| You are in: World: Europe | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 18 June, 2001, 03:28 GMT 04:28 UK East European royalty in exile ![]() Yugoslavia's Prince Alexander: Banned by Tito Bulgaria's former king Simeon II is set to become the first monarch to return to power in East Europe since the collapse of communism, after his election victory on Sunday. Other former monarchs have returned to their homelands, but none has regained political power. Here is what happened to some of them.
Born in June 1937, he took the throne at the age of six, but was forced into exile when communists took power in 1946. He first returned to his homeland in 1996 after half a century in exile, mostly in Spain. His family's property was returned in 1998. He formed a political coalition in April this year to contest legislative elections. The only child of the country's last king, Zog I, has lived in South Africa since 1979, but has never given up hoping for the monarchy to be restored in his homeland. Born in April 1939, he lived in Albania for only three years, before his family fled to Greece, then France and Britain. He returned to Tirana in 1997 after half a century in exile, but left after only a few days. He was jailed in absentia for three years for organising an illegal demonstration during his visit.
He reigned for two periods, as a child from 1927-1930 and from 1940, when he was 19 years old, until 1947. He was forced to abdicate a few hours before a communist republic was declared in December 1947. Michael went into exile in London the following year and was stripped of his Romanian citizenship, which he only regained in 1997. Now living in Switzerland, he made a three-week visit to Romania in June this year, marked by his reconciliation with ex-communist President Ion Iliescu. Born in 1945 in exile in London, he was banned by the regime of Josip Tito in November that year. He lived in the United States in the 1970s, but returned to London after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In October 2000, after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, he was greeted at Belgrade airport by monarchist supporters, but said he simply wanted to help develop democracy in his homeland. Born in July 1944 in France to a French mother, he was the heir to a dynasty which had ruled Montenegro for three centuries until the end of World War I. He lives and works as an architect in Paris and has no plans to return as a monarch, but supports pro-independence movements in his homeland, Serbia's partner in the Yugoslav republic. |
See also: Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Europe stories now: Links to more Europe stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Links to more Europe stories |
| ^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII|News Sources|Privacy | ||