The Extraordinary Journey of the Scot who became Prince Consort of Romania
By William Lowden
To the average American, having an audience with the Prince Consort of Romania would be a foregone conclusion, should he be able to situate Romania on a map. He would be prepared to meet another Mitteleuropean royal, with striking blue eyes and a thick accent. And now, entering a room in the Royal Palace in Bucharest, enters a tall, dark-haired man, not looking German at all, who shakes your hand and asks you “how do you do” in a perfect English. Not in the received pronunciation, more like Southern England, with traces of a Glaswegian accent. That is Prince Iacov, husband to Queen Margareta of Romania, born James Gordon Brown near Glasgow. Not only a commoner, but a Scotsman.
With his wife reigning since December 2017, Prince Iacov (“please, call me Gordon”) knew that the challenge of being a foreigner on the side of a monarch would be harsh : his adopted country, Romania, had had one of the most troubled histories during the Twentieth Century : thirty years under the Iron Guard, one of the most nightmarish regimes in the history of Europe, then almost twenty-five years split between German-backed Vallachia and Russian-backed Moldavia ; even succeeding the deeply popular King Mihai, who had escaped as a child from the massacre of his whole family at the hands of Codreanu’s Legionaires, then came back to reclaim his birthright as ruler of the Romanians, meant that Margareta wouldn’t have an easy task, more over in a deeply chauvinistic Romanian society, still defined by machismo and deep-rooted tradition. Internationally, the old royal families that have ruled Europe for centuries had little regards for this Scottish commoner, who happened to marry into a second-rank royal family, the Romanian Hohenzollerns.
But Prince Iacov has endeared himself to his new people, who look gladly to the royal family, by pride in the late King but also in opposition to the harsh military regime of General Mircea Chelaru : even if they laugh as the accent the Prince of Iasi hasn’t managed to shake off, they appreciate his support and presence behind his family and the Queen, and his personal commitments as Prince Consort for royally endorsed programs against poverty and for education, in one of the poorest countries of Europe. For the Prince, being a commoner was a help : “Even my father-in-law knew, in regards with his personal history, that nothing was granted in this life. So that makes me deeply different from the other scions of the ruling families of Europe. But growing up in the United Kingdom, where constitutional monarchy has been founded and made for the better, also prepared me for the role I had to take”.
Born to a minister of the Church of Scotland, a “son of a manse” as Scots call it, James Gordon Brown never thought of entering the small elite of royalty. He saw himself “making a career as a history teacher, or maybe dabbling a bit in politics after a while”. His early life was marked by an injury shortly after entering the University of Edinburgh, at the early age of 16 : after a kick to the head during a rugby union match, he suffered a retinal detachment and left him blind in his left eye, forcing him to wear a glass eye. In spite of this handicap, the future Prince Consort of Romania would graduate with an undegraduate MA degree with First-Class Honours in history in 1972, and was looking forward to obtain a PhD degree, maybe around the influence of the Labour Party in Scotland. But as in a fairy tale, his life would change when he met Margareta de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the woman that would one day become Queen of Romania.
A friend of those years recalled : “She was sweet and gentle and obviously cut out to make somebody a very good wife. She was bright, too, though not like him, but they seemed made for each other.” The two students, as she was studying in sociology, political science and public international law, talked all the time about politics. But when he came to understand who his girlfriend was, he also knew that his future father-in-law had inherited a country in ruins, broken in two after a horrific civil war. King Mihai, who had five daughters, still hoped to have a male heir, but the future of Wallachia, upon which he had managed to take hold, looked dire, becoming nothing less than a German puppet. The couple even parted ways at some time.
“I felt that it was not my destiny to become a powerless figurehead, I wanted to go into politics or at least teach history. But, through love, I came to understand and love the Romanian people”. Even conservative King Mihai, who had married into the prestigious Bourbon-Parma family in spite of his exile, came to regard this Scottish commoner as a deeply intelligent man, and would write in his diary: “To survive into the next millenium, Romania has to embrace modernity, after having suffered too much under the foolish vision of a false past. And thus the Crown has to modernize”. He would nevertheless only modify the law of succession to allow his eldest daughter to succeed him in 1987, ten years after the beautiful wedding of Prince Iacov and Princess Margareta at Curtea de Arges, then in Wallachia. The foreigner would make many efforts to acclimate into his new country and didn’t felt there was too many obstacles. “I still speak Romanian with an accent, but once you’ve known French, or Italian, it’s quite an easy language. The worst was when I had to tell my father, a minister in the Church of Scotland, that I had to convert to Romanian Orthodoxy”, he laughs.
Iacov (“My father-in-law told me that there was no equivalent for Gordon in Romanian”) would take up his energy to “serve the Queen, raise our children to become one day the monarchs of Romania and to be a servant of his new country”, using his natural charisma to serve as an ambassador extraordinaire to the cause of Romania, meeting with foreign investors and diplomats. “When I came to Bucharest, the city was left in ruins after the civil war and the earthquake, the people suffered under the yoke of Pacepa’s dictatorship and tried everything to flee. Nowadays, Romania has been reunified at last, it’s one of the most rapidly growing economies in the European community and its automaton industry is thriving, hand in hand with Bulgaria”. The Prince Consort, committed to parliamentary democracy, liberalism and European construction, would at times suffer the critics of the ultranationalistic governments that succeeded themselves at the helm of Wallachia and Romania: his relations with longtime Prime Minister Corneliu Tudor were said to be frosty, and the late strongman would criticize “the Celtic dynast”, pointing out that the Prince Consort didn’t support Romanian failed military and diplomatic endeavours against Hungary. Due to his royal reserve, Prince Iacov can’t voice his well-known distrust for the ruling military regime. But in spite of Romanian chauvinism, he would also quickly endear itself to the eyes of his people, due to another tragedy in his life as a father : the first son he had with the Queen, Prince Mihai, died two weeks after his birth of a brain hemorrhage. “I am an intimate man but I knew that as a public figure, my life would be well publicized.” In a country where infantile mortality is still a thing, many Romanians felt with the Royal couple : along with Princess Elena, the couple’s other son also bears the name Mihai, both in homage to his grandfather and his deceased brother ; the Prince of Alba Iulia would one day become the next King of Romania, under the unheard of dynastic name of “Hohenzollern-Brown”.
The royal reserve of Prince Iacov doesn’t extend to his birth country, the British Isles. “I must admit that I didn’t recognize myself in the country Enoch Powell made, it also laid much into my decision”. Known for his sympathies for the Labour Party in his youth, he however refuses to define his line. Is he on the right wing, incarnated by Oswald Mosley and Peter Shore, or more on the left wing, defined by Shirley Williams or Rushanara Ali ? “Let’s just say that I wish the best for Prime Minister Buttigieg, who I met and appreciate”. The Prince Consort is also quite reluctant to share his view about Scotland, who gained its independence since he went to Romania. “I was born a British, my father served in the Church of Scotland. I’m proud to be a Scotsman, I’m proud that my birth country became free but still, I saw in Romania what were the consequences of division. I felt that independence was maybe not the best for Scotland. But still, I didn’t vote in the referendum and I’m a Romanian foremost now. So my voice doesn’t count, it was the decision of the Scottish people and I’m proud of them”.
Leaving us for a new meeting, centered in fighting poverty in Moldavia, the Prince Consort is interrogated about whether, in another life, he would have remained in Scotland, maybe becoming a MP. He laughs out loud and says “Why not ? I never ran for office in fact, maybe I would have still immigrated to Romania to campaign !”
By William Lowden
To the average American, having an audience with the Prince Consort of Romania would be a foregone conclusion, should he be able to situate Romania on a map. He would be prepared to meet another Mitteleuropean royal, with striking blue eyes and a thick accent. And now, entering a room in the Royal Palace in Bucharest, enters a tall, dark-haired man, not looking German at all, who shakes your hand and asks you “how do you do” in a perfect English. Not in the received pronunciation, more like Southern England, with traces of a Glaswegian accent. That is Prince Iacov, husband to Queen Margareta of Romania, born James Gordon Brown near Glasgow. Not only a commoner, but a Scotsman.
With his wife reigning since December 2017, Prince Iacov (“please, call me Gordon”) knew that the challenge of being a foreigner on the side of a monarch would be harsh : his adopted country, Romania, had had one of the most troubled histories during the Twentieth Century : thirty years under the Iron Guard, one of the most nightmarish regimes in the history of Europe, then almost twenty-five years split between German-backed Vallachia and Russian-backed Moldavia ; even succeeding the deeply popular King Mihai, who had escaped as a child from the massacre of his whole family at the hands of Codreanu’s Legionaires, then came back to reclaim his birthright as ruler of the Romanians, meant that Margareta wouldn’t have an easy task, more over in a deeply chauvinistic Romanian society, still defined by machismo and deep-rooted tradition. Internationally, the old royal families that have ruled Europe for centuries had little regards for this Scottish commoner, who happened to marry into a second-rank royal family, the Romanian Hohenzollerns.
But Prince Iacov has endeared himself to his new people, who look gladly to the royal family, by pride in the late King but also in opposition to the harsh military regime of General Mircea Chelaru : even if they laugh as the accent the Prince of Iasi hasn’t managed to shake off, they appreciate his support and presence behind his family and the Queen, and his personal commitments as Prince Consort for royally endorsed programs against poverty and for education, in one of the poorest countries of Europe. For the Prince, being a commoner was a help : “Even my father-in-law knew, in regards with his personal history, that nothing was granted in this life. So that makes me deeply different from the other scions of the ruling families of Europe. But growing up in the United Kingdom, where constitutional monarchy has been founded and made for the better, also prepared me for the role I had to take”.
Born to a minister of the Church of Scotland, a “son of a manse” as Scots call it, James Gordon Brown never thought of entering the small elite of royalty. He saw himself “making a career as a history teacher, or maybe dabbling a bit in politics after a while”. His early life was marked by an injury shortly after entering the University of Edinburgh, at the early age of 16 : after a kick to the head during a rugby union match, he suffered a retinal detachment and left him blind in his left eye, forcing him to wear a glass eye. In spite of this handicap, the future Prince Consort of Romania would graduate with an undegraduate MA degree with First-Class Honours in history in 1972, and was looking forward to obtain a PhD degree, maybe around the influence of the Labour Party in Scotland. But as in a fairy tale, his life would change when he met Margareta de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the woman that would one day become Queen of Romania.
A friend of those years recalled : “She was sweet and gentle and obviously cut out to make somebody a very good wife. She was bright, too, though not like him, but they seemed made for each other.” The two students, as she was studying in sociology, political science and public international law, talked all the time about politics. But when he came to understand who his girlfriend was, he also knew that his future father-in-law had inherited a country in ruins, broken in two after a horrific civil war. King Mihai, who had five daughters, still hoped to have a male heir, but the future of Wallachia, upon which he had managed to take hold, looked dire, becoming nothing less than a German puppet. The couple even parted ways at some time.
“I felt that it was not my destiny to become a powerless figurehead, I wanted to go into politics or at least teach history. But, through love, I came to understand and love the Romanian people”. Even conservative King Mihai, who had married into the prestigious Bourbon-Parma family in spite of his exile, came to regard this Scottish commoner as a deeply intelligent man, and would write in his diary: “To survive into the next millenium, Romania has to embrace modernity, after having suffered too much under the foolish vision of a false past. And thus the Crown has to modernize”. He would nevertheless only modify the law of succession to allow his eldest daughter to succeed him in 1987, ten years after the beautiful wedding of Prince Iacov and Princess Margareta at Curtea de Arges, then in Wallachia. The foreigner would make many efforts to acclimate into his new country and didn’t felt there was too many obstacles. “I still speak Romanian with an accent, but once you’ve known French, or Italian, it’s quite an easy language. The worst was when I had to tell my father, a minister in the Church of Scotland, that I had to convert to Romanian Orthodoxy”, he laughs.
Iacov (“My father-in-law told me that there was no equivalent for Gordon in Romanian”) would take up his energy to “serve the Queen, raise our children to become one day the monarchs of Romania and to be a servant of his new country”, using his natural charisma to serve as an ambassador extraordinaire to the cause of Romania, meeting with foreign investors and diplomats. “When I came to Bucharest, the city was left in ruins after the civil war and the earthquake, the people suffered under the yoke of Pacepa’s dictatorship and tried everything to flee. Nowadays, Romania has been reunified at last, it’s one of the most rapidly growing economies in the European community and its automaton industry is thriving, hand in hand with Bulgaria”. The Prince Consort, committed to parliamentary democracy, liberalism and European construction, would at times suffer the critics of the ultranationalistic governments that succeeded themselves at the helm of Wallachia and Romania: his relations with longtime Prime Minister Corneliu Tudor were said to be frosty, and the late strongman would criticize “the Celtic dynast”, pointing out that the Prince Consort didn’t support Romanian failed military and diplomatic endeavours against Hungary. Due to his royal reserve, Prince Iacov can’t voice his well-known distrust for the ruling military regime. But in spite of Romanian chauvinism, he would also quickly endear itself to the eyes of his people, due to another tragedy in his life as a father : the first son he had with the Queen, Prince Mihai, died two weeks after his birth of a brain hemorrhage. “I am an intimate man but I knew that as a public figure, my life would be well publicized.” In a country where infantile mortality is still a thing, many Romanians felt with the Royal couple : along with Princess Elena, the couple’s other son also bears the name Mihai, both in homage to his grandfather and his deceased brother ; the Prince of Alba Iulia would one day become the next King of Romania, under the unheard of dynastic name of “Hohenzollern-Brown”.
The royal reserve of Prince Iacov doesn’t extend to his birth country, the British Isles. “I must admit that I didn’t recognize myself in the country Enoch Powell made, it also laid much into my decision”. Known for his sympathies for the Labour Party in his youth, he however refuses to define his line. Is he on the right wing, incarnated by Oswald Mosley and Peter Shore, or more on the left wing, defined by Shirley Williams or Rushanara Ali ? “Let’s just say that I wish the best for Prime Minister Buttigieg, who I met and appreciate”. The Prince Consort is also quite reluctant to share his view about Scotland, who gained its independence since he went to Romania. “I was born a British, my father served in the Church of Scotland. I’m proud to be a Scotsman, I’m proud that my birth country became free but still, I saw in Romania what were the consequences of division. I felt that independence was maybe not the best for Scotland. But still, I didn’t vote in the referendum and I’m a Romanian foremost now. So my voice doesn’t count, it was the decision of the Scottish people and I’m proud of them”.
Leaving us for a new meeting, centered in fighting poverty in Moldavia, the Prince Consort is interrogated about whether, in another life, he would have remained in Scotland, maybe becoming a MP. He laughs out loud and says “Why not ? I never ran for office in fact, maybe I would have still immigrated to Romania to campaign !”