Menu
Queen Maria is considered “the main founder of the unification of Romania, the country she assumed with all her mind and with all her heart.” Because there is no one else who speaks more eloquently about Queen Maria than Mihaela Miroiu, feminist theorist and activist, writer, philosopher and civic activist, we invited her on stage for a laudatio.
“In the country she has assumed with all her mind and with all her heart, Queen Maria has no monument as a diplomat. Unsuitable and unfeminine. The effigies as a wife and her statue as the mother of the wounded soldiers are the only public recognition. The memory of the sovereign’s merciful wife and that of the mother of six princes and princesses is enough. (…) The Queen’s body, like Ana’s body, is part of the wall of a masterpiece blamed solely on politicians. Of all the loves she was given, the only one she assumed as being absolute was to the Romanian people.
At the military ceremonies, organized on December 1, Romania’s National Day, which celebrates the Great Union of all Romanians, you can hear anything about anything, but nothing about why the Romanians from Transylvania wanted to unite with the Romanian Kingdom and who are the ones who did it possible, beyond “the people” and some politicians of the time. Something about Ferdinand, about I.C. Brătianu. But nothing more about Queen Maria.
Maria was well aware that she had to act as a sovereign, in a country in serious crisis, lacking historical virility. She was the daughter of Great Britain, moreover, she was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She came from a country that used to be ruled by queens, without burlesques and emasculation complexes, as in our Mioritic homeland myth, where monarchies were ruled only by kings. Faced with the lack of courage and historical sense of men in power: “There are no men in this country and I am ashamed to be the Queen of cowards.” So said the Queen, in a full assertion of her strong character.
Maria persuaded Ferdinand to do everything in his power not to sign the Buftea peace pact separately. This was the decisive moment for Romania’s recognition as an ally and winner: “Truly, at that moment in history, Maria was the only real man of Romania.”
Share this post
