CROWN PRINCE OF A LOST COUNTRY  

Yugoslavia's Prince Alexander has a thankless job  

By Linda Frum  
National Post (Canada)  

On London's posh Park Lane, in the office of Alexander Karadjordjevic, there is a gilt-framed, two-page letter from King George VI congratulating Mr. Karadjordjevic's parents, the King and Queen of Yugoslavia, on the birth of their son. 

"Accept my best wishes for the welfare of the infant Prince and His illustrious Parents," it reads. 
This precious letter has been in Prince Alexander's possession for only three years. It was presented to him as a gift on his 50th birthday, after a friend found it while browsing through a second-hand bookstore in Baltimore. 

"How did it leave my father's archives?" asks the Crown Prince of Yugoslavia with a shrug. How did it? "It was pinched. Stolen. Like so many of our things." Mr. Karadjordjevic, who speaks with a blended American-English accent, points to an oil portrait of his father, King Peter II, painted when his father was a boy of 11. This valued piece of family history was found frameless, folded into squares, in a Venice antique store, and was also returned to the Prince through happenstance and the generosity of a friend. Such is the legacy of the would-be-King of Yugoslavia. Alexander Karadjordjevic has never lived in Yugoslavia and, until recently, did not even speak Serbian. His father fled Belgrade in April, 1941, to escape the advancing German army. In 1945, on the eve of the birth of his only child, the King, then 23, appealed to the Churchill government to protect his child's Yugoslavian citizenship. Churchill acceded and, to this day, if you visit the room where Mr. Karadjordjevic was born, Suite 212 in London's Claridge's Hotel, you are on Yugoslavian soil, or at least, broadloom. 

Alexander Karadjordjevic was destined for a strange life. Heir to a kingdom destroyed by communists, sovereign of a country that no longer exists, he is an English citizen and businessman who created his own wealth while fulfilling the role of moral leader to a people in distress. His boyhood was marked by his father's sadness and his own. 

"We only stayed in London for a year after my birth. There were many travels back and forth between Europe and the United States. It was a sad period for my father, who had lost his country. I was shifted around from one continent to the other. It was not a particularly nice life for a young boy." 
Asked about his professional work, Mr. Karadjordjevic says he is "a consultant on the board of several financial groups," and he is clearly rich. But as much as two-thirds of his business day is dedicated to a daily stream of visitors, letters, phone calls, and e-mails received from fellow Serbs, urging him to take an active role in the democratization of the former Yugoslavia. 

To many Serbs, Prince Alexander represents the hope of democracy and justice. The Karadjordjevic Dynasty was founded in 1804, when "Black George," a wealthy Serbian clan chief, successfully rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, which had previously controlled the Balkans. They were considered benign and moderate rulers. But when his father died "of a broken heart" in 1970 at the age of 47, Prince Alexander chose not to take on the title of King. "To be a countryless King would have been unrealistic," he says. 

The Prince is not engaged in a campaign to return to power. One senses he is quite content where he is. He and his wife socialize with the wide band of European royalty who are "cousins and friends." His three sons attend top English public schools. As his hobbies he lists skiing, sailing, and scuba-diving. However, were he called upon, he says, he would fulfill the obligations of his birth and serve as King to the Serbian and Montenegrin peoples. 

"I don't have any aspirations of fulfilling a dream," he says. "I just wish I could do something for the people. There is 70% unemployment. There's a brain drain in the region of 300,000 individuals who have left for Canada, the United States, and Australia since the civil war. It's a tragedy. You are seeing a country die. And one feels a responsibility, having inherited a tradition. But when I left school and the British army, I had to work. And I still do. My position has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. I have to receive people, be a representative of all those who are hurting. My wife does a valiant job on charity. It's a different kind of life: Keeping the lights going, helping those in need, and being a beacon of democracy." 

He is lobbied "every day. And I strongly respect such strong emotions. However, I am in a very difficult position. I don't have an army which is loyal for instilling law and order. The regime has destroyed the media, infiltrated the opposition parties. Mafias rule the country. We have all sorts of militias and every sordid thing. It is not easy, I can assure you. It is the most appalling thing when you are faced with such monsters who have destroyed a country, and created so many refugees and deaths." 

The Prince made his first visit to the former Yugoslavia in 1991, when he was 46 years old. He was criticized for his poor grasp of the language, and has been studying Serbian ever since. "That was the first time I ever set foot in the country. It was an emotional moment. A shock, if you think about it. I went with my wife and children and we were very well received. The tragedy of the civil war had started. I went there to talk about economic reform and human rights." 

Although his mere presence in Belgrade was an act of agitation against the Milosevic regime, Prince Alexander says he felt no sense of physical danger. "I felt extremely secure. I can't speak for the regime, but I would hope they would never do something crazy regarding myself or my family. I don't think they would dare, because feelings are very strong for the family." 

Little remains of his family's once-considerable holdings. "The property, of course, was confiscated by Tito," explains Mr. Karadjordjevic. "There was a decree signed by his deputy in 1947, when I was two, which abolished my rights to citizenship and property. Now the point was that these were private properties. The family had been landowners and farmers. We grew as the nation grew and we were proud of what we owned. Tito initially refused to live in the White Palace, which was one of our residences, but he moved there eventually and lived there until he died." 

That Tito lived in the residence that should be his, "is an insult. It hurts." 

For now, the Prince's life resembles that of any well-born and monied European. But as much as his wife, Princess Katherine of Greece, and his sons from his first marriage to Princess Maria of Brazil, might wish to lead a life of extravagance and personal indulgence, fate has dealt them a different hand. 

With a lot of prodding I force him to admit: "Sure, there are some mornings when I wake up and say: 'Hey, screw this.' But we have a great duty. And it would give one the greatest of pleasure to see the fruits of what one has been advocating. It would give my wife and I the greatest pleasure to see democracy in Yugoslavia. It makes us sick that we don't." 

But his lack of optimism is best measured by the modesty of his expectations for the royal role of his sons. "My expectation is that they be normal children," he says. "That they have a normal education and friendships. We have not instilled in them that they are special. It's never even crossed their minds. If you met them, you would find normal students, getting on with their lives, trying to do well on exams." Because even if these sons of royalty ever do return to their grandfather's kingdom: "They will have to survive in jobs just like everybody else."