DELICIOUSLY dressed in powder blue with a cream hat over her blond hair and eight months of pregnancy showing, Mette-Marit of Norway is not your average crown princess.

She accompanied King Harald, Queen Sonja and her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, to Buckingham Palace and Downing Street yesterday at the start of a three-day official visit to Britain to mark the centenary of Norway’s independence from Sweden. Mette- Marit stole the show. She kissed the Queen on both cheeks before curtseying.

Norway was divided in 2000 when Crown Prince Haakon, the country’s next monarch, announced his engagement to a single mother who had had a child by a convicted drug user and who had a reputation of her own in Oslo’s nightclubs.

Father and son spent long hours discussing the implications of such an addition to a Royal Family of hitherto impeccable credentials, but the King and Queen were won over by Mette-Marit’s good intentions. Norwegian officials and journalists agreed yesterday that the Crown Princess had won many hearts and minds thanks to the tutelage of Queen Sonja, a commoner who endured a long wait before she could marry Crown Prince Harald.

The royal correspondent of Aftenposten, the leading Oslo daily, said: “She has proved herself by working hard and being very good at meeting people.”

And she has also provided a legitimate daughter, Ingrid Alexandra, now nearly two, who under her country’s enlightened constitution will one day claim her right as Norway’s first female head of state.

Although not a full State visit, the occasion has all the appearance of one, with the royal party arriving on the Thames aboard their royal yacht Norge.

A carriage procession down the Mall led to a formal welcome with a guard of honour at Buckingham Palace.

In truth it was more of a family occasion. The Queen and King Harald, Ballioleducated, as was his father, are second cousins, Harald being the grandson of Maud, daughter of Edward VII and first Queen of Norway, in 1905, who married the future King Haakon VII in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace in 1896. The visit is part of a year of independence celebrations that began last November. The British visit is a token of thanks for providing Maud and for being one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations.

Among the hosts at the Buckingham Palace banquet last night was our own Crown Princess in all but name.

Accompanied by her husband, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall had her baptism as an official assistant hostess to the Queen.Today Queen Sonja and Crown Princess Mette-Marit will have lunch at the Groucho Club in London to launch an anthology of contemporary Norwegian writers.

The King and the Crown Prince will have lunch with Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to discuss London’s anti-terrorist measures, and the Crown Prince and Princess will call on the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House before a City of London banquet.

The visit ends tomorrow with the Norwegians hosting a lunch for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on board the Norge.

Tiara outing

The Duchess of Cornwall wore a royal tiara for the first time last night. It had been loaned to her by the Queen for dinner with the King and Queen of Norway. The Durbar Tiara had previously been worn by Queen Mary for the reception in Delhi that celebrated the coronation of King George V. It has diamonds mounted in gold and set in platinum.

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