At Ris Church in Oslo, on 23 September, the Norwegian royal family said goodbye to Princess Astrid. She died on 11 September, aged 94 - fifteen days after the death of her younger brother, King Harald V. The church was open to any citizen who wanted to come. That detail says more than all the crowns in the front rows.

After the service, the coffin, draped in the Norwegian flag, was carried out by King Haakon VIII himself - Astrid's nephew - together with her five children. Her children and grandchildren laid red roses on it. Among the wreaths from Europe's royal courts were white roses from Britain's Princess Anne. In the front rows sat Queen Mette-Marit, Crown Princess Ingrid and Queen Sonja, who in the space of a few weeks lost both her husband and his sister. From abroad came Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Margaretha of Luxembourg, Belgium's Princess Astrid and Prince Lorenz.

The most powerful sentence didn't come from a priest, but from a politician. Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, the man who led NATO for a whole decade, spoke about something entirely private: "She was there when he was born, and she was there when he died. Astrid took care of Harald." A sentence that needs no title at all. Perhaps that's the most honest description of monarchy: a family that lives through its losses in front of an entire country.

Parish priest Pål Erik Wirgenes described her as "an important support" who took part in the royal family's duties all her life. Astrid saw all four Norwegian monarchs on the throne since independence in 1905. The state acknowledged this in its own way: for her 70th birthday, in 2002, the government granted her a pension for her decades of service.

Two empty seats were noticed in the church. Prince Sverre Magnus, the King's son, didn't come because he is studying in Lisbon. Marius Borg Høiby, Mette-Marit's son from before her marriage, was absent because of his legal situation - he is under house arrest and awaits a retrial in February 2027. How much of that absence is legal necessity, and how much a palace decision that one photo from the pews should not overshadow the whole ceremony?

The choice of church was no accident: Astrid's husband, Johan Martin Ferner, is buried at Ris. Her dog Vilma, said to have been "everything" to her, already has a new home with one of her children. And Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria lost both her godfather, King Harald, and Astrid within a few weeks.

In the Balkans, royal funerals are mostly a subject for history books or nostalgia. In Norway they are a state routine with the doors left open - and that is the whole point. Continuity is the only thing a monarchy really sells, and at a funeral you see it most clearly.