King Haakon VIII has inherited the Norwegian throne after the death of his father, Harald V. Many in Norway believe he has big shoes to fill.
King Harald was immensely popular with ordinary Norwegians, as shown by his consistent high polling and the outpouring of emotion in the lead-up to his death. Haakon is the fourth king to head Norway's modern monarchy, since it was restored in 1905 after the country gained independence from Sweden.
Many commentators believe he is well-placed to follow in his predecessors' footsteps. As crown prince, Haakon worked closely with his father as he carried out his royal duties and in recent years was handed more responsibility, increasingly acting as regent while Harald was ill or absent."
I am so lucky that Crown Prince Haakon is the one who will carry this forward," King Harald wrote of his son in his biography The King Tells. Historian Trond Norén Isaksen tells the BBC that Haakon will be a different type of king to his father, but no less respected.
" King Harald... [was] very charismatic, he [had] a great sense of humour, which everyone appreciates, and Haakon is a bit more reserved, a bit more like his mother."
But in recent years he has also become a bit more relaxed and opened up a bit and showed a bit more of his sense of humour... he has been pulling enormous weight for many years given his parents have become older and his wife has been ill."
Haakon is a great-great-great-grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria. His daughter Ingrid Alexandra, 22, now becomes the crown princess and heir to the Norwegian throne.
But their relationship was not without controversy and there was a fierce public debate in Norway from the moment Haakon first announced they were dating. Some commentators even warned at the time that their relationship could spell the end of the Norwegian monarchy, with comparisons being made to the infamous union between American divorcee Wallis Simpson and British King Edward VIII which led to his abdication in 1936.
Mette-Marit was not the first commoner to marry into the Norwegian royal family - the late King Harald had already broken with tradition by marrying Queen Sonja three decades earlier. She was, however, a single mother to a four-year-old child whose father had served time for a conviction of cocaine possession.
The royal couple's co-habitation in an Oslo flat had also drawn criticism from the conservative Lutheran Church of Norway - though polls from the time showed most ordinary Norwegians did not care about either. What many Norwegians did question, though, was whether her former party lifestyle was one compatible with that of someone married to the future king.
