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King Ferdinand of Bulgaria (who was actually Hungarian, not Bulgarian) was born in Vienna, Austria, on Feb. 26, 1861, into the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Koháry family, a prominent branch of the German royalty and the Austro-Hungarian nobility. The family was quite wealthy and had extensive landholdings in Hungary and Slovakia, and Ferdinand grew up in the lap of luxury and comfort in the heady world of 19th-century Vienna. He had close family ties to other European royalty, being related to, among others, King Leopold II of Belgium, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Monaco of England and Empress Carlotta of Mexico.
In 1886 Bulgaria's Prince Alexander abdicated the throne and Ferdinand was elected Prince Regent by the Bulgarian National Assembly. Bulgaria was in danger of being occupied and absorbed by its giant neighbor Russia, and the inexperienced Ferdinand was not the Assembly's first choice as Prince Regent. However, every other European prince, duke and less royal personages to whom the position was offered wanted no part of it and turned it down. When it was (eventually) offered to Ferdinand, he accepted. To the surprise of most of Europe's royalty, however, he proved to be a capable and effective ruler.
In 1894 he married Princess Maria Louise of Bourbon-Parma. It was an arranged political marriage meant to solidify the country's ties with European royalty, as Maria was from an old-line Italian former sovereign family, and it produced four children. Unfortunately, she died in 1899 giving birth to their daughter Nadezhda. Ferdinand did not marry again until 1908 when, in order to fulfill his obligations as the head of the royal family and to provide a mother for his children, he married Princess Eleonore Carolina Gasparine. Both of Ferdinand's marriages were dogged by rumors of his homosexuality, or at least his bisexuality, and his frequent holidays on the Island of Capri--an Italian resort that catered mainly to wealthy and powerful gay European men--didn't help to squelch those rumors.
In 1894 the head of the Bulgarian Liberal party, which advocated the country keeping its distance from Russia, was removed from his post and several months later assassinated (an act blamed by many Bulgarians on Russian agents). Ferdinand believed that Bulgaria should have closer ties with Russia, and to that end he had his infant child Prince Boris (laer to become King Boris III) convert from the family's Roman Catholic faith to the Russian royal family's Eastern Orthodox branch of Catholicism. While that cemented the country's ties with Russia, it incurred the wrath of his Catholic relatives in the Austrian royal family, especially Emperor Franz Josef.
On October 5, 1908, Ferdinand declared Bulgaria's independence from the Ottoman Empire (although for all practical purposes the country had been independent since 1873), and proclaimed himself king. The country's independent status and his position as king was accepted by Turkey and other European royal powers. Four years later Ferdinand joined with Greece, Serbia and Montenegro in declaring war on Ottoman Turkey (a declining empire known as "the sick man of Europe") in what became known as the First Balkan War. He thought he could regain the Bulgarian territories still occupied by Turkey and expand his scope of influence in the Balkans. Turkey was eventually defeated and Bulgaria was awarded some territory, but Ferdinand didn't think that his allies had fairly divided the rest of the territory they had won with Bulgaria. In 1913 Ferdinand sent his army to attack his former allies Greece and Serbia in an attempt to secure more territory, but the country found itself under attack from neighboring Romania as well as the Ottoman Empire. In what became known as the Second Balkan War Bulgaria was soundly defeated, its army suffering heavy losses. Although the treaty that ended the war awarded Bulgaria a small strip of territory that gave it access to the Aegean Sea, Ferdinand was still not satisfied. In 1915, during World War I, he sent his forces against Serbia and Montenegro. The Bulgarian army fared much better in this conflict, however, eventually forcing Serbia to surrender, and Bulgaria took over most of the Serbian territory of Macedonia. In addition, because of its alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, Bulgaria defended the Axis powers, fighting off attacks from Allied armies based in Greece. This lasted until 1918, when a combined Allied army mounted a strong attack on the Bulgarians and decisively defeated them. The Bulgarian army was virtually destroyed, and to save the throne for his family, Ferdinand accepted responsibility for the defeat and abdicated in favor of his son Boris, who shortly thereafter surrendered the country to the Allies.
After the war Ferdinand went to live in Coburg, Germany, his family's ancestral home. While he may have lost his throne, he didn't lose his fortune; he lived quite well in exile. However, exile would prove to contain its share of tragedy for him, too. His son Boris, now known as King Boris III', died under mysterious circumstances shortly after returning from a visit to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Germany. Ferdinand's son Simon succeeded Boris, but he was deposed in 1946 by Communist rebels, who declared a "People's Republic of Bulgaria" and shortly afterward executed Ferdinand's remaining son Kyril.
Demoralized, dispirited and broken, Ferdinand died on Sept. 10, 1948, in his home of Coburg. His will requested that he be buried in Bulgaria, but the Communist authorities there would not allow it, so he was buried in the family crypt in St. Augustin's Catholic Church in Coburg.
