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HM King Simeon of the Bulgarians

By 28th July 2022Speakers-2022

HM KING SIMEON II OF THE BULGARIANS, 85, the last surviving WW2 head of state, reigned as king and later ruled as elected prime minister of his country – an almost unique record in the twentieth century. Upon the sudden death of Tsar Boris III in 1943, the 6-year old Simeon acceded to the throne as Tsar Simeon II, forced to abdicate in 1946 as Stalin established a Communist dictatorship that lasted until 1991. The king went into exile in Egypt and Spain. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Simeon Saxe-Coburg returned to Bulgaria, founded his own political party – the National Movement Simeon II (NMSII) – and, over fifty years after his abdication, in July 2001, he won a landslide to become much-respected prime minister of Bulgaria until 2005.