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Boris III (January 30, 1894 – August 28, 1943) was the “Tsar” of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until his death in 1943. Although many sources use the Title of Tsar I generally translate the title of Tsar into the title of King. Tomorrow I will do a post on why I translate the title of Tsar into the title of King.

Boris was born on January 30, 1894 in Sofia to Ferdinand I, Prince of Bulgaria, and his wife Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma.

His father, Ferdinand I, Prince of Bulgaria, was a German Prince of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry. He was the son of Prince August of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his wife Clémentine of Orléans, daughter of King Louis Philippe I of the French and his wife Princess Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies.

Princess Maria Antonia Koháry was a Hungarian Noble and heiress who married Ferdinand’s grandfather, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

The previous ruling Prince of Bulgaria, Alexander of Battenberg, had abdicated in 1886 after a pro-Russian coup, only seven years after he had been elected. Ferdinand, who was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, was elected Prince of autonomous Bulgaria by its Grand National Assembly on July 7, 1887.

On October 5, 1908, Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria’s de jure independence from the Ottoman Empire (though the country had been de facto independent since 1878). He also proclaimed Bulgaria a Kingdom, and assumed the title of Tsar—a deliberate nod to the rulers of the earlier Bulgarian states. However, while the title Tsar was translated as “Emperor” in the First and Second Bulgarian Empires, it was translated as “King” under Ferdinand and his successors.

Princess Marie Louise was born in Rome in 1870 the eldest daughter of Robert I, Duke of Parma, and his first wife, Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. The couple produced eleven more children before Maria Pia died in childbirth in 1882. Later, Duke Robert remarried Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal and had twelve more children.

Boris’s mother, Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma, who was twelve at the time of her mother’s death, was brought up in Biarritz and Switzerland under the care of English governesses. Fluent in five languages, she liked painting and music. Her talents playing the guitar and the piano were judged to be well above the average.

In 1892, her father Robert I, Duke of Parma, arranged her marriage to the then reigning Prince of Bulgaria, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The negotiations were conducted between Duke Robert and Ferdinand’s mother, Princess Clémentine of Orléans.

The engagement was celebrated at the Castle of Schwartzau, the residence of the Bourbon-Parma family in Austria. Marie Louise and Ferdinand had never met prior to that day. Princess Clémentine, who was present on that occasion, described her future daughter-in-law in a letter to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom as “Unhappily not very pretty, it is the only thing which is lacking, since she is charming, good, very witty, intelligent and very likable”.

The wedding took place on April 20, 1893 at the Villa Pianore in Lucca, Italy, the residence of Duke Roberto in Italy. Marie Louise was 23 at the time, nine years younger than Ferdinand. The couple wasted no time producing an heir, with son Boris born nine months and ten days after their wedding.

Conversation to Eastern Orthodoxy

In February 1896, Boris’s father paved the way for the reconciliation of Bulgaria and Russia with the conversion of the infant Prince Boris from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a move that earned Ferdinand the frustration of his wife, the animosity of his Catholic Austrian relatives (particularly his uncle Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary) and excommunication from the Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII.

In order to remedy this difficult situation, Ferdinand christened all his remaining children as Catholics. Emperor Nicholas II of Russia stood as godfather to Boris and met the young boy during Ferdinand’s official visit to Saint Petersburg in July 1898.

As the eldest son of King Ferdinand I, Boris assumed the throne upon the abdication of his father on October 3, 1918 in the wake of Bulgaria’s defeat in World War I. Under the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly, Bulgaria was forced to, amongst other things, cede various territories, pay crippling war reparations, and greatly reduce the size of its military.

That same year, Aleksandar Stamboliyski of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union became prime minister. After Stamboliyski was overthrown in a coup in 1923, Boris recognized the new government of Aleksandar Tsankov, who harshly suppressed the Bulgarian Communist Party and led the nation through a brief border war with Greece.

Tsankov was removed from power in 1926, and a series of Prime Ministersvfollowed until 1934, when the corporatist Zveno movement staged a coup and outlawed all political parties. Boris opposed the Zveno government and overthrew them in 1935, eventually installing Georgi Kyoseivanov as Prime Minister. For the remainder of his reign, Boris would rule as a de facto absolute monarch, with his Prime Ministers largely submitting to his will.

Following the outbreak of World War II, Bulgaria initially remained neutral. In 1940, Bogdan Filov replaced Kyoseivanov as prime minister, becoming the last Prime Minister to serve under Boris. In September 1940, with the support of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria received the region of Southern Dobrudja from Romania as part of the Treaty of Craiova.

In January 1941, Boris approved the anti-Semitic Law for Protection of the Nation, which denied citizenship to Bulgarian Jews and placed numerous restrictions upon them. In March 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis and allowed German troops to use Bulgaria as a base from which to invade Yugoslavia and Greece.

Under public pressure Boris cancelled the deportation of Bulgarian Jews while expelling almost 20,000 Jews to the Bulgarian countryside to be deployed in forced-labor camps. In 1942, Zveno, the Agrarian National Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, and various other far-left groups united to form a resistance movement known as the Fatherland Front, which would later go on to overthrow the government in 1944. In August 1943, shortly after returning from a visit to Germany, Boris died at the age of 49. His six-year-old son, Simeon II, succeeded him as King.

Marriage

Boris married princess Giovanna of Italy, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Princess Elena of Montenegro. Upon her Roman Catholic christening, she was given the names Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria. Her older brother was the future (and last) Italian king Umberto II of Italy.

Boris and Giovanna married in a Catholic ceremony – but not a Mass – at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Assisi, Italy, on October 25, 1930. Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini registered the marriage at the town hall immediately after the religious service.

Their marriage produced two children: a daughter, Maria Louisa, on 13 January 13, 1932, and a son and heir to the throne, Simeon, on June 16, 1937.