Surely even the most hard-hearted republican couldn’t fail to be melted a little by these pictures of Estelle Silvia Eva Mary, aka Duchess of Ostergotland, and second in line to the Swedish throne.

Estelle, the first royal baby to be born in the Nordic country for three decades, arrived last Thursday at the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, a suburb of Stockholm. She is the first child of Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Daniel, a commoner and her former personal trainer, whom she married in June 2010.