Romania Letter: Few royal courts offer visitors a business card bearing a photograph of the grinning monarch in his glittering gold regalia, writes Dan McLaughlin
But then, according to Florin Cioaba, there is only one King of the Gypsies.
In his poolside Romanian mansion, he says he is preparing for the "special honour" of leading almost four million more of his people into the European Union next year, when Romanian and Bulgarian Gypsies hope to join 8 million others already living in the bloc.
But last month's postponement of an EU verdict on the two countries' bid for membership, and the grinding poverty and discrimination endured by Europe's Gypsy, or Roma communities, are not the only matters weighing on the mind of King Florin.
In the historic Transylvanian town of Sibiu - which will be a European Capital of Culture next year - he is dealing with his very own neighbour from hell.
Just round the corner lives Iulian Radulescu, in a tin-turreted villa emblazoned with his own claim to Gypsy supremacy: "This is the Imperial Palace of the Emperor of All the Roma" proclaims a multicoloured electric sign on the side of the building.
The portly rivals have vied for a decade over the title of undisputed Roma chief, indulging in a scrap whose frequent descent into pantomime has threatened to distract attention from the desperate plight endured by most of Europe's Gypsies.
"My dad and Radulescu had a great rivalry," says Mr Cioaba (52) recalling his father King Ion, the first man to declare himself monarch of all the Gypsies, and whose crown passed to his son when he died in 1997.
"Radulescu should have understood that my title is born of tradition and that my family has always given leaders to the Roma community.
"But one day he just decided to call himself emperor. Who knows, someone might call themselves our pharaoh next."
King Florin has dismissed Emperor Iulian's accusations that his family is involved in crime, but had more serious trouble pacifying an angry Brussels.
He was lambasted by EU politicians in 2003 for allowing his 12-year-old daughter to marry a 15-year-old boy, in the kind of ceremony he says Roma have performed since before their arrival in Europe from northern India some 600 years ago.
"It's a very difficult and delicate problem," admits Mr Cioaba, dressed in a plain business suit unadorned by his ornate gold crown, mace and chain of office.
"If I want to respect our traditions then the international community jumps on me. But if I tell Roma they can't do something then they jump on me," he sighs.
"If we assimilate completely then we will just disappear. But we live in this country and soon in the EU, so we have to accept certain laws, adapt and compromise."
Eastern Europe's media often mock the Byzantine politics and lavish lifestyles of the "Roma royalty", while ignoring the problems faced by millions of ordinary Gypsies, most of whom have little time for their self-declared monarchs.
Only one-sixth of Romania's almost four million Gypsies officially acknowledge their ethnicity, such is the fear of discrimination and the legacy of what Roma call "the Devouring" - the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of their ancestors by the Nazis and their allies.
In its latest report on the progress of Romania and Bulgaria towards EU membership in January, Brussels said both countries' treatment of their Roma minorities was still giving cause for concern.
"The EU is putting pressure on accession countries but if those nations' politicians aren't focussing on the problem then it can disappear from view," says Viktoria Mohacsi, one of two Roma MEPs from Hungary.
"Someone has to remind member states that the problem exists.
"There will be 12 million Roma in Europe and practically all of them face the same grim situation."
If feuding Gypsy kings and emperors hark back to a clannish and divided past, the eloquent, stylish and multilingual Mohacsi may embody a brighter Roma future.
She became an MEP in 2004, after working for a human rights group and Hungarian state television's weekly Roma affairs programme, until the channel's bosses told her to stop reporting on problems that beset Gypsy life.
"In the mid-1990s Roma were being beaten and killed, kids were being shot for stealing fruit, so many bad things were happening but they wanted me to smile and talk about culture," she remembers. "Now the media at least discusses discrimination and politicians can't get away with racist remarks," says Ms Mohacsi (31).
"But research shows that 94 per cent of Hungarian parents still wouldn't want their child sitting next to a Roma in school." Segregation blights education systems across eastern Europe, where thousands of young Roma are shoved into special-needs schools because of poor standards of literacy and the desire of white parents to stop their children mingling with Gypsies.
Ending such segregation is the aim of Ms Mohacsi who, while dismissing the regal claims of King Florin and Emperor Iulian, is emerging as a new kind of Gypsy leader.
"I don't say I'm a Hungarian politician," she insists. "I'm an MEP for Roma."