Why Transylvania Needed A Queen

I'll be blunt, I do like royalty, but I can say that I can see a lot of faults in many of the past members of the various royal houses.

One such person whom I admire is Queen Marie of Romania, who transformed her nation, only it was during the Great War (commonly known as World War One.)  Before this time she was an irresponsible, and somewhat absorbed woman who wanted to be more than what she was.

She wanted a family, but was unwilling or unable to stand up to pressure to have her two elder children taken care of by people she didn't choose. While one can make the argument that it was a product of the time, and she was married reasonably young, she also had two mentors who she should have sought help from- her mother and grandmother. Both of whom were formidable women in their own right.  She did learn she was important, but she didn't learn that she had to prove why she was important.

That is until she learned from others.


She learned to lead.  Not as a leader with a specific title, although by this time she was a queen of a country which was fighting a losing battle, but a Queen who could lead and show courage to others.

Why did Transylvania need a Queen?

In 1914, Transylvania was not a part of Romania, but rather the Kingdom of Hungary.  It didn't have a Queen of Hungary since Elizabeth, the wife of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary- Franz Joseph was murdered in 1898.

In 1916, the new Queen of Hungary, Empress Zita of Austria, was crowned in Budapest but by this time she was Empress to a dying Empire, and would have little influence on Transylvania as a whole.


Transylvania needed a Queen, not of Transylvania proper, who saw its importance, and Marie did think highly of Romania's newest province, so much so she was crowned in Alba Iulia in 1922, almost eight years after she became Queen.

Had it not been for this war, and the fall of the Hapsburg Empire things would be different and people would see Transylvania in a different light, in terms of it needing a dynamic personality to bring more people to the area.

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