Carol II of Romania

Biography

Carol was born in 1893, the eldest son of the future King Ferdinand I, and became crown prince in 1914 on the death of his great-uncle Carol I, taking a seat in the Senate that November. In 1918 he left his army post without leave to marry Zizi Lambrino in Odesa, a match annulled the following year. In 1921 he married Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, and their son Michael was born later that year.

His open affair with Magda Lupescu led him to renounce his right to the throne in December 1925; he was struck from the royal house and went to live with Lupescu in Paris. Michael became king as a child on Ferdinand's death in 1927, and Helen divorced Carol in 1928. Amid political crisis and a weak regency, Carol returned in June 1930 in a coup backed by Iuliu Maniu, displaced his son and was recognised by parliament as king.

As king he set the parties against one another, governed through a corrupt camarilla, and built a personality cult. After the inconclusive December 1937 election he suspended the 1923 constitution in February 1938, had a new one approved in a referendum, banned the parties and in December formed the National Renaissance Front as the sole legal party. His regime moved against the fascist Iron Guard: on the night of 30 November 1938 he had its leader Corneliu Codreanu and thirteen others killed in custody.

After trying to stay neutral he swung toward Germany in 1940, but that summer Romania lost Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, Northern Transylvania to Hungary and Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. Discredited, he was forced by General Ion Antonescu to abdicate in favour of Michael on 6 September 1940 and left the country. He married Lupescu in Brazil in 1947 and died in exile at Estoril, Portugal, in 1953.