King Mihai and Queen Ana Celebrate the Diamond Wedding
The event is marked these days by special happenings organized both in Bucharest and Sinaia, events that will be attended by 14 European Royal families, and by outstanding representatives of the Romanian society.
After the event of last week which marked the return of King Mihai to Peles Castle after 60 years, the Royal family is now under the focus of attention. King Mihai and Queen Ana celebrated yesterday the diamond wedding, after joining their destinies sixty years ago at Tatoi in Greece.
Yesterday evening there was a concert at the Romanian Athenaeum, where the national orchestra of “George Enescu” Philharmonic played, in the presence of the Royal family and their guests, works of composers such as George Enescu, Franz Liszt, Edvard Grieg and Giuseppe Verdi. The volume “The Diamond Wedding” written by Princess Margareta and Prince Radu will be launched tomorrow, at 11.00 h., at the National Museum of History, a book described by the authors as “a story with pictures, in which the present day people watch events full of love, beauty, hope and pride.” Besides these events, opened to the media and to the public, three other private occurrences take place in Bucharest and Sinaia. The persons close to the Royal family will rally today at Sinaia, for an outdoor party organized at Peles Castle.
The concert from the Romanian Athenaeum and the other events organized on the occasion of the “Diamond wedding” will be attended by around 1,000 persons, members of 14 European royal families, among whom Queen Sofia of Spain, King Simeon II and Queen Margarita of the Bulgarians, King Constantin II and Queen Ana-Maria of the Hellenes, Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Prince Alexandru II and Princess Ecaterina of Serbia, Archduke Karl of Austria, the Duke of Braganza (Portugal), Duke Amedeo and Duchess Silvia of Savoia-Aosta (Italy), Prince Philip and Princess Annette of Bourbon-Parma, who will come to Bucharest to share the joy of this anniversary with King Mihai and Queen Ana.
The foreign guests will be joined by members of the Government and Parliament of Romania, representatives of the Orthodox Church and Romanian Academy, an important number of representatives of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Bucharest, starting with the Papal Nuncio, personalities of the Romanian art and culture, of the business and media circles, a press release of the Royal House reads.
Destinies United for Six Decades
The King and the Queen met in London, in 1947, the year when Mihai I was forced to abdicate. The two met on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Elisabeth II of Great Britain with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, King Mihai proposing to Princess Ana of Bourbon Parma only one week after he had met her. After the event from Great Britain, the King returned to Romania, in spite of the political pressures made at home, because many statesmen would have liked King Mihai to remain in exile. But, soon, on December 30, 1947, he was obliged to abdicate, on the grounds that if he does not sign the act through which he renounces the Throne, 1,000 young persons arrested by the communists were to be executed.
Consequently, the wedding of King Mihai and Queen Ana, which took place on June 10, 1948, at Tatoi, in Greece, marked also the debut of an exile of 44 years. For this reason, Queen Ana stepped on the Romanian soil hardly in 1992, on Easter. The happiness of the wedding was also shadowed by the refusal of Pope Pius XII to acknowledge the wedding, which rendered Queen Ana, who was a Roman-Catholic, very sad. Loyal to his country, King Mihai continued the tradition begun by King Carol I that says that all the members of the Royal Family of Romania had to be christened in the Orthodox religion. Consequently, Queen Ana was excommunicated from the Roman-Catholic Church until the pontificate of Pope John XXIII, and not any of her close relatives attended the wedding. All the descendants of King Mihai belong to the Orthodox Church. The wedding from June 1948 was attended, among others, by the Queen-Mother Elena of Romania, Prince Erik of Denmark, uncle of Queen Ana, and relatives from the families of Hanover and Hesse. Queen Sofia of Spain and King Constantin of the Hellenes, present these days in Romania to mark the diamond wedding, were, 60 years ago, pages at the wedding of the King and Queen, in Athens.
The Royal pair has five daughters: the Princesses Margareta, Elena, Irina, Sofia and Maria. King Mihai, accompanied by the whole Royal family, has returned officially to Peles Castle five days ago, after an absence of 60 years.
source:
http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php?page=detalii&categorie=homenews&id=20080611-9053
