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Literary Review
Monarchs without thrones
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Europe's ex-kings and royal `pretenders' are seldom in the news but they are not forgotten. CHRISTOPHER HURST surveys a varied scene.
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Spain's King Juan Carlos II, (second left), and his wife Queen Sofia (left), with Bulgaria's former king Simeon Saxcoburggotski, now the prime minister, and his wife Margarita.
IF I were the Hereditary Prince of Ruritania, whose deceased father lost his throne through backing the wrong horse in World War II and whose country is now struggling to be democratic after decades of communist dictatorship, I might, on sunny mornings, briefly forget the dismal reality of my situation by recalling the extraordinary turn-about of fortune that not only brought the Bourbon king of Spain, Juan Carlos, to the throne lost by his grandfather Alfonso XIII, but firmly secured his place upon it.
Alfonso abdicated in 1931, and the country then went through a turbulent phase as a republic before General Franco defeated it in a bloody civil war. Franco established a personal clerico-fascist style of rule which was neither republican nor royal, and bequeathed the headship of state when he died in the mid 1970s to Alfonso's grandson Juan Carlos, bypassing the young man's father, Don Juan, who was still alive. Juan Carlos, whom Franco had carefully groomed in his own image, surprised sceptics by his positive attitude towards democratic institutions, and never more so than when, early in his reign, he faced down a crude attempt by Franco loyalists to subvert parliament. He and his family (his wife Sofia is a sister of the discredited former King Constantine of Greece) have kept a low profile and remained popular. His authority, like that of Franco, is personal; most Spaniards today have no mystical attachment to royalty, and the monarchy will only survive after him if his son Felipe, or any other successor, can earn their respect. Alfonso XIII, who was born king and brought up in the old undemocratic tradition, failed in this, although his wife (an English princess) was popular — not an unusual syndrome.
The House of Savoy is an ancient royal dynasty, but it ruled over no more than the island of Sardinia and the region of Piedmont in the north of Italy until its head, Victor Emanuel II, became one of the leaders of the Italian unification movement, leading to his becoming king of the united realm in 1860. The Savoy monarchy was thus not a deeply rooted institution in Italy as a whole. King Victor Emanuel III, who reigned from 1900, could possibly have taken a successful stand on constitutional grounds against Mussolini and the fascist dictatorship he introduced after seizing power in 1922, and thus established a lasting hold on the country's loyalty, but in the event he collaborated, through weakness, first with Mussolini and subsequently with Hitler. After the fall of Italian fascism in 1943 the royal family beat a hasty retreat, leaving the country to be occupied and fought over (against the advancing Allies) by the Germans. It thus remained tarred with the fascist brush. The old king abdicated, but his only son Umberto returned, only to be turned out by a referendum on the monarchy in 1946 after having "reigned" for barely 30 days. He lived as an exile in Portugal until his death in 1983. Like Alfonso of Spain, he separated from his popular wife (Marie Jose of Belgium) after abdicating. He had lost his throne, partly at least, because personally he was not respected or trusted.
The Italian monarchy had been compromised in the eyes of the educated middle class by their closeness to the fascists, but the more conservative and less wealthy south of Italy voted in favour of its continuation. The result of the referendum was therefore close, which is thought to be the main reason why male members of the House were forbidden to enter Italy from 1946 onwards — until Prince Victor Emanuel, Umberto's only son, was permitted to make a brief visit to Rome at the end of 2002. This was widely thought to have been a fiasco, because he called on the Pope but — surely a fatal error of judgement — not the head of state, the President of Italy.
The Greek royal house, which is descended from the reigning dynasty of Denmark, not only held on to its throne but continued to play a leading role in domestic politics well into the latter half of the 20th Century. Its first major conflict with elected politicians was when the prime minister, Venizelos, took Greece into World War I on the side of the Western Entente, while King Constantine I, married to the Kaiser's sister, would have preferred to join Germany. His son George II, who went into exile (for the second time) after Hitler invaded Greece in 1941, became a focus of loyalty for the non-communist resistance to the Germans, and later for the anti-communist side in the civil war that followed the liberation, and was thus able, after a referendum, to return to Greece. He died in 1947, and with the succession of his brother Paul the monarchy's political partisanship entered a new intensified phase. Paul's German wife Queen Frederica divided the officer corps by blatantly intriguing against Marshal Papagos, the prestigious victor of the civil war, whose influence in the army she saw as exceeding the king's and therefore as a threat to the monarchy.
Paul's son Constantine II succeeded when still in his twenties, and staked his reputation on an attempted coup against the junta of army officers who seized power and established a dictatorship in 1967. This failed, and he went into exile, never to return — the monarchy was abolished by the junta in 1973. Since then he has tried, largely without success, to reclaim the estates in Greece which were the property of the royal family. His influence in Greece is negligible, but he remains, very publicly, a close friend of the British royal family — which some might think an indiscretion on the part of the latter.
The affairs of the Romanian and Bulgarian royals largely escape the attention of the international press. When Romania emerged as an independent state from the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s, a king was chosen from the Hohenzollerns, the German imperial house. This was Ferdinand, whose intelligent English wife Marie tried to make their small capital an imitation of Paris. Their son, King Carol, was remarkable chiefly for his erratic love-life; but his brief marriage to a daughter of Constantine I of Greece resulted in the birth of one son, Michael, who first became king as a boy when his father abdicated, was then displaced when his father decided to return, but ruled in name from the beginning of World War II till the communist take-over in 1947 drove him into exile. Michael acts as an unofficial ambassador for his country in an impressive manner — I heard him a few months ago address a gathering in London advocating Romania's accession to NATO. He appears serious and dignified, with glimmers of charm and humour, but makes no secret of the bitterness of a life spent largely in exile. I would describe his spoken English as perfect, and those able to appreciate it say that he speaks Romanian of a purity which is seldom heard today in his own country.
The Bulgarian royals have made a comeback in some ways more remarkable than that of Juan Carlos; King Simeon, who went into exile as a boy at the end of the war, is now his native country's prime minister. He has apparently made it plain that he does not aspire to reclaim the title of king; he is known as Simeon Saxe-Coburg, since he shares descent from that minor German princely family with the British (through Queen Victoria's husband Albert) and Belgian royal houses. He lived till middle age in Spain, pursuing a successful career in business, and only returned to Bulgaria in the 1990s. This was an extremely emotional event for many Bulgarians, and he was mobbed by the crowds. Like Michael of Romania, he was praised for the quality of his speech — his Bulgarian, they say, remains untainted either by Russian or by American.
We can conclude this survey with the Habsburgs — who, almost within living memory, ruled a vast multinational empire in the heart of Europe, as they had done since the Middle Ages. Otto von Habsburg, eldest son of Charles, the last Austro-Hungarian emperor (1916-18), is still alive aged 90, and he has generally enhanced the prestige of that dynasty, in contrast to some of his forebears when the empire existed. In both Austria and Hungary the Habsburgs command emotional loyalty, but the politics of the past 80 years have never made a restoration of the monarchy a practical possibility. In the early days after his forced departure Charles attempted more than once to regain power, but the results were humiliating failures and he died, supposedly heartbroken, aged only 35. More nobly, he strove during his short time as emperor to bring about a negotiated peace between the warring powers — another humiliating and much more tragic failure. For a long time none of his family were allowed even to visit Austria, and his widow Empress Zita never did so in her lifetime since she refused to give up her royal claims, but her funeral was held in Vienna in 1989 amid an outpouring of forbidden monarchical sentiment.
To the disappointment of strict loyalists, Otto adopted (Federal) German citizenship, which enabled him for many years to sit in the European Parliament. His special interest has always been the situation of Central and Eastern Europe; his notable idealism seems to be an inheritance from his father.
Alone of these defunct monarchies, that of the Habsburgs is charismatic and continues to exert a mystical hold on its former subjects. Of surviving monarchies only the British, unlike the "bicycling monarchies" of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, is a "big" one with similar in-built charisma and power over its subjects' unconscious lives — which it would retain if its political luck ran out. The German Hohenzollerns and the Russian Romanovs, who lost their crowns at the same time as the Habsburgs, had much shallower roots and are ignored, if not despised, in the their former realms.
Perhaps a final word should be spared for Leka of Albania, who went into exile at the age of three days when the Italians drove his father King Zog out of Albania on Good Friday, 1939. He has led a chequered career, and today resides in Tirana with some influence but no power.
christopher@hurstpub.co.uk
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