Halloween Heartbeats For The Bran Castle

Bran Castle, built in the 14th century as a fortress to protect against the invading Ottoman Turks, was home to the Romanian royal family from the 1920s until the communist regime confiscated it in 1948. At the end of communist rule in the 1980's, Bran Castle was restored, dubbed "Dracula's Castle," and thus became a popular tourist attraction, with some 450,000 people visiting the castle each year.

While Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, aka "Vlad the Impaler", may or may not have ever stayed at Bran Castle, the Transylvanian castle did inspire Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula -- and apparently that is enough for millions of people.

Me? I'm not such a fan of horror & blood. But I am a lover of affairs of the heart & hearts themselves... beating with life they literally keep the beat of our lives, turning the rapid pulse of emotion into the racing hearts of passion and then the heated pumping of erotic acts... and how the heart stills with emotional too, be it the skip at romantic introduction or the pause when the heart is broken... I even love them long after they've stopped beating. So, I'd still go see the Bran Castle -- but not for Dracula; I'd go for Queen Marie of Romania.

While married to Ferdinand of Romania, Marie not only had an affair with Lieutenant Zixi Cantacuzene which produced a child "disappeared from history"; a longer affair with Barbu Ştirbey which produced at least one son, Prince Mircea, and possibly one daughter, Princess Ileana; but Princess Maria (called Mignon) might have been the daughter of Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia.

Certainly all of this had to have affected Marie's thinking regarding her son, King Carol II, and his relationship with Magda Lupescu -- first his mistress, and this his wife after his abdication -- but she publicly stated he had "sinned grievously". The irony seems to have been lost to Marie who only became further estranged from her son.

All such juicy things to further investigate...

And then there's this bit: Queen Marie made arrangements in her will for her heart to be kept in a cloister at the Balchik Palace -- her son Carol II dutifully carried out the request.



In 1940 her heart was transferred to the chapel at Bran Castle (the casket with Queen Marie's heart has since been moved to National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest).

Who doesn't want to pilgrimage to this woman's home?

If that's not enough to seduce you to, how about this quote from Queen Marie regarding a proselytizer:

I have met ..... I did not like him. He seemed to me to be a snob. He spoke of God as if He were the oldest title in the Almanach de Gotha. And all that business about telling one's sins in public -- He wanted me ... me ... to get up before my children and confess everything I had ever done! It is spiritual nudism! Ça se ne fait pas.

(From All I Could Never Be, by Beverley Nichols.)

In 2005, the Romanian government passed a law allowing restitution claims on properties seized by the Communist government of Romania in 1948. It was due to this law that, in 2006, the Romanian government awarded ownership of Bran Castle to the son and heir of Princess Ileana, Archduke Dominic of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, known as Dominic von Habsburg -- then a 68-year-old New York architect.

Because of Princess Ileana's questionable lineage, among other things, the property distribution was challenged; but as Queen Marie herself named Ileana as the one to inherit Bran Castle, the Constitutional Court of Romania and an investigation commission of the Romanian government reaffirmed the validity & legality of the restitution procedures used and in December 2007 issued confirmation that the restitution to Ileana's son, von Habsburg, was made in full compliance with the law.

According to the contract signed when Bran castle was returned, the government pays rent to von Habsburg for the right to run the castle as a museum (including charging admission) for three years. That period ends in 2009 and full rights to the castle & property will then transfer to von Habsburg.

Having no experience with running a museum, von Habsburg and his family have put the castle up for sale to those "who will treat the property and its history with appropriate respect."

I'm not sure my lusty love of history would meet approval; but as Bran Castle is expected to fetch over $135 million, I don't suppose I could afford it anyway.