THE little old lady in the green suit and bright pink lipstick arrived at the gates of Elizabeth Palace just after 8 a.m. She had waited all her life to see Michael I, she told the royal minders; she didn't mind waiting all morning to get a moment with the former Romanian monarch.
In her hand she clutched a certificate of bravery, stamped with the royal seal, which had been given to her father for fighting in two world wars. "He will always be our king, our king forever," she said with a smile.
She queued in the sunshine with another half dozen devoted royalists. A retired general who had fought in the Romanian army during its alliance with Hitler and later as a resistance fighter against the communists was first in line. A recently elected member of parliament stood beside him. At 66, he was the youngest of the group.
Some 15 per cent of Romanians want a return of the monarchy. Many of them remember the days when Michael I was still on the throne. During his latest visit to Romania during the Orthodox Easter week, crowds of mainly elderly men and women turned out to welcome him. But the monarchy also has friends in high places - many deputies in the current government and many of Romania's intelligentsia want the monarchy to return.
Tall and handsome, Michael carries his 76 years well as he moves through the palace courtyard shaking hands with the faithful. But the former monarch, who now lives in Switzerland, seems agitated, if not annoyed, at the slow progress of his rehabilitation. "There has been a monarchy here for 2,000 years," he says when we meet at Elizabeth Palace. "This republic brought in by the Soviets is just an accident along the way of history. Look what happens in other modern countries which have a monarchy. They have stability. The monarchy is always above political intrigue." He could do much more than a presidency, he insists.
Michael I of Romania came to power in 1927 at the tender age of six after his father, Carol II, turned down the throne to pursue women. The bete noire of the royal family, Carol II returned in 1930 and in the latter years of his reign set up a royal dictatorship. In 1940, after ceding much of Romania's territory to Hungary and Bulgaria, Hitler's allies, he was forced to abdicate. He fled Romania with his mistress and the royal spoils, leaving Michael, then 19, to take over the throne.
The latter's performance in power is the subject of much debate. During the second World War Romania, under the leadership of Marshal Ion Antonescu, sided with Hitler. When the military tide had turned, however, and the Red Army was at the border, Michael orchestrated a royal/military coup. Antonescu was locked in a safe and was later executed.
The first government formed by the king's government was a broad coalition, with communists playing only a minor role. But with the Red Army occupying the country that soon changed. On December 30th, 1947 Michael I was forced to abdicate and Romania was declared a People's Republic.
The king and his new bride, Princess Anne of Bourbon Parma whom he had met at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II to Prince Philip, moved to England where he became a market gardener. He later became a test pilot before moving to Switzerland to work as a broker and live more in the style to which he was accustomed.
After the fall of the Ceausescu regime, he tried to return to his country, but the neo communist government refused to give him a visa. In 1990 he travelled to Romania on a Danish diplomatic passport but was stopped on the motorway and deported 12 hours after arriving. In Easter 1992 he was allowed a visit which drew large crowds. Two years later when he tried to visit again he was put straight back on the plane.
Now that he has finally regained his citizenship, under a new Romanian government, his family is free to come and go as it pleases.
But the crowds on the latest royal tour have been smaller. Michael I insists this is not a mark of falling popularity and is annoyed the media have unfavourably compared his Easter trip to the visit in 1992, when thousands of people turned out to give him the traditional Romanian gift of bread and salt.
"It was different then. In 1992 they came out to see me but they also came out to show their opposition to communism. Of course there were enormous crowds. This time the crowds are a little less but there was more warmth in the expressions on the people's faces."
In February, he was being made an honorary ambassador to the royal households of Europe to lobby support for Romania's entry into NATO.
"We have a lot of hard work to do to put our house in order," he says. "We have to come back to the family of nations in Europe. It is very important for Romania, but also very important for the stability of Europe. I am trying to repair the terrible reputation Romania has earned, during 50 years of communism.
But the elderly monarch wants more.
"I would like to come back here permanently, but I have nothing here. Everything has been taken away from me by the communists," he says bitterly. "This is something that can not be settled overnight."
Elizabeth Palace once belonged to his aunt. These days, however, Michael I has to pay 2.5 million lei a night for the privilege of staying there. The rate, £250 a night, is the equivalent of three months salary for the average Romanian.
The mansion on the outskirts of Bucharest is one of the properties the former monarch wants back. Returning royal properties is not high on the government's agenda, however.
THROUGHOUT the Balkans, the royal families who were forced to abdicate during or after the second World War are returning to try to recover their possessions and their place in the political uncertainty that has followed the collapse of communism.
As Michael I was welcomed back to Romania, the three opposition leaders in Serbia met with Alexander Karadjordjevic, the 51 year old son of the last Yugoslav monarch, Peter II. In Sofia, the new Bulgarian president appointed the son of Simeon II, the last Bulgarian monarch (deposed at the age of nine), to the position of government adviser. In April Prince Leka of Albania, the son of Zog I, was allowed return from exile in South Africa.
"We have kept in touch for many years," Michael I says of all Balkan royal families. "Of course the time is right to return. The time should have been long ago. The whole thing should not have happened. We should not have been forced to leave."
Vadim Tudor, meanwhile, says the return of the monarchs to the Balkans is not a coincidence but a plot.
"They want a new order in Europe. They want their protectorates," says the leader of the extreme Greater Romanian Party, which nets some 5 per cent of the vote in Romania.
"Germany is guilty of this dysfunction. Margaret Thatcher wrote some years ago about how a united Germany could be a great peril to Europe. I know the history of Germany in Europe, no one can lie to me easily.
"This is a plot against countries which do not want to be a colony of Berlin."
On Tudor's office wall an old chart of the royal family tree hangs beside photographs of himself with Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk but this "poet, philosopher and politician" is staunchly republican. "Romanian people don't want to be slaves or subjects. We want to be equal citizens.
"Michael the first and, I hope, the last," he laughs. "The friends of this old man try to present him as a newborn, without sin. But he made mistakes, a lot of mistakes."
He points to photographs of Michael I and his father with Hitler. "It was a big mistake to be allied to Hitler," he says. In the same breath he describes Michael I's "betrayal" of Hitler's ally Antonescu as the most "unfair and unpleasant event in Romanian history".
THE monarchists are not without their own contradictions. Silviu Petrescu, deputy with the governing National Peasant and Christian Democratic Party, and his friend General Latea Constantin, speak fondly of Antonescu's regime. "But the monarchy is in our hearts. The royal family built the new Romania. They introduced civilisation into this country. They developed science and culture. All the great Romanian works of art were completed under the royalty," says the 83 year old retired general.
"The king is a direct link to God," says Petrescu, who was elected to parliament last year. The deputy does not have much faith in the Republican system. "Where the monarchs are on the throne there is stability and prosperity," he says, listing the royal families of Europe and the Middle East.
"When the monarchies left the Balkans we saw what happened. There is now a void that has to be filled."
The idea of a return of the monarchy only took hold in Romania in the months after the fall of Ceausescu, by which time a new government had already taken control, according to Andrei Pippidi, historian and monarchist. But there is a "considerable minority" which would now welcome the return of Michael I to the throne, among them a large number of Romania's intelligentsia. "The rural electorate still forms 55 per cent of the population. They are a passive electorate and if the king was proclaimed tomorrow no one would protest. But as long as there is a presidency they would vote against the king. Politics works by inertia.
"With a royalist parliament in power it could be done. But while the present parliament is respectful of the king it is not favourable to the idea of a monarchy," he says.
The main obstacle to the return of the monarchy, however, is not a political one, according to royalists. At 76, Michael I could not be expected to govern for long and he has no sons. His eldest daughter married a Romanian actor, a "commoner" in some royalist eyes, earlier this year. The only option, many believe, is to put Michael I's 10 year old grandson, Nicolae, on the throne.