Prince Kiril of Bulgaria

Prince Kyril of Bulgaria, Prince of Preslav (Kyril Heinrich Franz Ludwig Anton Karl Philipp) (November 17, 1895 - February 1, 1945) was the second son of Ferdinand I of Bulgaria and his first wife Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma. He was a younger brother of Boris III of Bulgaria. In September 1936 Prince Kyril accompanied King Edward VIII on a whistle-stop tour of Bulgaria.

Present at the death of his brother, Tsar Boris on August 28 1943, Prince Kyril was appointed head of a regency council by the Bulgarian parliament, to act as Head of State until the late Tsar's son, Simeon II of Bulgaria, became 18.

Prince Kyril, with the widowed Tsaritsa, Giovanna of Savoy, daughter of the Italian king, led the State Funeral for his brother Tsar Boris III on 5 September 1943 at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, thereafter proceeding across the city to the main railway station where the funeral train waited to take the body to the 12th century Rila Monastery in the mountains. Thereafter the three consecutive governments made efforts to extricate themselves from Bulgaria's agreements with Germany, notably that which permitted their use of the railway to Greece and the German troops stationed along it for protection. A Bulgarian Delegation travelled to Cairo in an attempt to negotiate with the United States and Great Britain but failed, the latter refusing to meet them without the participation of the Soviet Union.

Despite Sofia's continuous diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, at the end of August 1944 that country declared war on Bulgaria and Soviet armies crossed the Romanian border. The Fatherland Front, a coalition of the Communist Party, the left-wing of the Agrarian Union, the Zveno group, and a few pro-Soviet politicians who had returned from exile in the Soviet Union, executed a Soviet-backed military coup on 9 September and seized power.

On the night of 1 February 1945, Kyril, former Prime Minister Professor Bogdan Filov, General Nikola Mihov, and a range of former cabinet ministers and advisors were executed. Their death sentences had been pronounced earlier that day by a "People's Tribunal."

Ancestry

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1= 1. Prince Kyril of Bulgaria
2= 2. Ferdinand I of Bulgaria
3= 3. Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma
4= 4. August of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 5th Prince of Kohary
5= 5. Princess Clémentine of Orléans
6= 6. Robert I, Duke of Parma
7= 7. Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies
8= 8. Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 4th Prince of Kohary
9= 9. Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág
10= 10. Louis-Philippe of France
11= 11. Princess Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies
12= 12. Charles III, Duke of Parma
13= 13. Princess Louise Marie Thérèse of France
14= 14. Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies
15= 15. Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria
16= 16. Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
17= 17. Princess Augusta Caroline Reuss of Ebersdorf
18= 18. Prince Ferenc Jozsef of Koháry de Csábrág and Szitnya
19= 19. Maria Antonia von Waldstein
20= 20. Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
21= 21. Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre
22= 22. Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies
23= 23. Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria
24= 24. Charles II, Duke of Parma
25= 25. Maria Teresa of Savoy
26= 26. Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry
27= 27. Princess Caroline Ferdinande Louise of the Two Sicilies
28= 28. Francis I of the Two Sicilies
29= 29. Infanta Maria Isabella of Spain
30= 30. Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen
31= 31. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg

References

* "Bulgaria in the Second World War" by Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975.
* "Boris III of Bulgaria 1894-1943", by Pashanko Dimitroff, London, 1986, ISBN 0-86332-140-2
* "Crown of Thorns" by Stephane Groueff, Lanham MD., and London, 1987, ISBN 0-8191-5778-3
* "The Betrayal of Bulgaria" by Gregory Lauder-Frost, Monarchist League Policy Paper, London, 1989.
* "The Daily Telegraph", Obituary for "HM Queen Ioanna of the Bulgarians", London, 28 February 2000.