King Michael I At the Romanian Parliament

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King Michael I At the Romanian Parliament

Romania on Tuesday has celebrated the anniversary of the King of Romania Michael I, who was forced by the Communist regime to abdicate the throne on December 30, 1947, after which a People’s Republic was established in this East European country. King Michael turned 90, and is the last head of state that was in office during the WWII to still live, a fact that the Romanian media has highlighted throughout the day.
On this momentous occasion, the King addressed the Parliament of Romania, in a gesture he had not been doing, in his own words, since 1945, in the wake of the WWII, when the country was occupied by the Soviet troops.
In his address before the republican parliament, the monarch spoke about values that the monarchy underlies and upholds, such as patriotism, faith in God and morality, urged the political parties to place the nation above interests of individuals, to act as if the country was not “inherited from the forefathers” but rather “lent from the children.”
He spoke of the necessity of the Romanians to abide by a set of Christian principles that are paramount in life, about the need for a moral reformation so that stability and prosperity be based on solid grounds.
In spite of his age, the King’s posture was commendable and the speech was galvanizing for the entire audience. At the end, those present on the floor of the parliament gave him the longest and most heartfelt round of applauses those walls in the second-largest building on the face of the earth had ever heard.
The King’s anniversary was celebrated by many members of the royal houses in Europe and Asia. Queen Sophie of Spain, King Carl Gustav of Sweden and Queen Silvia of Sweden, Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, King Simeon of Bulgaria, representatives from the royal houses of Jordan, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Serbia, diplomats and Romanian politicians, all came to Bucharest to congratulate the 90-year-old King.
On Tuesday evening the King invited his friends, and companions to attend a concert in his honor at the Romanian Opera House in Bucharest, and the moment will be concluded with an official dinner at the CEC Palace in Bucharest.
The event at the Opera House can be watched on huge screens placed in a square in front of the opera by an estimated number of 5,000 people.
The event sparked enormous interest amid the Romanians, a 20-million population out of which only some 10 percent are credited with pro-monarchy feelings.
The presence of the King in the public life of the country, and also his mentioning during some television debates, where he had been judged for his role in the WWII as a “collaborator of the Soviet” sparked both the indignation of Moscow, which slammed the official who had said those words as a Nazi enthusiast, and the reaction of the intellectuals in Romania, who came to his defense by explaining the context of the WWII.
Many Romanian politicians and public figures see the anniversary on Tuesday as a sign of normality for a country which faces major challenges, the economic and moral ones being the hardest.

King's Residence: Peles Castle in Sinaia

Romania emerged from the communist era at the end of the most brutal revolution in the entire eastern Europe, which saw the last communist dictator executed for his decision to crackdown on the people of his country, as they were demanding their rights.
And even though Nicolae Ceausescu was executed after a trial in which he was accused by his own defense after a pattern he and his comrades had invented some decades ago, Romanians still feel ashamed that his live was taken in the holy day of Christmas, even though they have been spared the indignity of having the Ceausescu couple displayed for the public eyes until their corpses began to rot, as it happened to Muammar al-Qaddafi, a friend of Ceausescu’s, a few days ago.
Soon after the fall of the communism Romania entered an era of struggles and uncertainties, while the other former Communist regimes were following the path toward an European integration.
Romania followed a very different path, as the political corruption amounted to unbelievable rates and the life of the majority became unbearable. In the early 1990s, the King made an attempt to come back to his homeland from his exile in Versoix, Switzerland, but the regime in power back then did not allow him to get down from the plane that had brought him home.
A few year after, as the things became a little brighter for the Romanians, the King was allowed to go to Romania, and was even involved by the new authorities in the process of integration of the country to the continental structures NATO and the European Union.
In 2004, Romania became a valuable part of the NATO alliance and offered the United States and the other countries a valuable help in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in Kosovo, with its military troops praised by the Western allies as some of the finest NATO can have, and in 2007 the country became a member of the European Union, where its poor economic performance kept it at the margin of the decision making process, although the country is the seventh out of 27 in as much as the territory and the population count.
The effort to have the country included among the European countries was sustained also by the Royal House of Romania, whose representatives have systematically lobbyed the Western democracies which have as form of government constitutional monarchies.
The King of Romania lives at the Peles Castle, a residence of the royal family for more than a century, and since their return to the country, the royal house took the name of “of Romania,” after being for more than a century a branch of the German imperial house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

Crown Princess Margareta

Romania established the monarchy in 1966, when the parliament recognized Prince Carol I Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as the first ruler of Romania. In 1877, Romania became an independent country, after a war with the Ottoman Empire, and in 1881 it became a Kingdom, with King Carol I as the first modern constitutional King.
In 1918-1919, after the WWI, Romania became The Greater Romania by including within its boundaries all territories where Romanian population lived. The first King of Greater Romania was Ferdinand I, nephew to King Carol.
As the world was getting ready for WWII, the Crown Prince of Romania Carol II entered a skirmish with the royal family over marrying a Romanian princess, when the Romanian Constitution, drafted in 1923, demanded that the Crown Princess be of royal blood from an European ruling house.
After King Ferdinand died, Carol II was allowed to take the crown after annulling the marriage and even though he was an educated man, he had a non-democratic vision of ruling the country.
Consequently, he dissolved all political parties and form only one and attempted to rule in the name of his house over a country that was being engulfed in the war.
As the situation got more complicated, King Carol II abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Michael I, who had been born on October 25, 1921, and was only 19 years old when he became King again (after being made King during the royal skirmish of his father).
Michael I was the King who on August 23, 1944 decided that Romania would stop supporting the Nazi power and become an ally of the European and American powers that were fighting the Nazi.
The gesture the King made that day left the Germans without an ally on the front against the Soviet and cut off from the supply they were offering the front in the West, especially oil.

King Michael Saluting his Nation

Some historians agree that by that the King of Romania made it possible for the war to become shorter by six months, and even possibly spared Germany of the first nuclear bombs some say were about to be tested on them in stead of the Japanese.
In 1947, after the Soviet invaded the country in retaliation for the Romanian invasion a few years ago, when they were fighting on the side of the Germans, Romanian King was forced to renounce the throne by a blackmail the Communists organized in the country they were taking under their control.
They threatened the King with a bloodbath in the streets of Bucharest unless he signed. The King had to sign and go into exile. In 1948, he married Queen Anna of Bourbon-Parma. They have five daughters, one of which, Princess Margareta, was appointed as the successor to the throne and the next head of the royal house.
Since he went into exile, the King lived in Switzerland and worked as a pilot most of his live, enduring the same life conditions of the commoners.
The communist regime installed the republic, which, according to some law experts, has no legal grounds in Romania since it had been brought by an non-democratic regime and without a referendum that would legitimize it.

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