From Freshers' Week to the Political Front Line

To his friends at Oxford in the autumn, he was Bilawal Lawalib, just another ordinary teenage student enjoying the social whirl of his first term at the university. To the rest of the world he is the shy-looking 19-year-old contending with a future as the head of Pakistan's greatest political dynasty.

It is a split existence that seems unimaginable, yet thanks to the internet age it is possible to get a glimpse of the life the new joint leader of Benazir Bhutto's PPP leads as a history fresher at Christ Church college, with all the newly forged friendships and nights out university inductions inevitably bring.

Fellow students' Facebook pages reveal him to be a popular student who had clearly been looking forward to starting his degree, which in the first term would have focused on British history. He had joined a group on the social networking site set up for college freshers before they arrived.

Some students had not even realized that the surname Lawalib was his first name spelt backwards, presumably to avoid the attention the surname Zardari might bring. Many who met him did not at first realize who his family was, and he did not mention it to them. He lived in college and had no obvious security.

Soon after the start of term Bilawal looked confident and at ease as he posed for a photograph with two new friends after matriculation, the ceremony which formally recognizes new members of the university. The others were still in the white shirts and black jackets of Oxford's "subfusc" formal wear, clutching their gowns, while Bilawal had swapped his for a black sweater.

At Halloween he donned devil horns and painted his face to go out with a group in fancy dress. Underneath the photograph, posted by a friend, he added the comment: "We're ready to bring hell on earth ... mwaaahahahahahah." Another picture shows him and his friends talking and laughing around a bar table.

Bilawal's comments on his peers' pages tend to be brief: sometimes flippant, sometimes perhaps poignant.

In December, after term had finished, he told one friend he was missing her. Later in the month he urged her: "Screw birghton [sic] come to dubai!!" On another acquaintance's page, he wrote: "I envy your freedom."

After the dramatic events of the last few days, he will return to Oxford with far more to worry about. In the light of his mother's assassination and his new role in Pakistan's politics, local police are liaising with national security services to review their arrangements for his protection "if and where necessary".

Thames Valley police said it had had "suitable security plans" in place since Bilawal began his studies, but would not comment on what they entailed.

"A threat level is decided, and can change, according to the environment in which the protected person is at any time and also the capability of any group to carry out an attack," it said in a statement.