Splendor in exile: The ex-majesties of Europe

Splendor in exile: The ex-majesties of Europe by Fenyvesi, Charles. hardcover edition. ISBN: 0000915220555.

Monarchy, the Divine Right of Kings, was once a cherished institution in Europe. Now, measured against the fickle moods of democracy and immobility of dictatorship, it is a fairytale diversion, the nostalgia option, the purple possibility. Here, in Splendor in Exile, are the ex-majesties of Europe, kings and princes who, in a century wracked by war and totalitarian rule, live a life of kingship without a court. What scenarios for restoration do they dream about? The constant source of gossip columns and picture magazines, this royal elite rarely grant writers an audience. Now, for the first time, a writer has interviewed all the claimants to European thrones. These vanquished majesties are now businessman, hunters, sailors, retirees, and jet-setters-all bask in the glorious romance of what might have been. Tempering irony with compassion, Charles Fenyvesi offers profiles of such monarchs as: Albanias Leka I, son of Zog, an adventurer, now an international arms merchant with close ties to Saudis and Thais; Frances Henri Bourbon-Orleans, the count of Paris, regarded by French legitimists as Henri VI; Greeces Constantine II, a former Olympic gold medal winner and picture-book king; Portugals Dom Duarte Juao, a royal eccentric who assists refugees and is renovating a seventeenth century mansion; and Wladimir Romanoff, a full-time pretender as headstrong as Peter the Great, who issues political manifestos arguing that monarchy is Russias only road to freedom