page_title: Carol II of Romania
section_title: Return to the throne
hierarchical_section_title: Carol II of Romania / Return to the throne
caption_attribution_description: Română: Jurământului Regelui Carol al II-lea în fața Adunării Constituante din 8 iunie 1930
context_page_description: Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until his abdication on 6 September 1940.
  Carol was the eldest son of Ferdinand I and became crown prince upon the death of his grand-uncle, King Carol I in 1914. He was the first of the Hohenzollern kings of Romania to be born in the country; both of his predecessors had been born in Germany and only came to Romania as adults. As such, he was the first member of the Romanian branch of the Hohenzollerns who spoke Romanian as his first language, and was also the first member of the royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith. Carol was also a fan of football, being the Romanian Football Federation's president for almost one year from 1924 until 1925.
  He possessed a hedonistic personality that contributed to the controversies marring his reign, and his life was marked by numerous scandals, among them marriages to Zizi Lambrino and Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, daughter of King Constantine I of Greece. His continued affairs with Magda Lupescu obliged him to renounce his succession rights in 1925 and leave the country. Princess Helen eventually divorced him in 1928.
context_section_description: Returning to the country on 7 June 1930, in a coup d'état engineered by National Peasant Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol was recognized by the Parliament as king of Romania the following day. For the next decade he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently (January 1938) through a ministry of his own choosing. Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult against the growing influence of the Iron Guard, for instance by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Țării in 1935. The American historian Stanley G. Payne described Carol as "the most cynical, corrupt and power-hungry monarch who ever disgraced a throne anywhere in twentieth-century Europe". A colorful character, Carol was in the words of the British historian Richard Cavendish:
  "Dashing, wilful and reckless, a lover of women, champagne and speed, Carol drove racing cars and piloted planes, and on state occasions appeared in operetta uniforms with enough ribbons, chains and orders to sink a small destroyer."
   The Romanian historian Maria Bucur wrote about Carol: 
  "Of course, he loved luxury; being born to privilege he expected nothing less than the grand lifestyle he saw in the other courts of Europe. Yet his style was not outlandish or grotesque like Nicolae Ceaușescu's unique brand of kitsch. He liked things large but relatively simple-his royal palace testifies to that trait. Carol’s true passions were Lupescu, hunting and cars and he spared no expense on them.
  Carol liked to present an impressive and populist persona to the public, wearing garish military uniforms adorned with medals, and to be the benefactor of every philanthropic endeavor in the land. He loved parades and grandiose festivals and watched them closely, but he was not taken in by these events as more than shows of his power; he did not take them as a show of sincere popularity as Ceaușescu did during his later years.
   Carol had a populist style, depicting himself as the defender of the common man against the corrupt Francophile elites (especially the National Liberals) mixed in with generous elements of nationalism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Carol's tendency to throw together populism, authoritarianism, a vaguely xenophobic nationalism and Orthodoxy superficially resembled the style of the Iron Guard, albeit Carol's message was far less passionate than that of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, "the Captain" who preached a message of ferociously xenophobic ultra-nationalism, intense Orthodox mysticism, extremely violent anti-Semitism, a populist disdain for all the elites and a glorification of death in the service of the cause as the most beautiful, glorious, noble and erotic experience in the entire world. Codreanu, a man with death fetish had made the Iron Guard into a macabre death cult and often sent his followers out on what were clearly suicidal missions. After committing murders, Iron Guardsmen rarely attempted to flee and instead waited to be arrested as they wanted to be executed for their crimes. Many found the way that Legionaries went to their executions positively giddy and joyful about the prospect of their own deaths, happily proclaiming their deaths were the happiest moment of their life a deeply eerie experience. Carol regarded Codreanu's death fetish together with his claim that the Archangel Michael had told him that God had chosen him to save Romania as evidence that Codreanu was "crazy".
  Carol had sworn in his coronation oath to uphold the constitution of 1923, a promise he had no intention of keeping and right from the start of his reign, the king meddled in politics to increase his own power. Carol was an opportunist with no real principles or values other than the belief he was the right man to rule Romania and that what his kingdom needed was a modernizing dictatorship. Carol ruled via an informal body known as the camarilla comprising courtiers together with senior diplomats, army officers, politicians and industrialists who
caption: Oath of Carol II in front of parliament, 8 June 1930
exif: {}