Displaced Person

Fortnight ago, when Rumania's Communist-eclipsed young (26) King Michael and his handsome mamma, Queen Helen, flew to London for Cousin Elizabeth's wedding, he was asked if he intended to return to Bucharest. Said he: "I have heard these reports...They are not true. I have my responsibility and I intend to meet it." He said he would fly back Nov. 23. Last week the deadline passed, and Michael stayed on in London.

During the nuptial week he had a thin time of it. The newspapers paid little attention to him. Some who met him at parties and receptions described him as a disagreeable young man utterly uninterested in everything and everybody. After the wedding breakfast, while other guests, led by George VI, pelted Philip and Elizabeth with flower petals, Michael held aloof, finally walked away.

Only once did he unbend, at a bibulous evening in the Hampstead House apartment of Luxembourg's Prince Jean, whose playful guests turned the soda siphons on each other. Also present, and splashed, was Princess Thereza d'Orleans e Braganc,a, youngest sister of a claimant to Brazil's long extinct throne and of the Comtesse de Paris. Mayfair gossips said that 28-year-old, moderately good looking, very rich Thereza had been picked for Michael's queen by Michael's experienced, appreciative papa, ex-King Carol. Thereza said there was no truth in the rumors.

But there was more than romance on Michael's mind. From the day of his arrival in London he had been holding high level talks about his job in Bucharest. The Rumanian Communists' power grab was complete, and Michael, king in a Communist-dominated country, had become a royal cipher. The stunned immobility with which Rumanians watched their beloved National Peasant Party Leader Juliu Maniu be crushed under Communist Matriarch Ana Pauker's steamroller told Michael he had not long to reign--even as Pauker's virtual prisoner.

As a result of the talks Michael had made a decision: he would not return.

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