Wednesday 31 January 2018

My latest article: 200 years of Bernadottes & the last King of Bavaria

On 5 February the Bernadottes have sat on the Swedish throne for 200 years, so in the February issue of Majesty (Vol. 39, No. 2), which was published in Britain a while ago and will be on sale in Norway tomorrow, I recount the history of this dynasty, which originated in revoltuionary and Napoleonic France, and how it has survived against the odds, including some of the occasions when it might have fallen.
In the same issue I write about a monarch who did fall: King Ludwig III of Bavaria, the cousin of the more famous "mad" King Ludwig II, who seized the crown from another mad cousin, King Otto, in 1913. Although the Bavarians were traditionally attached to their dynasty, Ludwig III was the first monarch to fall when a wave of revolutions swept across Germany in 1918, bringing to an end the 738-year rule of the House of Wittelsbach.
In the same issue there are also articles by other writers on, among other topics, the Duchess of Cambridge's jewels, the gradual transition from Queen Elizabeth of Britain to Prince Charles, the funeral of ex-King Mihai of Romania and the Royal Academy of Arts's new exhibition "Charles I: King and Collector".