Thread on an aspect of European history that I've recently been reading about, and as someone from a country with a republican nationalist tradition, find fascinating and baffling.

So back at the start of the 1800s old empires like the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires were falling apart and borders were shifting. Various new nations came into existence at this point.

The nationalists who were dominant in these independence struggles were often constitutional monarchists.
They wanted a state with a monarch and a parliament like, e.g. Britain. For them, a king or queen was a natural part of being a nation like having a flag, currency etc.

But if you're a newly independent nation that until now has been a province of a larger entity, you do not have your own royal family.
So they... borrowed spare royals from elsewhere and made them king!

This happened in Greece. They found a spare Bavarian prince and made him King of Greece. He came with 3,500 Bavarian troops and ruled with a coterie dubbed the Bavarocracy, while hellenising his name and dress. He made Athens the new capital. He was 17.

King Otto of Greece grew unpopular and was deposed, so they tried again.
This time a Danish prince was found, 17 years old again. He was made King of the Hellenes, had a long successful reign, and founded the Greek royal family that lasted until a republic was proclaimed in 1947

The same thing happened in Belgium!
They found a German prince from an old duchy that used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Leopold I was actually offered the Greek crown first but turned it down.
He was sworn in in 1831 on July 21, which remains Belgium's national day.

The current Belgian king Philippe is Leopold I's great great great great great great grandson (I think that's the right amount of greats).

For those interested it was first king's son who was the infamous butcher of the Congo, Leopold II, whose reign is estimated to have killed up to 15 million people there. "He was passionate about discoveries," according to the Belgian monarchy's website https://www.monarchie.be/en/for-children/history

Great excitement surrounded the arrival of the first royal to be born on Greek soil.
Crowds gathered at the palace shouting the name 'Constantine', the figure who by legend would reconquer Constantinople.
The baby was named Constantine I. His reign was ultimately ill-fated.

The importance of securing a well-born royal seems to have a lot to do with convincing the great powers of the day of the legitimacy of the new nations.
Like today, it was vital for French and German potentates to give the plan the nod!
Romania secured Carol I in such a way.

This odd practice may not be as alien to Irish history as it seems today! https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/a-prussian-solution-to-an-irish-problem-an-irishman-s-diary-on-prince-joachim-and-the-1916-rising-1.4308126

Gas https://twitter.com/Loukas_RS/status/1285892109187325953?s=20

These people are fascinating. Incidentally I saw some of the yellow vests marching in Paris last year carrying French royalist flags https://twitter.com/KHernmarck/status/1285919090129997824?s=20