Royalty in exile

Plot

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 Albania's Leka I, son of Zog, an adventurer, now an international arms merchant with close ties to Saudis and Thais; France's Henri Bourbon-Orleans, the count of Paris, regarded by French legitimists as Henri VI; Greece's Constantine II, a former Olympic gold medal winner and picture-book king; Portugal's 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 Russia's only road to freedom