Romania loses its last, exiled king
He lived life defined by upheaval in Europe and political intrigue
Romania’s former King Michael I, a onetime boy monarch who later engineered the ouster of pro-Nazi strongman Gen. Ion Antonescu during the Second World War, only to be forced at gunpoint to abdicate by a Communist-led postwar government, died Dec. 5 at his residence in Switzerland. He was 96.
Michael, a member of the House of Hohenzollern and a distant cousin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, was one of the last surviving links to Europe’s royal heads of state before and during the Second World War. He lived a life defined by political intrigue and buffeted by nearly every major upheaval on the continent in the past century.
Banished by the communists in early 1948, he spent decades in exile before returning to his homeland amid the collapse of the Soviet bloc. He eventually carved out a role as an unofficial diplomat, helping Romania join NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007.
At age 5, in 1927, he became Europe’s youngest king after the ouster of his father, Carol II, who had been given an ultimatum to pick his mistress or the throne. Known for his errant ways, Carol chose the former and went into exile. A council of advisers was set up as a proxy leadership for the young king, but it fell into bickering and rivalries, and Carol returned in 1930 to replace King Michael as monarch.
As Michael finished his education, Carol abolished the constitution and paved the way for his overthrow in 1940 by a military government led by the fascist Antonescu and his “Iron Guard” regime. Suddenly reinstalled at 18 as a figurehead, King Michael said Antonescu treated him “like a child” and excluded him from strategic decisions.
Although King Michael was said to have harboured loyalties to the West, his country formalized ties with Berlin. The Allies responded with attacks including a daring, low-level 1943 mission by U.S. bombers against key oil facilities in Ploesti that were feeding the German war machine.
In 1944, as Soviets advanced on Romania, Michael built a clandestine network of pro-Allied plotters — including Sovietlinked factions — to lead a revolt that ousted Antonescu.
Under Michael’s command, Romania signed an armistice with the Allies, speeding the Red Army’s push through the Balkans. But after the war, with thousands of Russian troops stationed in Romania, communists gained a firm grip on power despite opposition from King Michael and his supporters.
He left the country in late 1947 to attend the wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in London. When he returned to Romania, a trap was set. On Dec. 30, 1947, King Michael was summoned to the capital by government leaders.
Acommunist leader — accounts vary on precisely who — pointed a gun at the monarch with a demand: Leave the throne or up to 1,000 detained students could be shot. Later that day, a proclamation was read abolishing the monarchy. Days later, Michael was forced to leave the country, and his relatives followed.
Later in 1948, he married Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, the independentminded daughter of Denmark’s princess and a distant cousin he met at the Elizabeth-Philip wedding.
They joined a collection of exiled monarchs whose bloodlines often intersected.
The fall of the Iron Curtain opened a new chapter for the couple.
On Christmas Day in1990 — a year after the toppling of Romania’s communist strongman Nicolae Ceausescu — Michael led an entourage back to the country on a 24-hour visa. Less than two years later, on Easter 1992, Romanian authorities gave full permission for his return. A speech from the window of his hotel room drew staggering crowds, which so alarmed Romania’s leaders that Michael was denied re-entry until 1997 after his citizenship was restored.
On his 90th birthday, in 2011, he addressed Romania’s Parliament in a speech that included some old-style noblesse oblige that seemed awkwardly out of step in a nation that was by then part of major Western military and political institutions.
“Eighty-four years since I became king, I can say without hesitation to the Romanian nation: After freedom and democracy, the most important things to be gained are identity and dignity,” Michael told the lawmakers. “Here a major responsibility rests upon the Romanian elite.”