Italy's new president, Sergio Mattarella: a quiet man marked by tragedy
After brother's slaying, Sergio Mattarella got involved in politics, holding top posts
He is a white-haired Sicilian who might never have got anywhere near the corridors of power but for the mafia killing of his beloved elder brother.
Instead, Sergio Mattarella, the 73-year-old elected on Saturday to succeed Giorgio Napolitano as head of state, has plenty of experience in high office, having served governments of both left and right in a string of ministerial posts including stints at both defence and education.
During a 25-year parliamentary career he was also the author of a since-amended electoral law that bears his name.
Since 2011 he has been a highly respected judge at the country's constitutional court, picking up the strings from a pre-politics career as a legal academic.
Even now, with his air of a kindly professor, the bespectacled Mattarella appears like someone more cut out for the quiet exchanges of academia than the cut and thrust of politics.
And that is where he may have stayed but for the 1980 slaying of his elder brother, Piersanti, by the Cosa Nostra, Sicily's notorious crime syndicate.
The son of one the island's most prominent and influential Christian Democrats, Piersanti rose to become the island's regional president.