The Pretenders

Ageing Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, 75, climbed out of his safety cellar and into his kilts. The last of the royal Stuarts and pretenders to the English throne was a German subject who had remained behind when the Germans evacuated Florence. He was happy to find himself among the Allies. Prince Rupprecht had never pressed his claims to the English throne, but last week he was studying Sumner Welles' plan to divide Germany into three states, was reported to be willing to accept the crown of one of them. His father, Ludwig III, was deposed as King of Bavaria in 1918.

Other pretenders and near pretenders of all shapes & sizes were darning and mending their hopes all over Europe and the U.S. last week.

In a 40-room mansion outside London, Albania's King Zog and his half-American Queen Geraldine held modest court but kept a sensitive ear cocked Balkanwards. Zog was dead set on going home. Said he: "Whether I'm King or not, Albania is my fatherland."

On the Spanish frontier waited Henri Bourbon, Comte de Paris, who would like to be Henri VI of France. Three months ago the dapper, 36-year-old Count moved his household from Madrid to Pamplona, near the French frontier, just in case the call should come.

Back to Manhattan dashed Archduke Otto of Habsburg. Week before he had dashed to the Quebec Conference, at nobody's invitation. The Archduke was worried: the Red Army might reach Vienna before he did. What then would become of his plan for a Danubian federation?

One pretender had some solid grounds for hope--Don Juan of Bourbon, 31, only non-hemophilic son of Spain's late ex-King Alfonso XIII. From his Swiss villa on Lake Geneva, where he will stay until the skiing season opens, the Infante made it known that he was against "totalitarian policies," was "calmly and confidently" waiting for a call to Madrid. He had reason. Britain might right royally welcome a monarch in that bulwark of Empire, Spain.

No pretender, but a newly-minted Regent of Belgium was Prince Charles, Count of Flanders, younger brother of captive King Leopold. For three months before the liberation, the Gestapo hunted high & low for Prince Charles. They could have found him, fighting with the Belgian Maquis in the High Ardennes. When he turned up at the Royal Palace in Brussels last week, the Belgian parliament, meeting for the first time since 1940 on Belgian soil, temporarily gave him a royal job. Regent Charles's first act was to announce that he was merely keeping the throne warm for his brother. Then he accepted the wholesale resignation of Premier Hubert Pierlot's cabinet-in-exile, started looking for a new government.

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