In Omaha, Nebraska, in the financial-aid department of Metropolitan Community College, Nick Behrens answered his office telephone. The caller introduced herself: it was Princess Margareta of Romania. Behrens was dumbfounded, but, as he recalled not long ago, the princess “was so very gracious, and I remember her saying that the needs there were so immense because of how CeauÅ?escu left the country: the illnesses, the orphanages, the AIDS, the lack of infrastructure, no tourism, no way for people to make money.”
The year was 1990. The Communist governments of Eastern Europe were falling, and Behrens, like many other members of the International Monarchist League—a private organization based in the United Kingdom, with members in many countries whose aim is, “quite simply, to support the principle of monarchy”—was full of hope. After the Iron Curtain fell, monarchists believed, a string of thrones across the Balkans might be restored.
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