Monday, October 22, 2001

The Inquirer

( Philadelphia , PA )

For some deposed monarchs, homeland calls

By Andrea Gerlin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

SOFIA , Bulgaria - As Mohammad Zahir Shah, ex-king of Afghanistan , weighs his chances of returning home, he might consider the comebacks that several other deposed monarchs elsewhere are enjoying.

Across the Adriatic Sea from the Rome villa where Zahir Shah has spent the last 28 years, two Eastern European royals who were ousted decades ago have been welcomed back to their homelands after lifetimes elsewhere.

"It sounds a bit of a romantic myth," Don Foreman of the International Monarchist League said. "But in the hearts of many people, they never went away."

They say their returns have been impelled more by a desire to encourage stability and speed progress than to turn back the clock. In nations still emerging from upheaval that began with the rise of fascism and only ended with the fall of communist dictatorships, the exiled monarchs roles' have been redefined.

King Simeon II went back to Bulgaria , and, within months, became its prime minister. Crown Prince Ale xander is serving as a roving goodwill ambassador for Yugoslavia . Both are living in ancestral palaces that had been confiscated in their absences. A third - Prince Michael of Romania , who spent more time in power than the other two - has sought no political role, only his property and the right to live peacefully in his homeland.

For the most part, they have been embraced warmly, even emotionally - none more so than Simeon , who was thrust to power in June by an electorate disillusioned by a string of corrupt leaders.

Born Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, one of many descendants of Britain's Queen Victoria, he took the throne as a child after his father, Boris III, died prematurely and mysteriously after a visit to Hitler in 1943.

Simeon 's reign was brief: His uncle and other regents who ruled on his behalf were executed by the Communists in 1945, and, a year later, the 9-year-old king and his mother, Queen Ioanna , fled to Egypt . They later settled in Spain , where Simeon grew up to become a businessman.

In April , at 64, he left Madrid and returned to Bulgaria , where his upstart political party, the Simeon II National Movement, was grudgingly granted a place on the June ballot by election commissioners. Running on a platform of radical reform, the party won 43 percent of the vote, about half of Parliament's 240 seats - and the prime minister's job for its leader.

"For the first time in history, a czar has come back to his country through republican elections," said Plamen Kenarov , a medical professor and a member of Simeon 's party, who won a parliamentary seat in June . "I would have never tried to enter politics if Simeon hadn't been there."

Simeon 's appeal stemmed from his status as an outsider with strong links to the country, his experience as chairman of the Spanish unit of a French electronics firm, and his popular touch as a campaigner. He speaks Bulgarian, and his wife, Princess Margarita, has been spotted sweeping the front porch at his family's old palace on the outskirts of Sofia .

Still, some of his constituents suspect that Simeon 's real hope is to restore a constitutional monarchy and resume the crown. The communists abolished the monarchy without a referendum, but Simeon never abdicated. Bulgarians remain divided about the subject, and their new leader has so far refused to discuss it.

Crown Prince Ale xander of Serbia's Karadjordjevic dynasty also has come home - to a country in which he never lived - and he, too, studiously dodges the question of whether he wants someday to be king. In a recent interview in his office in London , he royally referred to himself in the third person - but what he said was that he only wanted to attract investment and create jobs in a land of low salaries and double-digit unemployment.

These days, Ale xander is busy talking up his struggling country to outside investors and lobbying hard for improvements in areas such as telecommunications, airline connections and train service. A former banker and insurance executive who grew up in Britain and the United States , he promotes himself as a bridge between Yugoslavia and the Western countries that bombed it two years ago.

"The main issue now is jobs," he said. "There I really want to help, and there are several plans on the books to visit various cities across the world to show that we are an investment center, a land of opportunity within Europe and at the crossroads of southeastern Europe ."

Ale xander 's road home has been harder than Simeon 's. His grandfather, Ale xander I, was assassinated during a state visit to France in 1934, and his father's uncle, Prince Pavle , became prince regent for the new king, 11-year-old Peter .

Prince Pavle 's effort to appease the Nazis in 1941 failed, and, after a coup d'etat ousted him, the Germans bombed Belgrade , and the entire royal family was driven out, eventually settling in London .

There Ale xander was born in 1945 in a suite in Claridge's Hotel that King George VI temporarily declared Yugoslav soil for the purpose of his birth.

Ale xander was educated in New York , then at military academies in Indiana and Scotland , and he served in a British army regiment. He got on with his life, taking out a mortgage and paying his phone bill like everyone else.

"It never crossed my mind before 1989 that a day like now would come," he said. "I never thought about it. I was minding my own business."

The political landscape changed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, though Slobodan Milosevic clung to his dictatorship in Yugoslavia for a long, disastrous decade. When he finally was ousted last year, an opportunity arose in Yugoslavia .

In March, Ale xander was granted Yugoslav citizenship during a ceremony in the Claridge's suite where he was born. This summer, President Vojislav Kostunica ordered two family palaces in Belgrade returned to Ale xander , and now he is busy supervising the repair of roofs, plumbing, and cracked swimming pool tile.

"Over the last 10 to 12 years, zero maintenance took place," Ale xander , 56, said. "We'll have to be careful about expenses, but that should be done now."

He is still working on his Serbian, and hopes that his three college-age sons, Peter , Philip and Ale xander , will spend more time in Belgrade now that the family has relocated there.

And then, across the border in Romania , there is 80-year-old King Michael , who took the throne as a child in 1927 after his father, Prince Carol , renounced his right of succession. He stepped down when Carol changed his mind and returned in 1930, only to abdicate in 1940.

Michael was king through World War II, and, in 1944, at the age of 22, ousted Romania 's military dictatorship and cast his lot with the Allies. By the end of 1947, the royal family had been forced into exile by a communist regime.

Michael failed in his initial attempt to return after the 1989 overthrow of Nicolai Ceausescu . But he since has reestablished himself, and has lived in Romania since 1996. Agreeing to respect the republican constitution, he was granted a state salary and a residence.

What lessons might 86-year-old King Mohammad Zahir Shah draw from the returns of Simeon , Ale xander and Michael ? Since he was deposed by a cousin in 1973, he has lived as they did, watching from a distance as turmoil descended over his homeland.

Now he is the sentimental choice to help reunite the country, and is being courted by everyone eager to have a hand in whatever Afghan government might replace the imperiled Taliban regime. Even old kings have their uses, and - sometimes - can go home again.