Nobel Peace Prize: Some said that it was premature
In 1995, he appeared at the annual Drumcree parade, hand-in-hand with hardliner Ian Paisley before hundreds of Orangemen after they won the stand-off with the nationalist community of the Garvaghy Road.
David Trimble was born in October 1944 and is married with four children. A barrister and Queen's University lecturer by profession, he has been accused by many in his own camp of being the man who sold out to republican terrorism.
But to add to his problems, many nationalists and republicans have accused him of not really wanting to treat the Catholic community as equals.
That critical view was exacerbated by his stance on policing reform and, most importantly, his high-risk strategy to pull out of government in 2001 over the IRA's then lack of movement on the disposing of weapons.
From hardline to powersharing
David Trimble entered politics through the hardline Vanguard Party in the early 1970s. He joined mainstream unionism in 1978 and entered Westminster as the MP for Upper Bann in 1990.
When the news broke that he was the surprise winner of the Ulster Unionist leadership election in 1995, many feared it marked the end of the peace process.
In doing so, he created critics within his own community and to Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists, Mr Trimble is little more than a traitor.
Despite these accusations, Mr Trimble's decision in 1998 to sign the Good Friday Agreement won him support in London, Dublin and Washington and led to him sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with SDLP leader John Hume.
Leadership challenge
What has been clear since then is that Mr Trimble has been unable to count on the overwhelming support of unionists.
His turbulent ride has mirrored that of predecessors who had tried to reform the party, Northern Ireland and the relationship with the Catholic community and the Irish Republic.
His relationship with the party's ruling council has had more than its fair share of ups and downs and 43% of them supported a leadership challenge from the Reverend Martin Smyth MP.
The real challenger, if and when it comes, is still expected to be the anti-agreement MP Jeffrey Donaldson.
General Election disaster
As the 2001 general election approached, Mr Trimble knew that he was facing a tough battle with the Democratic Unionists for supremacy among a unionist community appearing to be increasingly fractured over the direction of the peace process.
Seeking to shore up his own support, David Trimble pledged to resign as First Minister at the end of June should there be no movement on IRA arms decommissioning.
The Democratic Unionists treated the election as a second referendum on the Good Friday Agreement and pummelled the UUP, increasing its own representation from two to five seats - just one behind Mr Trimble's party.
Mr Trimble did duly resign and Northern Ireland's political leadership appeared to once again have walked to the edge of the cliff. There would be no more returning to government without IRA decommissioning, Mr Trimble insisted.
Fractured party
When decommissioning finally came in the shape of the IRA putting some weapons "beyond use", Mr Trimble told his supporters that he had been vindicated. He told his community that the day they had been told would never come, had indeed arrived.
Despite those momentous events, Mr Trimble's return to government as First Minister has been a debacle.
Such were the divisions within unionism Mr Trimble failed to win the total support of his party in the assembly and could only be re-elected with the help of the two non-aligned groups, the Alliance Party and Women's Coalition.
The coming weeks and months will show whether Mr Trimble can bring his party - and the wider unionist family together - but his words when he received the Nobel Peace Prize indicated how he viewed the task.
"This is what I have tried to do: to tell unionists to give things a chance to develop," he said.
"We have started. And we will go on. Sometimes we will stumble, maybe even go back a bit.
"But this need not matter if, in the spirit of an old Irish proverb, we say to ourselves, 'Tomorrow is another day'."