Editing Carol II of Romania (section)

==Return to the throne==
[[File:Juramant Carol II.jpg|300px|thumb|Oath of Carol II in front of parliament, 8 June 1930]]
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 [[Carol II of Romania's cult of personality|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".{{sfn|Payne|1996|p=278}} A colorful character, Carol was in the words of the British historian [[Richard Cavendish (occult writer)|Richard Cavendish]]: "Dashing, willful and reckless, a lover of women, champagne and speed, Carol drove racing cars and piloted planes, and on state occasions, occasions appeared in operetta uniforms with enough ribbons, chains, and orders to sink a small destroyer."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Cavendish |first=Richard |date=April 2003 |title=Death of Carol II of Romania |url=http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/death-carol-ii-romania |magazine=History Today |access-date=2015-11-29}}</ref>

The Romanian historian Maria Bucur wrote about Carol: 

<blockquote>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 being the benefactor of every philanthropic endeavor in the country. 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.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|p=91}}</blockquote>

Carol had sworn in his coronation an 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.{{sfn|Payne|1996|p=278}} Carol was an opportunist with no real principles or values other than the belief that he was the right man to rule Romania and that what his kingdom needed was a modernizing dictatorship.{{sfn|Quinlan|1995|p=116}} Carol ruled via an informal body known as the ''camarilla'', comprising courtiers together with senior diplomats, army officers, politicians, and industrialists, who were all in some way dependent upon royal favor to advance their careers.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} The most important member of the ''camarilla'' was Carol's mistress, Madame Lupescu, whose political advice Carol greatly valued.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} Maniu had brought Carol to the throne out of the fear that the regency for Michael I was dominated by National Liberals, who would ensure that their party would always win the elections.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} Madame Lupescu was deeply unpopular with the Romanian people, and Maniu had demanded that Carol return to his wife, Princess Helen of Greece, as part of the price for being given the throne. When Carol broke his own word and continued to live with Madame Lupescu, Maniu resigned in protest in October 1930 and was to emerge as one of Carol's leading enemies.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} At the same time, Carol's return had prompted a break in the National Liberals with [[Gheorghe I. Brătianu]] breaking away to found a new party, the [[National Liberal Party-Brătianu]] that was willing to work with the new king. Despite his dislike of the National Liberals, Maniu's enmity towards Carol left the king with no choice, but to enlist as his allies the break-away factions of the National Liberals against the National Peasants, who demanded that Carol banish Lupescu and return to his wife.

The "Red Queen,"  as Lupescu was known to the Romanian people on account of the color of her hair, was the most hated woman in 1930s Romania. She was a woman whom ordinary Romanians saw as "the embodiment of evil,"{{Sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} in the words of the British historian Rebecca Haynes. Princess Helen was widely viewed as the wronged woman, while Lupescu was seen as the ''femme fatale'' who had stolen Carol away from the loving arms of Helen. Lupescu was Roman Catholic, but because of her parents' background, she was widely viewed as Jewish. Lupescu's personality did not win her many friends, as she was arrogant, pushy, manipulative, and extremely greedy, with an insatiable taste for buying the most expensive French clothes, cosmetics, and jewelry.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|pp=94–95}} At a time when many Romanians were suffering from the [[Great Depression in Romania]], Carol's habit of indulging Lupescu's expensive tastes caused much resentment, with many of Carol's subjects grumbling that the money would have been better spent on alleviating poverty in the kingdom. Further adding to Lupescu's immense unpopularity, she was a businesswoman who used her connections to the Crown to engage in dubious transactions that usually involved large sums of public money – going into her pocket.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=108}} However, the contemporary viewpoint that Carol was a mere puppet of Lupescu is incorrect, and Lupescu's influence on political decision-making was much exaggerated at the time.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|pp=94–95}} Lupescu was primarily interested in enriching herself to support her extravagant lifestyle and had no real interest in politics, beyond protecting her ability to engage in corruption.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|pp=94–95}} Unlike Carol, Lupescu had utterly no interest in social policy or foreign affairs and was such a self-absorbed narcissist that she was unaware of just how unpopular she was with ordinary people.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|p=95}} Carol by contrast was interested in the affairs of the state, and though he never sought to deny his relationship with Lupescu, he was careful not to display her too much in public, as he knew that this would bring him unpopularity.{{sfn|Bucur|2007|p=95}}

Carol sought to play the National Liberals, the National Peasant Party, and the Iron Guard off against each other with the ultimate aim of making himself master of Romanian politics and disposing of all the parties in Romania.{{sfn|Payne|1996|p=278}} With regards to the [[Iron Guard|Legion of the Archangel Michael]], Carol had no intention of ever letting the Iron Guard come to power, but insofar as the Legion was a disruptive force that weakened both the National Liberals and the National Peasants, Carol welcomed the rise of the Iron Guard in the early 1930s, and he sought to use the Legion for his own ends.{{sfn|Payne|1996|p=278}} On December 29, 1933, the Iron Guard assassinated the National Liberal prime minister, [[Ion G. Duca]], which led to the first of several bans placed on the Legion.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=110}} The assassination of Ion Duca, which was Romania's first political murder since 1862, shocked Carol, who saw the willingness of Codreanu to order the assassination of the Prime Minister as a clear sign that the egomaniacal Codreanu was getting out of control and that Codreanu would not play the role assigned by the king as a disruptive force threatening the National Liberals and National Peasants alike.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=110}} In 1934, when Codreanu was brought to trial for ordering Duca's assassination, he used as his defense the argument that the entire Francophile elite was completely corrupt and not properly Romanian, and as such, Duca was just another corrupt National Liberal politician who deserved to die. The jury acquitted Codreanu, an act that worried Carol as it showed that Codreanu's revolutionary message that the entire elite needed to be destroyed was winning popular approval. In the spring of 1934, after Codreanu was acquitted, Carol, together with Bucharest police prefect Gavrilă Marinescu and Madame Lupescu, were involved in a half-hearted plot to kill Codreanu by poisoning his coffee, an effort that was abandoned before being attempted.{{sfn|Haynes|2007|p=111}} Until 1935, Carol was a leading contributor to the "Friends of the Legion", the group that collected contributions to the Legion.{{sfn|Haynes|1999|p=705–706}} Carol only stopped contributing to the Legion after Codreanu started calling Lupescu a "Jewish whore". Carol's image was always that of "the playboy king", a hedonistic monarch more interested in womanizing, drinking, gambling, and partying, than in affairs of state, and to the extent that he cared about politics, Carol was viewed as a scheming, dishonest man only interested in wrecking the democratic system to seize power for himself.<ref name="Boia">{{cite book| last=Boia |first=Lucian |title=History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness |location=Budapest |publisher=Central European University Press |date=2001 |pages=204–205}}</ref>