More article sketches: A European Uber-Monarch? Continental irredentists, The 'Good Emperor', and Europe's Incredible Shrinking Countries

That for some reason these pitches didn't make the cut - or ended up in other pieces by other authors after submitting to various periodicals (you know who you are). Dating from 2020-2023.

Any who, here you go (remember these are sketches only, not fully-fledges articles):

Does the EU need an Emperor/Empress? and if so, who?

If the late Queen Elizabeth II harboured?any ambitions to be a Victoria-style?"Grandmother of Europe"?Brexit certainly put paid to them.

But maybe the European Union could benefit from a ceremonial head, chosen?from one of the many unemployed Royal dynasties still languishing on the continent.

?No particular offence?to?Ursula von der Leyen, but she's not especially?inspiring or unifying.

There are, of course, notable instances of booted royal lines making?a comeback - witness the return of the Bourbons in Spain (Juan Carlos I) and Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who became Prime Minister of Bulgaria (2001-05), but didn't see the restoration of the dynasty à la Louis Napoleon (elected President, then Emperor by coup in 1852).

?Portugal is an interesting?example - when Napoleon conquered the?country, The House of Braganza decamped to the colony of Brazil, where they established?a separate Empire that lasted from 1822-1889.

The second?emperor?(Pedro II) abolished slavery and established a parliamentary monarchy with freedom of speech, civil rights and economic growth. The monarch was very popular, but was overthrown by a military clique eager to exploit Brazil for their own ends.

So, maybe the current heir,?Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza - although his misguided support of Syria's Assad in 2011 is a black mark against him.

Who else (with explanations)

The Bonapartes? no, although they now have an infusion of Bourbon blood to beef up their claims to European Empire.

The Habsburgs? still liked in Austria (where the last?Emperor?Charles I has been Beatified) but pretty much nowhere else

The Bourbons/Orléans houses of France - thanks, but no thanks; having caused three revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848) is proof of their general unsuitability

Hohenzollerns - no, for obvious reasons (WWI)

Savoy (Italy) - no (WWII)

Hanover - the frequently barmy Windsor-adjacent house with the high incidence of?insanity-causing porphyria, no thankee

in fact no former German royals (Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Glücksburgs etc)

except...

The Stuarts - interestingly, and one in the eye for the UK/Windsors - current head Duke Francis of Bavaria

I think we can count the Zogus of Albania out, as they only lasted for the reign of Zog I (1928-39), who also had the distinction of being the world's heaviest smoker, apparently getting through 200+ coffin nails a day.?

Should we cast the net further?

?As supposedly?all?Western Europeans are descendants of proto Euro-Monarch Charlemagne (742-814) there's plenty to choose from. ?

A lottery perhaps?

?The Celts spread over much of Europe,?so?it's not an altogether ridiculous?idea to round up some of the present-day issue of the Irish High Kings and Welsh princelings.?

?

For those with a more esoteric bent, there are supposedly fair few descendants of some of the many ruling families of the?Byzantine Empire around, mainly through female lines.

?There are plenty remaining descendants of the pre-Romanov Rurikids alive:

?Vlad the Impaler? that of course would be King Charles 3.?

As many Republicans have justifiably often called 'The Firm' a bunch of thickheaded parasitical bloodsuckers, possibly appropriate.?

And who knows,?if?Prince Charles decides to occasionally use his Transylvanian title, we may all have to get used to calling him a Count.

?After all, Princess Di did.?

Allegedly.

Europe's irredentists

Any peace settlement in Ukraine will probably result in large tracts of territory ceded to Russia, thereby breeding further resentment.?

?President Zelwnskyy may have to take the Michael Collins route and accept half a loaf (Collins concluded that the Anglo-Irish Treaty offered Ireland?"not the freedom that all nations desire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve it") and some independence in a reduced state in the hope of the eventual restoration of his country after Putin leaves the stage.?

?Or before.?

?A look at the remaining irredentist movements in Europe:

Hungary (Transylvania)

Austria (the Italian Tyrol)

Germany (East Prussia, Silesia etc)

Greece (Cyprus, Thrace, Constantinople)

Ireland (Ulster)

Serbia (Greater Serbia)

Finland (Karelia)

Spain (Gibraltar)

And the past: Alsace Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein etc.

Closer to home, there are areas of Shropshire and Herefordshire that identify more with Wales. Some Welsh Nationalists have greater ambitions:?

Some Scots still hanker after Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was once an important part of the kingdom.?

Greater aspirations?

Btw, Berwick Rangers still play in the Scottish Lowland League.?

And England? not irredentism as such, but a few folk hanker for the return of Middlesex, the Yorkshire Ridings, a reunited Sussex

?France tries to get some of The Channel Islands back??

The 'Good Emperor' - Pedro II, Brazil's 'anti-Leopold'

With the platinum celebrations of Elizabeth II's 70 year reign overshadowed by the antics of two of her sons, a look at an apparently genuinely worthy monarch.?

Pedro II 'The Magnanimous'?of Brazil (1825-91), a scion?of Portugal's?House of Braganza who protected freedom of speech, civil rights (including women), promoted economic growth, and gave the country a (short-lived) representative parliamentary monarchy.

He pushed through the abolition of slavery despite opposition from powerful political and economic interests. The polymath emperor sponsored culture, learning, and the sciences.

Admired by the likes of Victor Hugo, Charles Darwin, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and was a friend to Louis Pasteur, Richard Wagner, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow..

There was no desire for a change in the form of government among most Brazilians, but the emperor was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état by a clique of military leaders who desired a republic headed by a 'strong?man' dictator who would enrich them all.

Pedro did not allow his ouster to be opposed and refused to back any attempt to restore the monarchy, living the rest of his life?in?penurious?European exile. The emperor's reputation was soon posthumously restored and his remains were returned to Brazil to be greeted by nationwide celebrations. Many local historians?rate him as The Greatest Brazilian.

When he heard the news of the coup he?said:?"If it is so, it will be my retirement. I have worked too hard and I am tired. I will go to rest then."

Although his descendants are unhappy about a new historical soap opera about Pedro, which probably plays to the authoritarian instincts of President?Bolsonaro.?

Compare and contrast with the behaviour of some members of The House of Windsor, Napoleon III and Pedro's vile contemporary, Leopold II of Belgium, whose brutal?legacy in his privately?owned 'Congo Free State' still haunts the country and Africa to this day.?

Europe's Incredible Shrinking Countries

With events in Ukraine (the loss of the Crimea etc), something?about European countries?that have shrunk in size, including:

?Luxembourg – which much larger before 1839 – in fact, about the current size of Yorkshire.?

?

Germany post WWI and II

?Denmark post the war with Prussia

?Monaco - now smaller than Manhattan’s Central Park:?

?But previously:?

Holland (which included?Belgium briefly from 1815-30)?

Austria - pre-collapse of the Habsburg empire

Russia - pre-WWI

Italy (Istria) - pre-WW2

Vatican/Papal States pre-1870

Hungary - the hope of regaining lost lands post WW1/2?

Poland

Greece - the gains from The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 all lost by their reckless invasion of Anatolia, resulting in the mass explusion or Hellenes from Smyrna etc on the Turkish mainland and Thrace.

?And the breakups of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia etc

The UK reduced?to a rump of England & Wales if Scotland and Northern Ireland ever depart? much?like Serbia & Montenegro - before Montenegro finally seceded in 2006.?

Stephen Arnell 2020-2022

?