Talk:Carol II of Romania

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Why should a British knightly title be given as part of the name of a Romanian king? I would remove it, but figured I'd give a chance for an explanation first. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:32, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it should be there either. No other monarchs really use foreign honours after their names and I don't think they have it on their pages. I vote to remove it. Craigy (talk) 17:56, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Sources 2 Maria Martini 3 Iron Guard 4 Love-life 5 "Consort" 6 Carol's train out of Romania

[edit] Sources

This is largely without sources, on this quite controversial figure. He had his defenders, and he certainly had those who took him far more seriously, but the allusions to books are to fiction. Does someone have citation on this? I was thinking of working on this article, from a rather different angle; I don't want to toss out anything solid that is here, but it is hard to tell what is solid. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:24, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of repeating myself: this article rather shortchanges Carol. Admittedly, he was not ultimately a success, but no Eastern European leader of his period was: they were all ultimately crushed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He played his hand better than most. The current article doesn't cite anything, and seems to rely mainly on a general sense of his bad reputation. He's a rather important figure in the lead-up to World War II, yet the article is mainly about his love life and his years of exile after he had become an irrelevancy. - Jmabel | Talk 17:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maria Martini

What were the dates of Carol's liaison with Maria Martini? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:29, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Iron Guard

What is the basis for saying that Carol "supported [the Iron Guard] in the 1930s"? Doesn't jibe with what I know of him. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:24, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Love-life

But if we are going to write at length about his love-life, let's try to get it right. I believe the following are the significant figures; I'd like to get some citations on each. I don't have a ton on this; I've read A.L. Easterman's 1942 book, which is a qualified defense of Carol, and other than that it's mostly what I've run across one time or another:

• Maria Martini, some time around the start of WWI. Carol would be about 20, she was younger (still in school), I believe there was at least one son. Maria died young (1927?).
• Zizi Lambrino. They married in 1918, had one son. By pretty much all accounts a love match; he renounced his royal rights in favor of a morganatic marriage; his mother, who had previously been trying to keep him away from "fast women" so disapproved that she sharply reversed course and started thrusting them (including Maria, I believe) in his path, successfully breaking the marriage, which was dubiously annulled by a Romanian court.
• Mirella Marcovici also a key in the breakup with Zizi Lambrino. Actress. I don't know much else about her.
• Elena of Greece, a royal marriage. Initially also a love match: indeed, the date of Michael's birth relative to the marriage date attests rather more of a love match than is normal among royalty. Marriage opposed by Elena's mother Sophie, who detested Carol's mother Marie, and quite possibly detested Carol as well. The marriage deteriorated rapidly, probably for several reasons. Elena was very much a classist and an elitist, who wished to be surrounded only by others of the "best" birth; Carol liked to hang out with middle-rank officers, liked the kind of party where people drink and sing, definitely not Elena's thing. And then when he took up with Lupescu, that was, from Elena's point of view, pretty much unforgivable.
• Magda Lupescu: Carol's longtime mistress; married to an officer when they met; much later (post-monarchy), Carol's wife. He gave up the throne for her in '27, lied in '30 and said he'd leave her and take the throne, had her as (by most accounts) his closest confidante for the rest of his life; the general (though by no means uniform) verdict on that is that he chose poorly. Scandal around her may derive more from her Jewish background than her actual character. It's easy to find slanderous comparisons of her to a prostitute (these are often tinged with anti-Semitism); pretty difficult to find anything scandalous in her actual social behavior (she seems to have been rarely seen in public during his reign); pretty hard to work out what was her actual influence on his policies, though few doubt that she was very influential.

If there are others who figure prominently, I'm unaware of them. As far as I can tell, his reputation as a "playboy" dates almost entirely from before the age of about 30.

Again, this is a just sketch of how it looks to me, and I'm not by any means expert, just clueful. I'd be interested in whether anyone can fill in more of the story, and especially if we can start building this up with citations. I'll try to get hold of Easterman's book again some time, but I'd rather have something more solid: Easterman was writing in the midst of WWII and definitely had a few axes to grind (including being unhappy with his own UK gov't's failure to use Romania in the 1930s as a bastion against the Nazis, a role he clearly feels that Carol would have willingly played). - Jmabel | Talk 20:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Consort"

How was Zizi Lambrino a "consort"? During the time he was married to her, he had specifically abjured any claim to the throne. - Jmabel | Talk 23:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

• ok, then I removed it. Astorknlam 9:30, 29 July 2006

[edit] Carol's train out of Romania

What is the basis of doubt about Carol's train leaving Romania laden with royal treasure? A.L. Easterman, who was very sympathetic to Carol, says so. - Jmabel | Talk 04:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)