Ferdinand I

Ferdinand I is the current Tsar of Bulgaria, the only Tsar of the Independent Tsardom of Bulgaria and the first Tsar of Bulgaria since it became a Puppet State of the German Empire. After the Tsardom of Bulgaria's annexation as a German Puppet State Ferdinand was forced to convert to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church by the Germans and Bulgarian Ministers loyal to the Germans who feel like the Bulgarians should have a ruler who has the same religion as them.

## History

### Early Life

Ferdinand was born on 26 February 1861 in Vienna, a German prince of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry. He was the son of Prince August of Saxe-Coburg and his wife Clémentine of Orléans, daughter of King Louis Philippe I of the French. Princess Maria Antonia Koháry was a Hungarian Noble and heiress who married Ferdinand’s grandfather, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Ferdinand was raised in his parents’ Catholic faith and baptised in St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna on 27 February, having as godparents Archduke Maximilian of Austria and his wife Princess Charlotte of Belgium. He grew up in the cosmopolitan environment of Austro-Hungarian high nobility and also in their ancestral lands in Hungary and in Germany. The House of Koháry descended from an immensely wealthy Upper Hungarian noble family, who held the princely lands of Čabraď and Sitno in present-day Slovakia, among others. The family's property was augmented by Clémentine of Orléans' remarkable dowry.

Ferdinand was a grandnephew of Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians. His father August was a brother of King Ferdinand II of Portugal, and also a first cousin to Queen Victoria, her husband Albert, Empress Carlota of Mexico and her brother Leopold II of Belgium. These last two, Leopold and Carlota, were also first cousins of Ferdinand I's through his mother, a princess of Orléans. This made the Belgian siblings his first cousins, as well as his first cousins once removed. Indeed, the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha had contrived to occupy, either by marriage or by direct election, several European thrones in the course of the 19th century. Following the family trend, Ferdinand was himself to found the royal dynasty of Bulgaria.

### Prince of Bulgaria

The previous ruling prince of Bulgaria, Alexander of Battenberg, had abdicated in 1886 after a pro-Russian coup, only seven years after he had been elected. Ferdinand, who was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, was elected Prince of autonomous Bulgaria by its Grand National Assembly on 7 July 1887 in the Gregorian calendar (the "New Style" used hereinafter). In desperate attempts to prevent Russian occupation of Bulgaria, the throne had been previously offered, before Ferdinand's acceptance, to princes from Denmark to the Caucasus and even to the King of Romania. The Russian tsar himself had nominated his aide, Nichols Dadian of Mingrelia, but his candidacy was rejected by the Bulgarians. Ferdinand's accession was greeted with disbelief in many of the royal houses of Europe; Queen Victoria, his father's first cousin, stated to her Prime Minister, "He is totally unfit ... delicate, eccentric and effeminate ... Should be stopped at once." To the amazement of his initial detractors, Ferdinand generally made a good account of himself during the first two decades of his reign.

Bulgaria's domestic political life was dominated during the early years of Ferdinand's reign by liberal party leader Stefan Stambolov, whose independent foreign policy saw a marked cooling in relations with Russia, formerly seen as Bulgaria's protector.

Stambolov's fall (May 1894) and subsequent assassination (July 1895) - likely planned by Ferdinand - paved the way for a reconciliation of Bulgaria with Russia, effected in February 1896 with Ferdinand's decision to convert his infant son, Prince Boris, from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. However, this move earned him the animosity of his Catholic Austrian relatives, particularly that of his uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, as well as being excommunicated by Pope Leo XIII.

### Tsar of Bulgaria

On 5 October 1908 (celebrated on 22 September), Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria's *de jure* independence from the Ottoman Empire (though the country had been *de facto* independent since 1878). He also proclaimed Bulgaria a kingdom, and assumed the title of *tsar*—a deliberate nod to the rulers of the earlier Bulgarian states. However, while the title *tsar* was translated as "emperor" in the First and Second Bulgarian empires, it was translated as "king" under Ferdinand and his successors. The Bulgarian Declaration of Independence was proclaimed by him at the Holy Forty Martyrs Church in Tarnovo, and was recognized by Turkey and the other European powers. The Tarnovo Constitution was retained, with the word "prince" replaced by the word "tsar."

Ferdinand was known for being quite a character. On a visit to German Emperor Wilhelm II, his second cousin once removed, in 1909, Ferdinand was leaning out of a window of the New Palace in Potsdam when the Emperor came up behind him and slapped him on the bottom. Ferdinand was affronted by the gesture but the Kaiser arrogantly refused to apologize. Ferdinand however exacted his revenge by awarding a valuable arms contract he had intended to give to the Krupp's factory in Essen to French arms manufacturer Schneider-Creusot. Another incident occurred on his journey to the funeral of his second cousin King Edward VII of the United Kingdom in 1910. A tussle broke out over where his private railway carriage would be positioned in relation to the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Archduke won out, having his carriage positioned directly behind the engine. Ferdinand's was placed directly behind. Realising the dining car of the train was behind his own carriage, Ferdinand obtained his revenge on the Archduke by refusing him entry through his own carriage to the dining car. On 15 July the same year during a visit to Belgium, Ferdinand also became the first head of state to fly in an airplane. He awarded the pilot of the plane with a medal when they landed.

### Balkan Wars

Like many other rulers before him, Ferdinand desired the creation of a "new Byzantium", a desire that has to be interpreted as wanting to create a significant, essentially Christian, Balkan power, given that Bulgaria and Bulgarians had neither cultural, nor ethnical, nor historical nor linguistic affinity with the old Byzantine Empire, which was quintessentially Roman and, evolving through the centuries, Greek . In 1912, Ferdinand joined the other Balkan states in an assault on the Ottoman Empire to free occupied territories. He saw this war as a new crusade declaring it, "a just, great and sacred struggle of the Cross against the Crescent." Bulgaria contributed the most and also lost the greatest number of soldiers. The Great Powers insisted on the creation of an independent Albania. Though the Balkan League allies had fought together against the common enemy in the First Balkan War, that was not enough to overcome their mutual rivalries. In the original documents for the Balkan League, Serbia had been pressured by Bulgaria to hand over most of Vardar Macedonia after it had conquered it from the Ottoman Empire. However Serbia, in response to the new Albanian state receiving territory in the north that it had expected to gain for itself, said that it would keep possession of the areas that its forces had occupied. Soon after, Bulgaria began the Second Balkan War when it invaded its recent allies Serbia and Greece to seize disputed areas, before being attacked itself by Romania and the Ottoman Empire. Although Bulgaria was defeated, the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest granted the Kingdom some territorial gains. The region of Western Thrace, giving access to the Aegean Sea was secured.

### World War I

On 11 October 1915, the Bulgarian army attacked Serbia after signing a treaty with Austria-Hungary and Germany stating that Bulgaria would gain the territory it sought at the expense of Serbia. While he was not an admirer of German Emperor Wilhelm II or Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I—whom he described as "that idiot, that old dotard of a Francis Joseph".—Ferdinand wanted additional territorial gains after the humiliation of the Balkan Wars. This also entailed forming an alliance with his former enemy, the Ottoman Empire. This ranging of his country with the Central Powers made him a de facto supporter of Germany’s war aims and was not well received by the Allies. Edmund Gosse wrote:

“In this war, where the ranks of the enemy present to us so many formidable, sinister, and shocking figures, there is one, and perhaps but one, which is purely ridiculous. If we had the heart to relieve our strained feelings by laughter, it would be at the gross Coburg traitor, with his bodyguard of assassins and his hidden coat-of-mail, his shaking hands and his painted face. The world has never seen a meaner scoundrel, and we may almost bring ourselves to pity the Kaiser, whom circumstances have forced to accept on equal terms a potentate so verminous.”

During the initial phase of World War I, the Tsardom of Bulgaria achieved several decisive victories over its enemies and laid claim to the disputed territories of Macedonia after Serbia's defeat. For the next two years, the Bulgarian army shifted its focus towards repelling Allied advances from nearby Greece. They were also partially involved in the 1916 conquest of neighboring Romania, now ruled by another Ferdinand I, who was also Ferdinand's second cousin once removed.

### Bulgaria gets Conquered as a German Puppet State

After the Russian Revolution, Germany then ended up having to conquer the Eastern Front as it had to also stabilize it's allies of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria itself before they fell to Communism. Bulgaria was a perfect target to gain since it was vulnerable to the allied powers of the Kingdom of Greece, the Kingdom of Romania, the Tsardom of Serbia, the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire as it was also near the Soviet Union. Germany conquered Bulgaria in 1917 as Wilhelm told Ferdinand that he'll have to end up being a German Puppet because because he's about to be screwed by the allies. Ferdinand then agreed as he surrendered himself and the Bulgarian Nation to the German Empire. Ferdinand was forced to convert to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

## Marriages

Ferdinand entered a marriage of convenience with Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, daughter of Robert I, Duke of Parma and Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, on 20 April 1893 at the Villa Pianore in Lucca. The marriage produced four children:

* Crown Prince Boris (b. 1894) married Princess Giovanna of Italy (b. 1907) in 1930. They have one daughter.
	+ Marie Louise, Princess of Koháry (b. 1933)
* Prince Kyril (b. 1895) married Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (b. 1895)
	+ Prince Alexei (b. 1920)
* Princess Eudoxia (b. 1898), not married, no issue
* Duchess Nadezhda of Württemberg (b. 1899), married to Duke Albrecht Eugen of Württemberg (b. 1895) and has five children.
	+ Duke Ferdinand Eugen of Württemberg (b. 1925)
	+ Duchess Margareta Luise of Württemberg (b. 1928)
	+ Duke Eugen Eberhard of Württemberg (b. 1930)
	+ Duke Alexander Eugen of Württemberg (b. 1933)

Marie Louise died on 31 January 1899 after giving birth to her youngest daughter. Ferdinand did not think about remarriage until his mother, Princess Clémentine died in 1907. To satisfy dynastic obligations and to provide his children with a mother figure, Ferdinand married Princess Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz, on 28 February 1908. Neither romantic love or physical attraction played any role, and Ferdinand treated her as no more than a member of the household, and showed scant regard.

After the death of Princess Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz, He then married Victoria, Princess of the United Kingdom who was the unmarried daughter of Edward VII. Victoria was unmarried and living with her mother, Queen Alexandra, the Queen mother and her aunt Maria Feodorovna, Empress Dowager of Imperial Russia. Maria Feodorovna was visiting her sister in England until she returned to Russia during World War I. When Britain was being bombarded by German planes, Maria Feodorovna was called by her sister to let her come to Russia for safety. Maria told Alexandria that it would not be possible because Russia was conqured and occupied by the Germans, but she retreated to Denmark to live in the villa of Hvidøre which is near the Royal Palace of Denmark. They lived there until Alexandra died in 1925 in which Victoria and Maria moved to Crimea. During their time in Crimea, the Khan who was great pals with Ferdinand I told Ferdinand about Victoria, the maiden Princess of the British Royal Family. Ferdinand then met the woman when he was visiting Crimea and as the womanizer he is he had an affair with Victoria. When Marie died, Victoria who acknowledged Ferdinand's feelings for her moved to Sofia and married him. Despite being British, the Kaiser felt the marriage between his cousin and Ferdinand was appropriate due to the fact they were close in age. Victoria was crowned Tsarina of Bulgaria after the marriage. Like her deceased family members, Victoria is close with her husband and step children.

In his private relations, Ferdinand was a somewhat hedonistic individual. Bisexual throughout his life, up until early middle age his inclination was more towards women. He enjoyed affairs with a number of women of humble position, siring a number of illegitimate children whom he then supported financially. In his later life, rumours abounded of Ferdinand's trysts with lieutenants and valets.