Kings Queens and Fallen Monarchies

Among the great hidden narratives of twentieth-century history are the movements in Europe which, between the two world wars, aimed to restore the royal and imperial houses forced out of power in 1918 (or, in Portugal’s case, eight years earlier). These efforts acquired media coverage and, often, strategic importance far greater than would be nowsupposed from the cursory, often dismissive, treatment which they have received from mosthistorians since. Campaigns to reinstate such dynasties as the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, theWittelsbachs, the Braganças, and even France’s House of Orléans, were taken seriously atthe highest governmental and journalistic levels in London and Paris, not to mention the HolySee. Upon the whole phenomenon, this book seeks to shed light. It discusses both thephenomenon’s ‘soft power’ manifestations (the designs of newspaper tycoon LordRothermere upon the Hungarian throne for his son, for instance) and the phenomenon’s‘hard power’ manifestations, among which probably the most dramatic were the successfulmonarchical campaigns in Albania and Greece. With a cast that includes not only the monarchist candidates themselves but Churchill,Lloyd George, Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, this is a drama that embraces a continent andforces thorough reappraisals of events which we thought we knew. No one can read itwithout acquiring a firmer grasp of political power's very nature and the sheer narrowness ofthe gap between victory and defeat.