THE ROYAL HOUSE OF RUMANIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 29 January 1915, Page 6

THE ROYAL HOUSE OF RUMANIA.

THE LOVE STORY OF THE PRESENT KING, Rumania is the latest of the Powers • to make jeady to enter the lists of war- , tare. 'An interesting little story of the < !<:ie romance of the present King, and i'.> :-';!..sei|U.-nt marriage to a beautiful English Princess, is 'told in a recent J number of the Ladies' Field. The Dowager Queen of Rumania, the poetic "Carmen -Sylva," has always been intensely devoted to children —the little English girls .at the Moravian School of Xcuw ied, the town where the Queen was born, and near which stands her beautiful mountain retreat, the white chateau of Mon Repos, can testify to the interest she took in them and her great kindness to them on many occasions. Her cup of joy was full when a small daughter was born to her, and the Princess Marie was the joy of her parents' hearts, but, alas! not for long. Death thrust in his pale sickle, and ■"Carmen Sylva" was bowed to the earth in an agony of grief that was all too great for expression.

in 1888, as all chance of a direct .heir to the throne was deemed hopeless, the King of Rumania decided to adopt Prince Ferdinand of Hoheiwollern, his nephew, as heir, and he was proclaimed Heir-Presumptive on March 20, 188!). Tlie Queen of Rumania had a lady-in-waiting, a well-known poetess, steeped, like her mistress the Queen, in romance and sentiment to her linger-tips. The Crown Prince fell deeply in love ■with the beautiful girl, and his passion was warmly returned, much to the delight of the Queen, who dearly loved a love story. Unhappily for the lovers, .this state of things reached the ears of the King, who descended like Jove in a thunderbolt and scattered confusion in his train. The lady-in-wait-ing was returned to her narents. and tin" Prince sent on tour —the inevitable Royal remedy for an iir.rvdy heart.

In 1S!I3 the Crown Prince married the beautiful Princess Marie of Rdlnbr.rgli, one of the most radiantly lovely princesses in Europe, and has a family of sons and daughters, the latter almost as lovely as their mother, which is saying a good deal. A brilliant marriage for Princess Elizabeth has been rumored and contradicted more than once since she attained womanhood. Among the Royal diadems that the Queen of Rumania wears on great State occasions is a circlet of rubies and ' diamonds which originally belonged to ■Napoleon, and with which he crowned .the Empress Josephine, the one woman that he really loved. The Princess .Marie of Edinburgh was, curiously enough, the first English Princess to .marry a Roman Catholic since the days of Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles the First, wdio married the brother of Louis XIV. of France. The marriage was also an interesting one, because Prince Ferdinand is a descendant of the same Henrietta, and is a Stewart by birth as well as a Hohenzollern. The Rumanian Trinces and Princesses can lay claim to descent from many famous ancestors, from Charles the First .06 England and Henry IV. of France, from Queen Victoria and the Empress Marie Therese from the Tsars Nicholas the First and Peter the Creat and last, but not least, from the humble village innkeeper who was the father of Murat.