by Scott Mehl © Unofficial Royalty 2014
Margareta, Custodian of the Crown of Romania; Credit – Wikipedia
Margareta, Custodian of the Crown of Romania
Margareta, Custodian of the Crown of Romania is the eldest of the five daughters of King Mihai I of Romania and Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma and has claimed the headship of the House of Romania since her father’s death on December 5, 2017. She was born on March 26, 1949, in Lausanne, Switzerland, where her father was living in exile. Her parents had met in London during the festivities of the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh in 1947 and married the following year. The Duke of Edinburgh was one of Margareta’s godparents.
Margareta has four younger sisters:
- Princess Elena of Romania (born 1950), married (1) Robin Medforth-Mills, had two children, divorced (2) Alexander McAteer, no children
- Princess Irina of Romania, (born 1953), married (1) John Kreuger, had two children, divorced (2) John Wesley Walker, no children; In 2013, Irina was stripped of her title, styles and rights to the throne following involvement with illegal cockfighting and arrest. She was restored to her original royal style and title by her elder sister Margareta, Custodian of the Crown of Romania, in August 2020.
- Princess Sophie of Romania (born 1957), married and divorced Alain Michel Biarneix, had one daughter
- Princess Marie of Romania (born 1964), married and divorced Kazimierz Wiesław Mystkowski
Following her primary and secondary education in Switzerland, Margareta had planned to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Artes in Paris. However, she was persuaded to first spend a year in Florence with her grandmother, Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, during which she decided to pursue a more academic education. She attended and graduated from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. While a student at Edinburgh, she was romantically involved with the future British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Following university, she worked with several universities, specializing in public health policy and medical sociology. She then worked with the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development. In 1989, she returned to Switzerland to work with her father and causes relating to Romania. In 1990, she established The Princess Margareta of Romania Foundation to foster and support civil society in Romania.
It was through the Foundation that Margareta met her future husband Radu Duda in 1994. He was the director of an art therapy program for orphans, a program that was supported by Margareta’s foundation. They were married on September 21, 1996, in Lausanne, Switzerland. The couple has no children and resides at the Elisabeta Palace in Bucharest, Romania.
During the time of the Romanian monarchy, succession to the throne was limited to males, and therefore, Margareta and her sisters were not eligible to succeed. However, in December 2007, King Mihai made changes to the house laws to ensure the succession of the current family. He established the Fundamental Rules of the Royal Family of Romania, in which he changed the line of succession to allow his daughters to succeed, and named Princess Margareta as Crown Princess and Custodian of the Romanian Crown, and his heir as Head of the House of Romania. He has also publicly requested that should the monarchy ever be restored, equal primogeniture be used. Following her father’s death in December 2017, Margareta became Head of the House of Romania and is formally styled as Her Majesty Margareta, Custodian of the Romanian Crown.
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Margareta and her husband at the funeral of Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg in 2019
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