RUMANIA: Playboy into Statesman

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Her children figured largely in her scheme to gain more power. One daughter (Marie) she married to Yugoslavia; another (Elizabeth) to Greece. She hoped that a third (Ileana) would marry Bulgaria, but King Boris did not press his suit when it was gossiped about that Ileana was Prince Stirbey's, and not King Ferdinand's, daughter. Through her daughters Queen Marie hoped to exert powerful influence throughout the Balkans; through her eldest son she planned on ruling Rumania.

Wedding Bells. Only fault with this reasoning was that Son Carol refused to play. A year or so of training at Potsdam, a tutor in the person of Professor Nicholas Jorga, a dogged old National Democrat who was against virtually everything the Bratianus stood for—these put unexpected backbone into the young Prince. Mother Marie was too busy hatching plots to notice that Son Carol was developing a mind of his own. She had a first glimpse of Carol's stubbornness at the Court of the Tsar. She got a big dose of it when, in World War I, the young Prince, serving as a Colonel, left his regiment, journeyed to Odessa, Russia, and there, after marrying 22-year-old Zizi Lambrino, the dashing daughter of a Rumanian officer, renounced all his rights to the throne.

No one is more severe toward a rake than a reformed rake, and King Ferdinand punished his son with a 75-day confinement in his barracks. The marriage was promptly annulled, and Mlle Lambrino was pensioned off ($12,000 a year) and banished from the country. A few months later she gave birth to a boy, named him Mircea. Mother & son went to Paris, and later she got another big settlement. Carol was soon sent on a trip to Egypt, India and Japan, only to find on his return that his family had picked out for him a beautiful and royal bride-to-be —Helen, sister of George II, the present King of Greece. They were married in 1921, and seven months later Princess Helen gave birth to Mihai, who fortnight ago celebrated his 18th birthday, and who was last week given a new palace near his father's.

Enter "Bibi." In a marriage of convenience forced upon him by his family, Carol had not the slightest intention of remaining a faithful or even a discreet husband. He made no attempt to disguise his many extra-marital affairs, and few Rumanians, to whom mistresses are certainly not unusual,* would have given his peccadilloes a second thought had not His Royal Highness happened one night in the Cercul Militar to meet a voluptuous young woman named Magda Lupescu. Daughter of a small shopkeeper, divorced wife of an Army lieutenant, she also happened to be half-Jewish in a country stridently antiSemitic. Notwithstanding, Carol fell for "Bibi"—as he called the titian-haired Magda—and for 16 years, through thick & thin, on and off the throne, in exile or at home, he was to stick by her and she by him.

He ran away with her in 1925, and in the very hotel from which his father had once renounced his throne, he was said to have penned a similar letter. Mihai, Carol's son, was declared next in succession. Then King Ferdinand died, and little Mihai was put on the throne surrounded by a regency consisting of his uncle, Prince Nicholas, Patriarch Miron Cristea, Supreme Court President George Buzdugan.