a scandal of a different calibre: the crown princess's son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg, was convicted on several serious counts, including rape, assault and drug-related offences. When private drama and a health crisis strike at the same time, even the crown begins to look like an ordinary family under pressure.

And the family's reaction is precisely what makes it human. Crown Prince Haakon temporarily set aside some of his duties to be by his wife's side, daughter Alexandra transferred to a nearer university to be close to her mother, and even the convicted Marius reportedly visited the hospital quietly. Illness asks nothing about titles - when someone close is on the operating table, kings too wait outside the same door as everyone else.