Tsar Simeon walking through crowds

00:00

Davis: It’s a royal walkabout, but one with a difference -- a hereditary monarch turns republican politician -- a King who’s become a Prime Minister. Tsar Simeon the second of Bulgaria is the first Eastern European monarch to regain power since the fall of communism. And he’s done so through the ballot box, with a stunning victory in national elections last month. Tonight, an exclusive encounter with the King- cum- Prime Minister – a cousin of Queen Elizabeth through the German side of her family – the Saxe Coburgs. Simeon Sax-Coburg has had a story-book life.

00:07

Simeon

Davis: Your majesty there does seem to be very genuine , do you think, that’s appealing to the Bulgarian people?

Simeon: Oh about me? I don’t think there’s much, it may be about what we’re offering, maybe in a way the historic burden I carry, but that’s not my merit, it comes from my forebears, it’s Bulgaria's history but somehow maybe people see me in it.

00:50

Church bells

Simeon in church

Davis: While Simeon embodies Bulgaria’s turbulent history, he also embodies its hopes for the future -- of finally turning its back on the communist era and moving from the fringes of Europe into its prosperous heart.

01:21

Singing

Davis: It’s the extraordinary saga of one man but also of a country – paradoxically both religious and yet once a jewel in the crown of the godless Soviet empire.

Singing

Bulgarian countryside

Davis: Until 12 years ago, Bulgaria was Moscow’s gatekeeper against the western bulwarks of Greece and Turkey and a fiercely loyal member of the Warsaw Pact. Now it’s a vigorous democracy led by a victim of communism and a royal one at that -- one who dreams of restoring Bulgaria’s pre-war eminence as the Switzerland of the Balkans.

02:08

Simeon

Davis: The country’s suffered extraordinarily hasn’t it, there’s no question about

Simeon: Unfortunately we’ve been very unlucky.

Davis: And you’re being seen by many people as the answer to their woes, it’s a huge expectation on your shoulders isn’t it?

02:35

Simeon: Far too much and I say I only have two hands and a fairly tired head, but if we all join and really work and look forward and forget a whole lot of things and try and put this past behind us for good, chances are….Bulgaria came out of an extraordinary 500 years of Ottoman domination and really advanced enormously in those days with the technology we had then, so with today’s technology, my god, I think we can really come up with some pretty good and quick and good results.

Music

Davis: The King-cum-Prime Minister has set a deadline of 800 days to change the lives of his eight million charges for the better. And to do that, he’s assembled a team of expatriate Bulgarian businessmen, economists and lawyers to help steer the country forward. His right hand man and campaign manager is a New York real estate magnate who describes the King’s prime role as an international salesman for Bulgaria.

03:34

Super:

Nikoly Marinov

National Movement

Simeon 11

Marinov: As we know there is a lot of money in the world and few very good deals, we would like to make Bulgaria a good deal.

04:03

Bulgarian countryside

These people are children of socialism, they don’t know how the real capitalist system, what it’s all about, we’re here to tell them it’s not that bad, it’s good.

04:11

Marketplace

Davis: So the agenda is to plunge the country even deeper into the currents of the free market, and also swim with mainstream Europe by joining the European Union and NATO.

Streets of Sofia

Already in the capital, Sofia, are all the trademarks of western-style free enterprise. Yet the average state worker here earns a salary of 1,200 US dollars a year and for most Bulgarians money is in desperately short supply. It fuels a level of public corruption that pervades Bulgarian society from the top down and which the King has pledged to eradicate.

04:35

Super:

Jonathan Eyal

Balkans political analyst

Eyal: Almost any government official is desperate to get his or her hands on any money. One could imagine what the level of corruption would be if half of the national economy is put up for sale in one go by the same officials who are meant to administer the sale.

05:02

Stalinist-style apartments

Davis: Thanks to the communists, many people still have somewhere to live in the Stalinist-style apartments that dot the main centres, but everywhere are the derelict reminders of where they used to work -- the failure of the controlled economy and an entire system.

05:21

Chanting

Prime Minister Ivan Kostov

Davis: The outgoing Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, did what he could to revive the economy but all the razzmatazz in the world couldn’t save him.

05:44

Music

Eyal

Davis: Did Mr. Kostov deserve to die?

Eyal: No, he did not, he was probably one of the better Bulgarian prime ministers since the end of communism, but like every politician he ultimately had to carry the can for very unpopular economic measures that had to be taken, which basically eradicated inflation but also created a large measure of unemployment.

05:58

Streets of Sofia

Davis: while there’ve been five elections since the fall of communism, each of which has produced a degree of reform, Bulgaria is still in an economic rut, a jobless rate of 20 per cent for instance, that leaves many wondering whether democracy is all it’s cracked up to be. So what’s happened here is remarkable even by the topsy-turvy standards of Balkans politics, the electorate repudiating mainstream politicians, not in favour of the communists but someone the comrades toppled nearly 60 years ago -- a man who’s turned history well and truly on its head.

06:20

Archival footage of Simeon

Music

Simeon

Davis: We’ve seen pictures of you as a child, you and your aeroplane pedal machine. Do you remember that?

Simeon: Yes, indeed.

Davis: It seemed to be an idyllic childhood that you had.

Simeon: Till the age of six

Davis: Cut short by the death of your father.

Simeon: Then I became a grown up and that’s why I feel so terribly old, because I've been a grown-up since the age of six.

07:07

Archival footage of Simeon

Davis: Of all the fates that providence can deal a child, few can be as cruel as the one dealt to Simeon Saxe Coburg. Propelled in an instant onto the throne when his father – Tsar Boris – was struck down in mysterious circumstances in 1943.

07:30

Davis: There’s a very famous clip of you as a boy reviewing a line of troops.

Simeon: Oh yes, yes, yes one of our guard here in Sofia.

Davis: You seem much older than your age at the time.

Simeon: Hah!

Davis: It was thrust upon you, wasn’t it?

Simeon: Well I suppose so, but anyone would be in the same position as me.

Davis: How did it feel to inherit the throne under those circumstances, so young?

Simeon: Oh you know, a child doesn’t see it in the optic that I see it now, but I know it did impress me very much and the fact that people referred to be as they used to refer to daddy, well that suddenly shocked me.

07:56

Davis: Simeon ruled nominally for just three years before fate dealt him another blow-- forced into exile with the communist take-over of Bulgaria in 1946.

Davis: Did you have any inkling at that age that it would take so long for you to come back?

08:50

Simeon

Simeon: No, well I came back after 50 years minus three months. A child sees things differently, but what I never thought is that I would come back and live to see, and be able to be again a normal citizen of this country and to travel around it and visit places.

Davis: In exile, the king went first to Egypt and then to Spain.

09:13

Davis: During that period in exile in Spain, what did you do, because I've read accounts of you being a playboy, a successful businessman.

09:19

Simeon: A playboy? Good Lord, that's really the last thing. Everybody considers me such a social bore that that's a compliment now at 64 to know that I've been a playboy as a young boy.

Davis: So you were typecast… as monarchs in exile sometimes are?

09:36

Simeon: I was very closely watched and educated by my mother, who was a very strict person, may she rest in peace. And I was also very conscious of the name I bore.

Davis: Simeon Saxe Coburg did become a businessman and by all accounts a successful one.

09:55

Eyal

Eyal: He's been engaged in commercial activities, especially in Spain. and to his credit he is neither fussy, not particularly hoity, not with any snobbish affectations, he did try to make a living.

10:01

Davis: What sort of business are we talking about?

Eyal: Well, we're talking effectively about commerce business, import export. The kind of business that boomed in Spain in the sixties and the seventies, as the Franco dictatorship collapsed there. As far as I'm aware, it was all perfectly legitimate, and on the whole very successful.

10:19

Berlin Wall

Davis: As the King tells it, it was the night the Berlin Wall came down that he realised the tide of history was turning, not just for his country but himself.

10:37

Simeon: I didn’t think I'd live to see the collapse of the soviet empire, somehow I had the feeling this would go on and on and on.

10:48

Davis: and when it did collapse, how did you feel?

Simeon

Simeon: I was terribly moved. We watched TV with the Berlin Wall coming down, and two of my sons were there, and they said, 'Dad, why do you have tears in your eyes?' I said, 'Kid, when you grow up you'll understand what it means to me.

Cheering

Simeon in Sofia

Davis: In 1996, the then government – which was still communist, though elected – invited the King to visit Bulgaria. No one, least of all the King himself, expected the magnitude of what happened in Sofia that day.

11:20

Davis: How did you feel that day?

11:39

Simeon: I couldn't believe it, and I was so moved and then suddenly I recognised places, the bridge and the cathedral and the town hall and after 50 years, it was like a dream.

Simeon at press interview

Davis: The stark contrast between the urbane King, his Spanish Queen Margarite, and the existing leadership left an indelible impression in many minds. Here was a man who didn’t just look the part sartorially, but embodied the kind of person Bulgarians would like to become themselves. The crude edges rubbed off, dignified in bearing, modest in demeanour, an easy sophistication.

11:57

The King speaks seven languages fluently, crossing between them in this campaign with a deftness that would shame any other European leader.

Music

Public buildings in Sofia

Davis: The public buildings that once housed the royals remain in state hands, like the palace in central Sofia that shows clear signs of neglect. But two and a half years ago, Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court returned the family’s vast private holdings, and many thought Simeon would take the money and run.

12:45

Simeon: Sometimes we Bulgarians tend to be quite malicious, so some people started saying, oh well he’s happy, he’s got his property back, now he’ll sell it, pack up and go and stay comfortably in Madrid, and that’s when I started thinking, well before people get the wrong idea, let’s prove that we can live here and contribute to this society.

13:08

Simeon

Davis: And that’s what you’ve done which is an extraordinary thing in itself…

Simeon: I’m trying to, I haven’t done it yet, I'm trying to.

Music

Archival photographs:

Simeon and Father

Davis: And to us, the King reveals a remarkable personal agenda as well, laying to rest the demons of his childhood, as the golden haired prince whose gilded world crumbled one awful day 58 years ago. To this day, Simeon doesn’t know what really happened to his father Boris, and he’s still very anxious to find out.

13:41

Simeon

Simeon: I’d rather as a son expect that my father died from a heart attack and not from some strange poisoning or schemes or god knows what.

Davis: Because, as you know, many people believe he was poisoned.

Simeon: Yes, indeed.

Davis: Soon after coming back from a visit to Adolf Hitler.

Simeon: Yes, his last visit there.

14:06

Archival footage: Germany in the Second World War

Davis: To its cost, Bulgaria had sided with Germany in the Second World War, just as it had in the first. But by 1943, Tsar Boris had had enough of Adolf Hitler.

14:24

Simeon

Simeon: Well it was a very stormy visit because Hitler asked for our troops on the eastern front, which my father refused and also to deport our Jewish population, which he also refused, so it must have been terrible for him.

14:38

Archival footage: Germany in the Second World War

Davis: While the Jews of Bulgaria had been saved, Hitler was enraged at Boris’s defiance. Two weeks after he returned to Sofia, the Tsar was dead.

14:56

Boris’s funeral procession

So popular had he been that there were extraordinary scenes of national grief. Between the wars, Bulgarians had enjoyed a period of relative prosperity. This was the beginning of the dark era from which the country is only just emerging.

15:09

Davis: Even after sixty years, you don't really know what happened there.

Simeon

Simeon: Well, there's no proof, so I can't say yes or no, but I mean we've seen the heart and definitely there is a massive clot, so it could have been a coronary. Now, whether induced or not, this can go into all kinds of interpretations.

15:30

Davis: But it still may be the case that he was poisoned.

15:51

Simeon: Then we have to look for the qui bono, whom did this disappearance of the king suit most.

Archival footage: Adolf Hitler

Davis: The answer to that is easy. But getting to the truth of what really happened is the difficult part, and Simeon won’t rest until he does.

16:01

Simeon

Simeon: We've asked the different archives of all countries. The only one we do not have clearing yet is the documents that are in Moscow.

Davis & Oleg Gordievsky

Davis: As it happens, Foreign Correspondent can tonight point the King in the direction of his life-long quest. It’s courtesy of this man, Oleg Gordievsky, a former top-ranking KGB officer and double agent who defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1985.

16:23

Gordievsky

Gordievsky: I personally don’t know anything about it but what is interesting is that when I joined the KGB in 1962, it was after all only 16 years after the death of tsar Boris, people in the KGB showed a lot of interest to Bulgaria and the mysterious death of the king and discussed it quite often and I had a strong feeling that somewhere inside the KGB there was a precise knowledge about what had happened.

16:41

Davis: Because the king's looking for answers. This is a good place for him to go.

Gordievsky: Yes! And the important thing is not just the Bulgarian sources and east European sources, which helped the KGB to create the knowledge about it, but the German archives as well because when the soviet army, the Red Army at the time, conquered East Germany and Berlin, they seized tremendous amounts of the German information, Nazi documentation and that documentation was studied secretly for years and years and years and was also put in the archives.

17:17

KGB archive

Davis: To this day, the files of the KGB remain firmly closed. But Oleg Gordievsky is urging King Simeon to make a personal approach to Russia’s President Putin for permission to examine the relevant extracts.

17:46

Gordievsky

Gordievsky : There are very good chances that the KGB archive inherited from the MGB and SMERSH, they are now amalgamated, there might be some important information for Bulgaria and for the rest of U.S.

Davis: And for the king?

Gordievsky: Particularly for the king, yes.

18:02

Music

Archival footage: German army

Davis: The Nazis are known to have been experts at developing poisons that could remain undetected in the body for long periods. It was an art the communists also used to good effect more than 30 years later to kill one of the chief critics of the Bulgarian regime. In 1978 Georgi Markov – a Bulgarian broadcaster for the BBC was assassinated on London’s Waterloo Bridge with a poison-tipped umbrella. It was all done on the orders of the then Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhikov with the help of the KGB.

18:27

KGB Building

Gordievsky: So the KGB did what? They provided the poison they’d developed, they provided the weapon, the poison was put in the pellet, the pellet was put in the sharp end of an umbrella and the pellet would remain in the skin or the flesh if the umbrella is stuck into the leg or an arm of a person.

19:03

Gordievsky

Then they provided an operational officer who I know very well because he was the man who interrogated me with the use of drugs in 1985. So seven years before he went to Sofia to help supervise the help operation and one officer of the so-called operational technical department, which means technician really, engineer, who went with the weapon, poison and taught the Bulgarians how to use it, after teaching them that, the Bulgarians carried out the operation successfully in London in 1978.

19:28

Music

Bulgarian memorabilia

Davis: This is all that remains of that extraordinary period of Bulgarian history -- the baubles and memorabilia of its communist past now the principle items on sale in its free market, the ultimate of ironies. How ironic too, that history should come full circle, the communists driven off by the King they deposed 55 years ago, who then transforms himself into a democratically elected Prime Minister.

20:10

Simeon

All through this campaign, Simeon has been dogged with one big question, does he intend to restore the monarchy if not for himself but his heirs? The succession is already assured, not just with Crown Prince Kardam but his son, Boris, Simeon’s grandson.

20:40

Davis: I'm not in the business of upsetting kings… believe me.

Simeon: I wouldn't think so, why should you…

Davis: But a lot of people believe that you're being very evasive about this question.

21:04

Simeon: Well, let them believe it. I think we have to have a series of values and priorities, and this alternative is not in my priorities.

21:08

Davis: So you're not ruling it out, but you're not ruling it in, at this stage?

Simeon: Who am I to rule it out? That's the title which history has put upon me. It's not my property to say okay, take it away, or I throw it away forever.

21:20

Davis: So if it's the will of the people that you become the constitutional monarch of this country, you will do it?

Simeon: But again, it's something which is so remote in my thinking and in my views of what we can achieve or what we have to do, and have on hand right now, that I really wouldn't -- I'd rather not go into it, because it would be sort of speculation.

21:34

Super:

Jonathan Eyal

Balkans political analyst

Eyal: Of course Simeon denies it, but the reality is that probably deep down that’s what he’s after, he’s after creating a figurehead role of a head of state who can ensure that Bulgaria is integrated into Europe, but at the same time, not directly involved in the day to day politics of the country. He probably believes that his only way of achieving that is to prove to the Bulgarians that he comes back not because of his history, not because of his title, not because of his traditions but because of his capabilities.

21:49

Simeon mixing with public

Davis: So the King will need to be a successful Prime Minister first -- and whether he can stand the rough and tumble of politics is in some doubt.

22:24

Super:

Ivan Krastev

Bulgarian political analyst

Krastev: The first danger is that now we have very unrealistic expectations concerning the king’s movement. People really await a social miracle, they expect bigger salaries now, bigger pensions now, they don’t expect him to change the administration, they expect him to change their lives!

22:38

Davis: And is he going to be able to do that?

Krastev: I don't believe that anybody's able to do this…

Simeon

Davis: Certainly, there’s a problem emerging already. Kings just aren’t used to the blow-torch approach and I ended up upsetting Simeon anyway. He walked out of our interview when I raised the criticism made by his opponents that he was all style and no substance.

23:01

Simeon: That's the privilege, sir. I don't take offence personally.

Davis: You don't?

Simeon: I think that Bulgaria is worth a lot more than a couple of cheap insults. Thank you.

23:18

Singing

Davis: All over eastern Europe, the toddler democracies that have emerged from the ashes of communism are vulnerable to the only real form of political expression nowadays - the protest vote. Anyone trying to spoon-feed the electorate the necessary medicine to cure their economic ills tends to find it splattered all over themselves at the next poll. And however noble he may be, King Simeon will be no exception.

Eyal

Eyal: Everything will depend on how he handles himself in the next few months. If he’s able to project the image of an energetic prime minister, he may be able to gain some popularity, on the whole however it would be downhill for him in terms of popularity from now on.

23:58

Polka band in park

Davis: If that’s the case, then this real life fairytale could still end in tears at the next election in four years time. But right now, most Bulgarians have their fingers crossed for a happy ending.

24:20

Music

Credits:

King Simeon

Reporter: Graham Davis

Camera: Greg Heap

Sound: Kate Graham

Editor: Simon Brynjolffsson

Producer: Vivian Altman

24:41