Your Highnesses, our illustriuos  Crown,

In the name of the Crown Council and all the present guests I have the great honor to deliver this toast to your health at your house, celebrating your day of birth today. 

The providence made that you were born in exile the same year when your nation became enslaved behind the iron curtain, and it decided that you return to your country when  the curtain fell. That is how the Crown became what it always has been – the symbol of continuity, unity and freedom. 

All birthday presents are smaller than the one which Heaven gave to you and  your people by your very birth. And what Heaven gave to you could not be taken away by anybody on Earth, not that they did not try. Where God had suffered the most, his anointed one could not have been spared. Although you did not leave, your coming was a return, and your presence in the country is a kind of first hand lesson. Until yesterday it was unthinkable for you to be at your home, and today it is unthinkable for you not to be at it. 

For two hundred years no one from your family on both sides has been nothing but the King. No other Serb is like that. And there is no Serb whose home was not sworn to your Home and that is why  we are no less obligated to you than our ancestors were to your ancestors and predecessors. You are not only the living bond to all the generations, but also the shortest way from each of us to another. 

Honor and glory to republics, but there is hardly a better example than Serbia how difficult it is to be a republic to the one that has never been a  republic. Communism and republic came to Serbia at the same time but they did not depart at the same time.  If it had left along with the one who had brought it  would have been the best proof that Serbia had finished with communism. But Yugoslav republic disappeared the same way it was established, in blood, anarchy and shame but it did not give up the idea to bestow its bloody heritage to Serbia. That is why there is no more important lustration than removing unlawfulness from the foundations of Serbian state, and from the face of Serbian nation. If only monarchists were pro that lustration, that would mean that everybody else agreed to violence and unlawfulness. Fortunately, it is not so, and the question of monarchy became the question of democracy, and its inseparable part. As old as the Church and the state, and older than political parties, the Crown makes no difference between its supporters and opponents in their rights.

There is no European kingdom that deserves to bear that name more than Serbia. And its place today can only be the one that the Crown has in the constitution of any European kingdom.  

It is difficult to restore democratic tradition and institutions and forget constitutional Monarchy. The Republic of Serbia has no democratic tradition and institutions. And it is difficult to understand that the problem with Serbia is that it has the Crown.  But it is even more difficult to watch it with its head bare amongst all the other European nations. Like a beggar who has the Crown.

If you had seen the world  for the first time in your country in 1945, the question of our dynasty and constitutional monarchy would have been solved the way the Bolsheviks had solved it once and for all in Russia.

When it is not known where the center is than nobody knows its own place. And where nobody knows his place, false kings have more supporters than the real one. That is why sometimes it seems it is the most important reason for such resistance to the God’ s truth and justice. 

They say today’s children look more like their time than their parents. It might be said not only for the children, but for today’s constitutional monarchies as well. That might be the reason why the young understand best and most easily accept its restoration. Today’s position of the Crown in the European constitutional monarchies is perhaps closer to their mythical and metaphysical essence. The King does not rule, but takes away from the ones who rule what does not belong to them. Same as in the Church, the Heaven and Earth go together with the Crown, and the Crown has preserved its heavenly side. It is the symbol of authenticity and the values of the people and the state, and that perhaps is what we miss the most today.

In the last half of the century for the first time in the history of Serbian language, speeches have not been ended by the exclamation “Long live the King!”. On the contrary, that exclamation used to be treated as a crime. But there, this word has returned to its language and its people, and where else is it more appropriate for it to be heard than at the Royal Palace? And when else should it be heard if not for a happy birthday of HRH Crown Prince Aleksandar.

Long live the King!

Many happy returns!

Matija Beckovic, 17 July 2002.

The toast for HRH Crown Prince Aleksandar’ s birthday