My Son Mircea

She was a commoner, the daughter of an army officer. He was the Crown Prince of Rumania. Nevertheless, in the desperate and melodic tradition of Ruritania, Carol Hohenzollern and Jeanne ("Zizi") Lambrino met, loved, and decided to marry. Risking not only position but honor for the sake of his true love, Carol deserted the regiment that he was commanding on the Eastern front in World War I, bundled Zizi into a staff car, and eloped with her across the Russian border. In a Russian Orthodox church at Odessa they were married on Aug. 31, 1918. After the honeymoon, Carol's father, King Ferdinand, hauled his son back to Bucharest and sent Carol's bride into house arrest at a royal estate.

Nothing, vowed impetuous young Carol, would induce him to renounce Zizi. But Ferdinand thought he knew a way. The King had his courts declare his son's marriage null, banished Zizi, had the son she had borne declared illegitimate, and cut off Carol's allowance. Outflanked and outmaneuvered, Carol jot ted a note to Zizi protesting his eternal love for her and admitting the parentage of their son; then he dutifully married Princess Helen of Greece.

In the years that followed, Queen Helen bore Carol a properly royal son, Prince Michael, who twice reigned as King of Rumania. Carol himself tired of Helen and took up with a Rumanian officer's wife named Elena ("Magda") Lupescu. Carol was banished, returned to rule for ten years, and was banished a final time. In 1947 Carol married Lupescu in Brazilian exile, at the side of what he imagined was her deathbed, only to have Magda recover after the ceremony. Meanwhile, in Paris and in other continental haunts familiar to the semi-destitute outcasts of royalty, forgotten Zizi Lambrino reared her son Mircea and dreamed of the day when he might be declared Carol's rightful heir. Mircea learned artistic bookbinding and made his modest way by peddling his skill among the booksellers along Paris' Quai de la Tournelle. In 1952 Zizi died. A year later, Carol followed her to the grave. Their son Mircea, 35, was left alone with a baby son, who was, like Mircea, the relic of an impulsive and broken marriage.

Last week in Lisbon, where Carol had his last legal residence, Mircea got the recognition his mother had longed for. At the conclusion of a suit brought by Mircea Lambrino, a Portuguese court formally declared him to be a true and legitimate Hohenzollern, entitled, along with his stepbrother Michael and his stepmother Magda, to a fair share of Carol's estates, villas and funds. The only problem left was how to talk Michael and Magda out of the money.

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