The Funeral of Queen Anne of Romania

Romanians paid their respects this week to Queen Anne of Romania, who will be buried on Saturday in Curtea de Arges, the first capital city of the medieval principality of Wallachia.

Consort to Romania’s last king, Michael I, Anne died early this week, at the age of 92, in Switzerland.

Her body was brought in the country on Tuesday night, first to the Peles Castle in Sinaia and later to the Throne Room of the Royal Palace in Bucharest.

Severely ill himself, King Michael I was denied doctors’ permission to attend the funeral. Aged 94, the King visited his wife every day at the Swiss clinic where she was hospitalized before she died on August 1.

Born in Paris in 1923, Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma met King Michael I in London, in 1947. Later the same year, on December 30, at a time when Romania was under Soviet occupation and run by a communist puppet government, the Sovereign was forced into exile.

From the USA, Britain and Switzerland, he endorsed the activity of the Romanian National Committee, presented as a government in exile, although Western democracies never recognised it as such.

King Michael was only permitted to return to Romania after the anti-communist Revolution of 1989, when he also regained his Romanian citizenship, withdrawn by communists, and part of his holdings.

As a special ambassador, he lobbied for Romania’s NATO accession in 2004 and EU accession in 2007.