From The Death Row

Some who may receive a copy of this letter don’t know who is Danarel. Discreetly, I inform everybody that he is my guardian angel. When it was more or less clear that I should come into being, my mother, the CONJURER, who was also a first rung ESPER (extra sensory perception), a TRUE BELIEVER, and THE LEADER OF THE PEOPLE, did something that had zero chances to succeed. She was desperate. She knew that age and situation, the Second World War was on the way, would not allow her to have more than one child. She also sensates that the package coming, me, will be a quite violent guy, not very easy to raise. Also, she felt that things may go from bad to worse. They did, the Nazis left so to say but the Communist regime that came after was no less ferocious. Read More

From home to the shrine, a pseudo-historical trot

Seven days in a row toiling on an inept document aiming at defending a lost penal case took a heavy toll on my aching back and wobbled my already shaky physical-cum-mental resilience. Honestly, I was progressively bored into nothingness. Because nobody had asked me to forward the worthless document which was the by-product of an outbreak of sympathy for a charming lady friend, my superego took advantage, to flog me with strings of vicious and, alas, well-deserved deprecatory remarks. I always wondered if there isn’t coiled in any more or less decent male fellow a well-programmed composite of Perseus cum Holy George, a potential savior of endangered virgin damsels?  When I finally completed this self-punishing chore, I crawled out into the open on my knees, determined to breathe pure, fresh air and to encounter a thing of beauty or perish. I chose to stay alive still. Of course, the outdoors was only moderately fresh and windy, 3° C and 17k/h, at the moment that a sound Antarctic cocktail, of some 25° C under zero and a gale to capsize the ice floe was what I needed.  However, wisely happy with what I got I bravely walked on  January 2^nd, 2024   from my Bucharest abode near Cişmigiu Garden towards the Palace of Justice in whose neighborhood  I was hoping to find open some religious shrines I had never visited.

Delighted to find that I can still walk I emerged through a short but stiff slope into Calea Victoriei Avenue. This north-to-south oriented, not very long boulevard was for the last two hundred years the landmark of an irregular, sometimes chaotic,

often successful effort to replace the mushy Balkanic-Ottoman outlook of Bucharest with a slightly pompous European capital setting. Under another name, Calea Victoriei was opened in 1692 by the then-Wallachian prince Constantin Brâncoveanu.  As we will see later he continued to maintain a strong religious and political presence, quasi-immanent, especially after he became first a martyr and then a saint[1], in the city’s center until nowadays.  Its purpose was to permit the easiest connection from his  Mogosoaia Palace on the city’s outskirts, to the Curtea Domneasca (Old Court), the ruler’s abode in Bucharest. Calea Victoriei is an architectonic potpourri that doesn’t lack charm, firstly because of the width of the avenue, secondly because it has some interesting buildings and views, and thirdly, mostly because the time’s patina conveys aesthetic value to well-preserved old buildings. Not only black but also old can be beautiful especially when about edifices and artifacts.

Further on the Calea Victoriei, at the southern corner of the huge Romanian National History Museum, (once the Romanian Palace of the Posts), while I was taking a sharp left turn to delve into the core of the Old Center (Centru Vechi) I remembered with pleasure my visits to this ungainly and fascinating institution. For those who have an irresistible desire to understand and feel the essence of the narrative art of yore, the origin of today’s comics and manga books, and even the source of the awful socialist realism style of yesterday the National History Museum is the ultimate address. It houses, the casts of the 123 high-relief panels of the Trajan Column in Rome and permits through the unique, side-by-side, and successive, presentation of scenes a keen understanding of ancient warfare and nation-building. Because of the monument’s height, the original panels weren’t, and are not visible in situ. Also, and off the record, it is stupid to get torticollis trying to look at the two thousand years old, and worn by time and smog,  illustrations of wars between Romans and the Dacians, the ancient habitants of Romania, when we have nice ongoing conflicts with modern tools and plethoric, non-stop visual and verbal feeding.   In conclusion, buy a cheap ticket and consider some first-quality genuine casts so close to genuine art that nobody, except some pedants or experts of sorts can see the difference. Feel free to appreciate the quality of the naturalist storytelling style, (neither broken lines nor blotches of color), the magnitude of the personality cult (here Emperor Trajan), and realize how militarist Rome led to the creation of a nation after having ruthlessly and cunningly (and shamefully I will murmur) erased any tracks of the native local culture.

 Old Center likely a remnant of the first Neolithic settlement on the shore of the Dâmbovița River, gradually became the core of Bucharest and the stronghold of the ruling class. There is always a ruling class in Cuba, Korea,  Monaco, or elsewhere. It was there that in 1490, the famous and much appreciated by both tourists and locals Vlad III Dracula nicknamed, for obvious reasons, Vlad the Impaler raised his palace –known today as the Old Court (Curtea Domneasca).  Since the fire in 1718, when the rulers departed for a better place, the borough became a TRADING POST, a market to which chariots loaded with merchandise were arriving from abroad. The market fostered the building of several huge guest houses called hans, and the settling of a large professional population on the streets that astonishingly enough (by lack of imagination or else) were bearing the name of the trade the inhabitants practiced. During the Marxist communist regime considering the property a theft and the trade a crime the entire area, once a mercantile and crafts hub,  sunk into a rotten, dilapidated state. It changed again after the revolution. Curtea Domneasca, Vlad’s palace had become a museum according to the rule that hospitals, museums, cemeteries, and the universe are in the continuous expanse. Around it,  bustling with life the borough metamorphosed again into a giant eatery for people who like to gorge shoulder to shoulder, energetically socialize, and fancy heavy metal music.

CLASSIFIED INFORMATION OF GENERAL INTEREST

I feel sorry to cut into the natural flow of my post, but a weird occurrence compels me to share it immediately with the reader, a rare event that could jeopardize my mental equilibrium and, God forbid,  the termination of my blogger ambitions. While I was desperately plodding forward with my report upon the visit to Domnița Balaşa Church, which I hoped with God’s help to achieve once, I felt that  I needed a break from my useless creative activity.  For this purpose, I visited my neighbor Thomas, a self-thought genius physicist and outstanding madman, without anticipating the weird experience I would have. Unexpectedly, after listening to my pseudo-historical ambling among the shadows and the relics of Bucharest’s past he alleged with some irritating Chinese-like nasal resonance: You cannot simply talk of bricks, stone, and plaster for so long. A story needs some skin, sweat, and blood,  a whiff of a human dream  – he pontified. You have to speak about people. I am doing, I replicated fairly offended, in the last two episodes. It is not enough they should appear all over he argued and continued to bluntly interrogate me about the quality of my visual information regarding the living characters that I intend to evoke. Alas, I told him, not only the quality but also the quantity is close to null and except for an epoch engraving of Constantin Brancoveanu, and a fine portrait of Safta,  I haven’t gotten anything else allowing me to place a mug on a name. But that is too little he grunts with non-concealed despise. And your arena, isn’t the city? What about the founder of the town? What about Bucur Ciobanul (Bucur the Sheepherder)? Bucur? I murmured, without sparing him a superior sneer. He is a legendary character, he never existed. We can check he said, suddenly deadly calm and cool, fiendishly raising the right eyebrow. How? It’s better not to argue with people like him. You know he asked the phenomenon of entanglement of subatomic particles? I do, I said. Very well, I discovered that not only can two particles be connected across time and space, but huge sequences of particles can combine for a while in a configuration that could be or represent a person, an object, or a natural phenomenon. I looked to see if I was close to the door to dart at need, but my propensity to argue about this and that took the better of me and I heard myself hoarsely croaking. These configurations do not fall apart after a while?! Yes, he said with a cold smile, but they left some ghost images behind like the erased documents on a hard disk. I made a new genial invention, a Nobel prize brand, with tons of cash for sure in view. I know how to call back these shadows.  God, they are spending billions on trifles, and the hotels for the insane are closed all over the world, I wailed in the privacy of my head. I was too scared to use the outer space. What do you say? Let’s see Bucur Ciobanul some 300 years ahead of Vlad, around 1200 C.E, and Curtea Domneasca 44.4301° N, 26.1013°E place on the map should provide enough data for a quick checking he mumbled. How for God’s sake did he know the figures by heart?  Without paying the slightest attention to the curious extent of his knowledge and skills, Thomas bounced on his laptop hitting the keys with the disgusting energy of a Jerry Lee Lewis, rock pianist, and monster womanizer nicknamed the Killer. After a short while, with an absent look, he handed me a photo and muttered: What a funny guy Bucur, You know? A predestinated name, not!  Bucuria (joy in Romanian), and Bucharest, the little Paris, and then he laughed heartedly and creepily. I took the slightly, wet and burning photo with shaking fingers. While I was staring for a couple of seconds into nothingness at my turn, I heard someone roaring, it was me, “late to the dentist” and dashed through the door. After calming down with some difficulty at home, I dared to look again at the photo. It portrayed a shepherd, of course, a kind of rough character devoid of the slightest marks of joy or intelligence. A city founder? Maybe Thomas pulled on me a fast one? The scoundrel! And then I remembered Adam Riess who with two fellows got a Nobel prize in 2011 for discovering Dark Energy that since was never identified and very much questioned. Then, Thomas, right or wrong, can also fetch the Swedish glory and make a laughing stock of me for many. Even the sheepman could be real after all. The city’s founders do not automatically resemble Dalai Lama! If physics nowadays is based on unprovable assumptions everything is possible. Please keep this incident secret, avoid mentioning it, and do not refer to me.

Now, it is time to return to the main even if it can be sometimes tricky and stormy  With a trot that nervously became a canter, I dashed through the Şelari street, where a hundred years ago lived, and rode high the saddles’ makers, it was horse time, towards the Dambovita river famous in the past for carrying sweet waters. For some mysterious reasons, its waters are so poisonous today that I will not advise for consumption to my worst enemies. The Palace of Justice’s monumental presence on the opposite bank (achieved in 1895) made me reflect on the insane chance of the offenders, great crooks, or petty criminals, it doesn’t matter, to be summoned,  judged,  and even sentenced on such prestigious premises. I paid particular attention to the free-standing pinion housing a large clock flanked by two female characters personifying the Force and the Prudence.  They were too remote for my feeble sight to distinguish the features. The camera did a little bit better.  Eventual readers may eventually recognize who is what and get an idea of how Carol Storck the son of leading sculptor of then times, Karl Storck, managed to embody psychological features. Forget the Force who is not more at all popular today when even a toothbrush should be Soft, but please consider the noli me tangere glance that Prudence lets filter through her modestly lowered eyelids. 

When I realized I was late and making royalty, the Balasa princess, waiting, I rushed full gas away from the Justice Palace towards a kind of esplanade allowing the passage from the left to the right shore of the Dâmbovița river. The concrete-imprisoned stream was lazy rippling under the intense watch of a small company of desperate fishermen.  While squinting upon the river’s murky waters spotted by a few villain ducks and some small floating islands of domestic refuse I realized that some three hundred years ago the passage from shore to shore was made possible by the since longly vanished wooden

  Bridge of Misers, (Podul Calicilor). The misers were waiting for silver change thrown at their intention from the windows of luxurious boyar carriages crossing the bridge. Deeply touched by this example of direct charity contrasting with the suspect ONG distribution of money and goods that they didn’t produce and that they vigorously skim into their extravagant wages I took a sharp turn left and marched slightly haggard into the Street of the Holly Apostles (Strada Sfintii Apostoli).  The Principal pitied my wandering and let me discover after barely ten meters a glorious fossil inserted like a shining carbuncle into a ring of ponderous, would-be-modular, off-white, towering, and somehow asinine, ex-communist residential blocks. It was the neo-Byzantine Domnița Balaşa church. 

[1] I am fascinated by the transformation of a regular Homo sapiens sapiens (the modern man) from an ambiguous character (a mixture of Eros and Thanatos) into a saint. For the moment, I have identified two recurrent features of this extreme mutation.  Firstly, royal families, when compared to the rest of the population, have furnished an astonishing number of saints. The intriguing fact that they also counted a striking number of vicious villains, I suggest, is beyond the point. Secondly, there is the fantastic role played by a traitor who does anything to harm the just without doubting that he is carrying him to eternal glory. I don’t want to sound irreverent, but one might say that without his cousin Stefan’ schemes, Constantin would never have received the nod, the nimbus! Do you agree?

The cute phoenix

If the functional identity of the Domnița Bălaşa church, as a real shrine, even as a royal shrine is unquestionable, my haste to label it a neo-Byzantine fossil was much less justified than it seemed. The towering dull, ponderous, communist structures, surrounding the church’s lovely plot, when compared to the church itself shining like a brand-new car fresh off the assembly line,  basically ageless and in high-performing mode, already show wear far beyond their age. Give them another 25 years and they will undoubtedly called fossils. Off the record, the church just got a massive expensive facelift thanks to the lavish contribution from the  C.E. which the locals claim is the major cash-cow provider for cultural endeavors, the sports betting industry, and significant political corruption.

My obsession with taxonomy, always seeking the right name for everything, failed by a hair to land me into trouble. Even before arriving on-site, I called the church architecture’s neo-Byzantine relying on some uncensored information I took from a cheap guide much more readable (but reliable?) than the boring hefty ones. I also believe that 99% of all Romanian churches. exhibit some generic hallmarks of the Byzantine style. This assumption was silly as I must admit that I haven’t seen more than 0.1% of  Romanian churches in my restless wandering life. Only in my drowsy, dirty, small, and ugly hometown, lying in the middle of nowhere, there were about  100 churches and at least as many pubs. Alas, many of the morning customers of the first set of facilities, were getting into a BUI (behaving under the influence) syndrome after a prolonged and intense visit to the second set in the late afternoon.  However, I didn’t step into more than two or three honorable precints out of a pool of a hundred because of my altricial unrecommendable conduct of agitated brat, bloody jew, and precocial atheist…Let’s say that I didn’t probably feel the call!

Imagine my embarrassment when I was informed, I forget by whom, that Domnita Bălaşa was actually “cast”  into a Neo-Romanesque and Gothic Revival style. Both! After the shock, I resolved that at my age I wouldn’t come to grips with new architectural styles, that could be as insignificant as some worthless variations on Goldberg Variations. So, I will visit the

church on my right foot, trusting my insight, and emphasizing its Byzantine character and aura. The invasive architectural features, which I can say from the beginning are not structural or the unfortunate straying from the classic Byzantine canon will be briefly reported to avoid extra confusion to eventual readers.

I see the church built of traditional bricklayers, [1]using semicircular arches only, having fine columns with elaborate capitals, and proudly exhibiting a crisp quincunx of five domes, a distinctive mark of the Byzantine style.  [2]Four domes, one at each corner top four cylindrical towers, called lanterns, while a major dome (no joke) hovers upon the crossing, the area defined by the encounter of the church’s nave and transept spaces.

The finely articulated church space setting preceded by a moderate steps flight comprises an open western columnar porch, a unique nave composed first of functional space -the narthex, second of the nave proper, and third of its expansion after the crossing into a choir.  A complex, shining, flashy, and light reflecting rood screen (iconostasis)  separates the crossing from the altar housing choir that ends within the main eastern apse space. Finally, two smaller apses are flanking the northern and southern sides of the crossing. The iconostasis together with the clerestory type piercing of the walls (mehr licht), the sparing use of marble enhancing doors and window frames, and the opulent running corniche girdling the ensemble should encourage one, me for example, to claim neo-Byzantine loudly. Alas, the obvious in a matter of style can be very treacherous.

The Domnita  Bălaşa church interior is gorgeous and dreamlike. It emanates faith and elevation and it is lavishly decorated with quality cult images of the artifact type more than fine arts that encourage piety and trust in God, at least during the holy

days. The staff is polite, soft speaking, even slightly unctuous, gently relating to parishioners and visitors equally. Even on a mundane day, the confession booths were rarely vacant indicating that mischief is still occurring around and the institution’s propensity to offer free-of-charge (think of the cost on a psychiatrist’s couch) psychological support for various types of sin.

 I must admit that the church does not have a sine-qua-non Byzantine Greek cross-ground plan and lacks the mandatory wall mosaics typical of Byzantine architecture. Sincerely dismayed to see my keen analysis falling flat and short overmatched by partisan local historians I decided that the main issue of the post is not style but the church’s ontogenesis, the various phases of its coming into being, its wanning and waxing episodes. Therefore, I conclude that the church’s uniqueness relies on its complex story, akin to a Phoenix holy bird rising from ashes, on the dramatic tale of its founder, and the striking quality of the statuary.

 Princess Bălaşa, the church’s founder,  was the daughter of the prince Constantin  Brȃncoveanu who ruled Walachia for twenty-six years from 1688 to 1714.  It was a rare long reign as the Turks who controlled the principality believed that good money should change hands often. They were generally selling the throne two or three times during a decade for 2000 gold purses for each run. Consequently, the mountainous Romanian gold veins became a remote souvenir. Being Papa Brȃncoveanu a particularly shrewd and skilled politician, he stayed a long time in charge, enjoyed a prolonged peace period, fathered eleven children, fostered a refined (neo-byzantine of course) architectural style, got full gas into construction mode, especially religious edifices, and built a dense network of friendly relationships with the European policymakers.

Of course, in-between he accumulated a fabulous fortune. In 1714 the Turks rightly suspecting Brȃncoveanu of collusion with the Russians before, during, and after the battle of Stanilesti (1710), arrested him and his four sons, and seized the visible part of his fortune. [3]All this seems fair enough from the Turkish side and ethics, being them what they were, but the motive for the delay is still mysterious.  Why did they wait three years before crushing the poor prince for the high treason crime? Never mind, the Turks chronically suffering of  Auri Sacra Fames brought the prince and his sons to Constantinople, brutally tortured them until fed up by the stubborn refusal of the Wallachs to divulge the whereabouts of the prince’s famous hidden treasure hacked them to pieces, and threw the dismembered bodies in the Bosphorus waters. Shortly after, Brȃncoveanu’s wife and daughter were also arrested.  The young girl, Princess Balasa was detained first at Ceauş Emini,  the women’s prison, and then at the Sultan’s Harem at Topkapi. At her turn, she was submitted vainly to the question, what suggests that the Turkish were not practicing genre discrimination on torture matter and convinced me, that there was not any hidden treasure whatsoever, because too many people died without to pip a word.

Ransomed by relatives and friends, the princess returned to Bucharest where she and her husband  Manolache Lambrino (Rangabe) built the first church on their estate. A facility for family use only, the church may have had three naves, was likely built by    Italian workers, got ruined by repetitive earthquakes and Dâmbovița’s river floodings, and was demolished in 1871. In 1750 the childless widowed princess Bălaşa proceeded to construct a new church, by the side of the old one, open to the community now. Built on the same shaky and soaked ground in the so-called Wallachian style, a neo-Byzantine variant, this church had to be demolished in 1838. By then, Princess Bălaşa who passed away in 1751, was a long time gone, but her contribution to the community, which included beyond the staunch religious projects a home for old people and a grammar school for the very young, continues to speak on her behalf and keep alive her memory until today. 

She was followed by Safta Brȃncoveanu, another outstanding woman, the generous and unique sponsor of the third version of Domnita Bălaşa church achieved in 1842. The church built in Gothic Revival style was a larger edifice than the previous ones and it had, it sounds familiar,  to be torn down in 1881. Safta, a widow at the rise of the church, was married to Grigore Brancoveanu, the last male descendent of the Constantinople martyr and saint, Constantin Brancoveanu, the father of Princess Bălaşa. Equally dividing her attention between spiritual needs and material necessities, Safta founded the large Brȃncovenesc Hospital (1838).  The hospital was demolished after being renovated in 1984, by Ceausescu’s “mistake” or “whim”.  Mistake it was and a massive one because Safta inserted in her testament a terrible curse aimed at whoever will imperil her outstanding philanthropies for the sake of which she liquidated her entire huge fortune and lived as a nun in a monastery cell for the last 17 years of her life. Do not mess with Safta boy! The sour end of Ceausescu is the ultimate proof of the irreducible and irremediable quality of the malediction.

The raising of the new church (and for the moment last), began immediately after the 1881 demolition and the new Phoenix was “on the spot” by 1885 already. By this time Romania was valiantly stepping into modernity. A great team of architects and artists participated, Romanian and foreigners, in both construction and decoration. Let’s now, in an ecumenical frame of mind, check the architectural features suggesting or even justifying a stylistic profile going beyond my initial neo-Byzantine appellation.

As Gothic Revival is the matter Domnita Bălaşa church displays a gable roof, a small nice rosette within the western wall, and a rich sequence of stained glass windows made in Germany. However ogival arches and flying buttresses the sine-qua-non Gothic style features are missing. Does the Gothic Revival appellation rely on this tiny rosette recalling, no offense intended, a bull-eye? I prefer not to elaborate, as I will not elaborate on the magnificent high-perched side pulpit that had a quite torturous historical development in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Alas, for reasons of compulsive sharing and political correctness, the modern liturgical officiants avoid climbing up and separating from the dear flock!

If somebody insists, and for equilibrium reasons only, I may suggest that the semicircular arches I pretended previously to be of Byzantine origin, could be (why not?) some cute embodiments of the neo-Romanesque architectural language, that started in Germany as Rundbogenstil (round arch style) on the eve of the XIX century. Its major representative, God only knows why, was a certain Mr. Hübsch (meaning cute in English). And isn’t “cute” the best qualifier of  Domnita Balasa church?  To stay on the safe side   I propose again to consider the architectural outcome as a stylistic potpourri, which is between us, no offense intended, the hallmark of the Romanian Culture as a whole. 

 Even if I am not sure about how the funds were channeled and if they were state money or personal money it is certain that the royal family, especially the king, was deeply involved in a much more ambitious scenario than the previous ones. In 1881 Carol I, the most successful of all the Hohenzollerns, until then prince of Romania, became king. Armed with a silver trowel and flanked by the beautiful queen Elisabeth, aka Carmen Sylva, poetess, and national idol, he lays the cornerstone. The king and the queen, seemingly “de facto” and “de jure” founders, got forever a couple of stalls at the left of the altar Of course, they proudly planted upon the Hohenzollern’s coat-of-arms conferring the church a Royal Chapel aura.

As you can learn from the Duchess of Sussex who sells house goods through her company American Riviera Orchard the coat-of-arms is nowadays replaced by the logo brand. And her logo brand is second to none! I am glad to know that royalty and trading became, so to say, good bed partners. I am still puzzled about whose behinds would be honored to land on King Carol I and Queen Elizabeth’s seats right now! Prince Radu ex Duda and wife?[4] So far so good the church functions, full gas, as a prestigious cult platform for the community at large, and as a specific ritual facility for the elite only, provided the beneficiaries are alive. For funerary services, one should seek another venue.

[1] If pressured I will avow that I have seen the bricklayers, a hallmark of the Byzantine style, much more with the mind’s eyes than with my external scrutinizing peepers. It could very well be the case but I cannot swear that the fairly horizontal laying of the bricks is structural (i.e. supporting weight) like in the old churches or decorative, i.e. laid upon a much more reliable modern concrete wall. O tempora o mores!

[2]Parrots, women, and architecture are the three great loves of my life. Two major achievements of architecture – the daringly curved ceilings and flying buttresses – struck a chord in my heart. I avow unbound admiration for the dome if the choice isn’t multiple. The passage from a flat ceiling to a curved ceiling, vault, or dome, isn’t a simple technological improvement. It instantiates a conceptual evolution, a qualitative leap in the architectural language. Byzantine architects didn’t invent the dome but its quasi-ubiquitous use and its persistence, after the end of the Empire, made the dome a hallmark of Byzantine culture. The dome at the factual level is a curved ceiling and at the symbolic level, is a stylized embodiment of the celestial vault. Its great aesthetic appeal is the result of the dialectic confrontation between its enormous quasi “floating” mass and the invisible upward soaring force that brought and kept it there. Most of the time the dome tops a square surface such as the frame of a church choir. The passage from the square shape to the dome’s circular base through a combination of round arches with curved triangles called pendentives is a fact of beauty It would provide the alert visitor with a spiritual apprehension of inert materials in tense relation, the eventual recognition of some sacred and lay scenery, often with a feeling of dizziness, and rare sensuous enchantment with, of course, a mandatory condition. Look up for God’s sake and to God’s glory.

[3] It seems that Brȃncoveany managed to play it safe for a long while until the repeated denunciations of his princely cousin Stefan Cantacuzino, who was targeting his throne,  convinced the Ottomans. Four years later the same Stefan, then Wallachia’s ruler,  together with his father and his uncle are hanged at Constantinople for similar treason accusations. According to the energetically nationalistic Romanian cultural lore, very fond of heroic figures bigger than life, the ascent of Brȃncoveanu to saintliness is justified not only by his martyrdom but also by his and his sons’ staunch refusal to apostasy. Either historical truth or legend I cannot judge. but I am forced to mention that his self-appointed illegitimate heir, Stefan Cantacuzino, was strangled by probably the same Turkish executioners,  without even getting the option to become a true halal believer! What I can say? This kind of incoherent discrimination makes me pull my hair out! 

[4] If King Mihai didn’t leave behind any male descendants after fathering five daughters, who beyond any reasonable doubt are not going to procreate further, his older half-brother Prince Mircea Grigore Carol Hohenzollern got a vigorous male and female fertile offspring out of which more than one can claim the right to indulge his seat into a royal stall! Considering that the relations between the half-siblings were reduced to continuous juridical warfare, the issue of the occupancy of ardently coveted places remains in suspension. 

Feeling in stone

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irin

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