Ferdinand I of Romania

Ferdinand I
King of the Romanians
Reign	27 September/10 October 1914-20 July, 1927
Predecessor	Carol I
Heir-Apparent	Mihai I
Issue	Prince Carol Elisabeth, Queen of Greece Marie, Queen of Yugoslavia Prince Nicholas Ileana, Archduchess Anton of Austria Prince Mircea
Names Ferdinand Victor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern
House	Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
Father	Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
Mother	Antónia of Portugal and Kohary

Ferdinand I (August 24 1865 – July 20 1927) was the king of Romania from October 10 1914 until his death.

Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the catholic Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was a son of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and princess Antonia of Portugal and Kohary (1845-1913), daughter of Queen Maria II and her consort, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha of Kohary, himself from that Slovakian-originated family. Following the renunciations of his father and elder brother, young Ferdinand became the heir to the throne of his childless uncle, King Carol I of Romania in November 1888. The Romanian government did not require his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy from catholicism, allowing him to continue with his born creed, but it was required that his children be raised orthodox, the religion of the sheer majoity of then Romanians.

Ferdinand's mother's first cousin Ferdinand I of Bulgaria, originally a prince of Kohary, sat on the throne of the neighboring Bulgaria since 1889 and was to become the greatest opponent of the kingdom of his Romanian cousins. The neighboring Emperor Francis Joseph, monarch of Austria-Hungary and as such, ruler of Transilvania, a province with a clear ethnic Romanian majority, was Ferdinand's grandmother's first cousin.

In 1893, Crown Prince Ferdinand married his distant cousin, Princess Marie of Edinburgh, daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and the orthodox Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia. Her paternal grandparents were Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Her maternal grandparents were Alexander II of Russia and Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. The reigning Emperor of the neighboring Russia was Marie's first cousin Nicholas II.

Their marriage produced three sons (one of whom died in infancy) and three daughters, his wife being reportedly adulterous in later stages of the marriage, so Ileana and Mircea are surmised children of Barbu Stirbey and Maria sired by Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia. Ferdinand reportedly wanted to avoid scandal and did not repudiate the legal paternity.

Ferdinand succeeded his uncle as King of Romania on 10 October, 1914, reigning until his death on 20 July, 1927.

Wilhelm and Ferdinand (British WWI poster)

Though a member of a cadet branch of Germany's ruling Hohenzollern imperial family, Ferdinand presided over his country's entry into World War I on the side of the Triple Entente powers against the Central Powers on August 27, 1916. Thus he gained the nickname the Loyal, respecting his oath when sworn in before the Romanian Parliament in 1914:

I will reign as a good Romanian.

Also as a consequence of this "betrayal" of his German roots, the Kaiser Wilhelm II had his name erased from the Hohenzollern House register and moreover had him excommunicated by the Pope Benedict XV. [1]

Despite the setbacks after the entry into war, when Dobruja and Wallachia were occupied by the Central Powers, Romania fought on in 1917 and stopped the German advance into Moldavia. When the Bolsheviks sued for peace in 1918, Romania was surrounded by the Central Powers and forced to conclude the Treaty of Bucharest, 1918. However, Ferdinand refused to sign the treaty. When the Allied advance on the Thessaloniki front knocked Bulgaria out of the war, Ferdinand ordered the re-mobilization of the Romanian Army and Romania re-entered the war on the Triple Entente side.

The outcome of Romania's war effort was the union of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918. Ferdinand became the ruler of a greatly enlarged Romanian state in 1918-1920 following the Entente's victory over the Central Powers, a war between the Kingdom of Romania and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the civil war in Russia, and was crowned King of Romania in a spectacular ceremony on October 15, 1922 at the historic princely seat of Alba Iulia in Transilvania.

Domestic political life during his reign was dominated by the conservative National Liberal party led by the brothers Ion and Vintilă Brătianu. The acquisition of Transylvania ironically enlarged the electoral base of the opposition, whose principal parties united in January 1925-October 1926 to form the National Peasant Party.

Ferdinand died in 1927, and was succeeded by his grandson Michael I, under a regency. The regency had three members, one of whom was Ferdinand's second son, Prince Nicholas.

Although it is said that during his life King Ferdinand was not a very strong-minded person and had no will, he remains Romania's most important monarch, a true ruler of "România Mare", who, opposite to Carol I, loved Romanian people and their country with all his heart.

Styles of King Ferdinand I of Romania
File:Stema mare a Regatului Romaniei.jpg
Reference style	His Majesty
Spoken style	Your Majesty
Alternative style	Sir