It was difficult to know which was stranger: former republican revolutionaries settling into government in Northern Ireland, or the fact that the DUP was joining them.
Yet it happened at Stormont yesterday. Martin McGuinness became a Minister in the very state he had once pledged to smash. Peter Robinson, defiant opponent of everything republican, is now a Cabinet colleague.
From street-fighter to education minister, it had been a long journey. Yet Mr McGuinness had made it and he looked happy with his new job, even if other people found it slightly unsettling.
"Martin will be Sammy's boss now," noted one reporter, pointing to DUP teacher Sammy Wilson. There was hissing and booing in the public gallery as Mr McGuinness was nominated.
Northern Ireland Unionist Party leader Cedric Wilson walked out of the chamber in protest at "this obscenity".
But with that exception, the appointment of the Executive passed without incident. It was all a bit of an anticlimax - neither press nor politicians said they felt the hand of the history on their shoulder.
In his acceptance speech, Peter Robinson insisted he wasn't selling out and would use "every ounce of my power and influence to frustrate Northern Ireland being pulled into a united Ireland".
Alliance deputy leader, Seamus Close, mocked the DUP's "pseudo-reluctant ministers grabbing office with tears in their eyes and claiming to do it all for Ulster".
If some things were changing in the North, others were staying the same. The first eight Cabinet nominations were all men. They had their choice of posts.
The two women ministers - Sinn Fein's Bairbre de Brun and the SDLP's Brid Rodgers - were nominated last. They were left with the positions the men didn't want. Ms Rodgers was landed with agriculture. "It's the green wellies for poor Brid," quipped one reporter.
The main issue of rancour at Stormont yesterday was Seamus Mallon's resignation as Deputy First Minister in July.
Sammy Wilson thought the procedural manoeuvres to put Mr Mallon back in the post were ludicrous. "It's like a Christmas pantomime - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," he said pointing to Mr Mallon's white head and the diminutive Sean Neeson of the Alliance Party.
Pro-agreement speakers said Mr Mallon hadn't really resigned at all. He had offered to resign. The Assembly hadn't formally accepted his resignation and he had made his offer only verbally, nothing had been written.
The anti-agreement camp was having none of it. Mr Mallon himself had said he was resigning. Every newspaper in the land had called it a resignation. It had been referred to as such at Westminster.
Bob McCartney expressed his exasperation at the whole affair to the presiding officer, Lord Alderdice. He quoted Sir Thomas More: "Can parliament make of man a woman?"
"Not only parliament, but in my medical experience others can do even more these days," quipped Lord Alderdice.
The anti-agreement speakers knew they were up against it, but they persisted. The British government had treated Mr Mallon's resignation as a resignation. He had to arrange a lift home from Stormont that July afternoon because his ministerial car had been withdrawn. Yet now we were being told he hadn't really resigned after all.
Honest, truth and decency didn't matter in Northern Ireland now, said Mr McCartney, who lambasted the pro-agreement side. "I did it for peace, they will say. You can get away with anything for peace - murder, mutilation, intimidation, bending the rules. It is all right as long as you do it for peace."
Mr Mallon looked embarrassed. The DUP tried to prick his conscience. Did he want to "cheat the democratic process" and enter government "by the back door"? Was he not a man who put "honour and integrity before personal position"?
Gerry Adams decided it was time for a more mellow tone. All the parties in the Assembly should "pursue their different goals in partnership", he said. Couldn't Dr Paisley, "in the twilight of his career" - that brought a smile to the DUP leader's lips - work with Sinn Fein for the sake of "the children of the nation".
Mr Cedric Wilson, citing various atrocities, thought the Provisional IRA had inflicted enough on "the children of the nation". Only a few of the Sinn Fein Assembly team did not have IRA pasts, he said. Mitchel McLaughlin was regarded as "a bit of a draft-dodger" in republican circles, he said. And for once, everyone - except poor Mr McLaughlin - smiled.