Books: Rambling Rex

MONARCHS-IN-WAITING by WALTER J.P. CURLEY JR. 238 pages, Dodd, Mead. $7.95.

They are descended from Robert the Pious and Gontran the Rich, from Suleiman the Magnificent and Cathal Crovedearg of the Wine-Red Hand. They belong, variously, to the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Moslem and Orthodox-both Greek and Russian-churches. They are, almost without exception, reasonable, personable -and, it goes without saying, well-bred. They consider themselves the legitimate claimants to the thrones of 14 European countries where royalty has gone out of business.

The putative monarchs include a Jesuit teacher-priest, a publisher, a salesman for Lockheed Aircraft and the nephew of Terence O'Neill, the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Most are businessmen, bankers or gentlemen farmers, living, if not in castles in Spain, on the palpable hope of restoration as well as on decent incomes. Not one appears to be a dimwit, a dinosaur or a debauchee or even a gossip-column item. Perhaps the one who conies closest to being a gay blade is Prince Louis-Ferdinand, 66, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II and claimant to the empire of Germany and the kingdom of Prussia. The prince once had a torrid affair with Lili Damita, an ex-wife of Errol Flynn.

Not untypical of the residual royals is the self-styled "Doktor Habsburg," recognized by a handful of monarchist followers as Emperor Otto I of Austria and King Otto II of Hungary. Scion of one of the great European dynasties -along with the Bourbons, the Windsors and Hohenzollerns-Otto von Habsburg was exiled in 1919 with his then reigning father, Emperor Charles 1 of Austria (King Charles IV of Hungary). Before the Anschluss in 1938, Hitler offered to restore Otto to his throne if he would support Nazi ideology. He refused, and during World War II, when he lived in the U.S., he advised U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt on Central European affairs. Now a spry 66, he lives in a slightly seedy villa outside Munich, has written twelve books on political science, lectures indefatigably in the cause of European unification, and manages to turn out a savvy newspaper column that is published from Portugal to Peru.

The Reign in Spain. Author Walter Curley is an investment banker who once served John Lindsay as New York City's chief of protocol. He points out in his genealogical mosaic that virtually all the monarchs-in-waiting are interrelated, and should at least have plenty to talk about. One can imagine a gold-plated dinner party for all the royals and their wives. But gad, sir, how to seat them? If the places were dispensed alphabetically, Bachelor King Leka I, 35, would have the honored position at either end of the table, since he is claimant to the throne of Albania and belongs to the house of Zogou. However, the Albanian monarchy was only established in 1928, and among dynasts antiquity is all.

By the author's reckoning, highest above the salt would have to be Henri d'Orleans, Count of Paris, an amateur pilot and accomplished horseman, whose royal line remained unbroken for 1,200 years. Here, though, a slight problem arises, since the 65-year-old count has a formidable rival in the person of Louis Jerome Victor Emmanuel Leopold Marie, Prince Napoleon Bonaparte, 58, who re-established his clan's regal credentials as a doughty officer in the French Resistance during World War II.