Funeral Ceremonies for Queen Anne
In Bucharest, Sinaia and Curtea de Argest, funeral ceremonies for Queen Anne are held until Saturday.
Bogdan Matei, 09.08.2016, 13:26
Queen Anne of Romania returns to the country that she always loved, but that she only got to know in her old age. For five days, ceremonies will be held in all the key geographic landmarks of Romanian royalty. Queen Annes body will first be taken to Peles Castle, built in the 19th Century in Sinaia, in the Carpathians, by the founder of the Romanian dynasty, King Karl I, and then brought to Bucharest, in the Throne Room of the Royal Palace. The public will have access to the Palace on Thursday and Friday, and the burial is scheduled for Saturday, in Curtea de Arges, the first capital of the medieval principality of Wallachia.
Doctors did not allow King Michael to attend the funeral. He will stay at his residence in Switzerland, accompanied by close friends and two Orthodox nuns. “This decision was made with deep sorrow, reads a news release issued by the Royal House. Aged 94 and very ill himself, King Michael visited his wife every day at the Swiss clinic where she was hospitalized before dying on August 1.
Born in Paris in 1923, Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma met King Michael in London in 1947. Later the same year, on December 30, when Romania was under Soviet military occupation and led by a communist puppet government, the Sovereign was forced into exile. From the USA, Britain or Switzerland, he endorsed the activity of the Romanian National Committee, presented as a government in exile, although Western democracies never recognised it as such.
In Bucharest, the communist regime constantly fuelled an aggressive anti-monarchy propaganda, whose toxic effects are yet to fully recede. 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to return to Romania after the anti-communist Revolution of 1989, when he also regained his Romanian citizenship, withdrawn by communists, and part of his property. As a special ambassador, he lobbied for Romanias NATO accession in 2004 and EU accession in 2007.
At home, the Royal Family undertook constantly, after repatriation, various charity and art patronage projects, thanks to which Romanians were finally able to know their deposed sovereigns. In an interview to Radio Romania in 2008, Queen Anne said that while in exile she had heard a lot from her husband about his homeland, but that a one-month journey across the country, from Dobrogea, in the south-east to Banat in the south-west and Transylvania, in the centre, had exceeded her expectations. She said she had found impressive cities, villages and landscapes, and met outstanding people.
