Romania lies in South-Eastern Europe. Its neighbours are Bulgaria (South), Yugoslavia (South-West), Hungary (North-West), Ukraine (North), Moldavia (East), the Black Sea (East).

     The area of Romania is 91,699 sq. miles (237,500 sq. km and its population, according to the 1992 census, is 22,788,993, mainly Romanian, alongside Hungarian, German and Gypsy minorities. About 55% of Romania's inhabitants live in urban areas, and the rest in rural areas. Gipsy minorities came in Eastern Europe more than 1.000 years ago from India and lived in tents all over Europe including Russia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Turkey and Romania.

     Romanian is a Roman (Latin) language with some archaic forms and with admixtures of Slavonic, Turkish, French and Magyar words.

     There is a wealth of folk tales, legends, poetry, music and dance passed on through the centuries. The main religion is the Romanian Greek Orthodoxism (86.9%). The other significant denominations in Romania are: Roman Catholicism (5%), Lutheranism, Calvinism (3.5%), Greek-Catholicism (1%), Pentecostalism (1%), Baptism (0.5%), Islamism (0.24%) and Judaism (0.04%).

     Romania is a Republic as a form of government.
Romania’s capital city is Bucharest, with an area of 1,521 sq. km and a population of 2,351,000 inhabitants.
The Romanian currency is Leu. The Romanian flag has three vertical bands – red, yellow and blue. The National Day is December 1 – in memory of the Romanians’ Great Union (December 1, 1918).

       Burebista's country, rooted in the former social and political tradition, was strengthened by the king's conquest of Greek cities, like Tomis, Histria and Callatis on the Black Sea shore, and by eliminating the threat of Celtic invasion. In this way, Burebista came to rule over the whole Thracian-Geto-Dacian world, from the Haemus Mountains (the Balkans) to the Wooded Carpathians, from Tyras (the Dnestr) to the Tisza.
       Controlling both sides of the Danube, Burebista was "the first and the greatest of the Thracian kings", as he is referred to in writing by Acornion of Dyonisopolis. The unifying centre of the Geto-Dacian state lay in the Orastie mountain zone (Sureanu) - a natural Transylvanian stronghold; there, Burebista developed a whole system of fortifications, which was to be continued by his followers Dicomes, Scoryllo, Cotiso.

       His successful unifying endeavour, which led to the unity of the Geto-Dacian people, language and civilisation, made the king feel stronger, a fact which led him into believing that he was capable of measuring his military strength with that of the Romans. He was supported by the great priest Daecaeneus. Intent upon taking advantage of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, he lent his support to the latter. Unfortunately, Caesar, emerging victorious, planned to take revenge on the Dacians in war. But his murder in the year 44 B.C. delayed an armed confrontation by some one hundred and twenty years. Shortly after Caesar's death, Burebista himself was overthrown by a plot of the aristocracy discontented with the king's absolute power. After his fall, the state weakened and lost part of its territory.
       The Geto-Dacians were to witness a new period of cultural and political prosperity when Decebal (A.D. 87-106) acceded to the throne. Geto-Dacian civilisation was by then at its climax. In the 1^st century B.C., as the Roman Empire was expanding, the Danube became the border between the Roman Empire and the Geto-Dacians. Dobrudja was already under Roman rule beginning with the reign of Augustus.

       Eventually, the Romans did declare war on the Dacians, after a first confrontation (A.D. 87-89) won by the Dacians, they waged two bloody wars (A.D. 101-102 and 105-106). 

       The Geto-Dacians were defeated after tow victories over the Roman Empire the one in 87-89 and the one in 101-102. 

       The Empire led by Trajan extended its bounds over the Danube and turned part of Dacia into a Roman imperial province. 

       Two monuments commemorate the events: one is Trajan's Column, in Rome, the work of Apollodorus of Damascus (A.D. 113), and the other is Trophaeum Traiani, at Adamclisi (A.D. 109).

       The heaviest burden of Ottoman suzerainty was not political, but economic. At the end of the l6th century, the tribute was raised steadily and demands for goods of all kinds, i.e. sheep, grain, lumber supplied at a very low price, had no limits; Constantinople had become dependent on supplies from the Romanian Principalities.

       An important stage in Romanian history was marked by the sway of Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), between 1593-1601, who was the first to rule and control, for a short while, the three Romanian lands, i.e. Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Michael the Brave joined the Christian League i.e. Austria, Mantua, Ferrara, Spain.

        He won the battles of Calugareni and Giurgiu against the Turks (1595) - to regain the independence of his country.     

       His seal, representing the united coats of arms of the three Romanian Countries, is a token to his intention to bring together, under one single rule, all the lands inhabited by Romanians. He would call himself prince of Wallachia, Transylvania and the whole of Moldavia. But the great powers - Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland - did not favour such a policy, so that the union was short-lived. However, the idea of unification was kept alive and gave fresh impetus to the Romanians’ struggle for the setting up of an independent national state.
       In the peaceful moments of their history, when they were not forced to strive for their independence, Romanians bent towards culture and the works of art. Imposing princely palaces were built at Câmpulung-Muscel, Curtea de Arges and Târgoviste in Wallachia, at Suceava and Iasi in Moldavia, alongside a number of defence cities (Poienari, Cetatea Neamtului, Suceava, Chilia, Cetatea Alba etc.) and beautiful monasteries (Tismana, Cozia, Dealu, Curtea de Arges, Neamt, Putna, Voronet, Sucevita, and many others), whose artistic value has been acknowledged worldwide. 

       The early 16th century (1508) in the Romanian Countries witnessed the use of print. Printing was to gain pride of place under the rules of Matei Basarab (1632-1654) in Wallachia, Vasile Lupu (1634-1652) in Moldavia, Serban Cantacuzino (1678-1688) and Constantin Brâncoveanu (1688-1714) in Wallachia. 

       Constantin Brincoveanu is well known for his beautiful residence at Mogosoaia, close to Bucharest and his tragic death in 1714, when he and his four sons where beheaded by the Turks for being a Christian. The religious and lay books printed by that time had a wide circulation throughout South-Eastern Europe and the Christian East.
       The 18th century witnessed the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Russian and Austrian ones. 

       The Eastern Question came to the core of European diplomatic debates. The Romanian Principalities experienced a period of political decline because of the foreign powers' involvement. In the wake of the Karlowitz Peace (1699), Transylvania fell under Austrian rule. The province remained nevertheless an autonomous principality.
       In order to curb the process of liberation in the Romanian Principalities, but also due to quarrels with the Habsburgs and the Russians, the Ottomans appointed Phanariot princes at their helm (the name comes from the Istanbul Phanar district, from which the Turks used to recruit their dragomans, i.e. foreign ministers. With the help of these new princes - actually high Turkish officials-, the Empire hoped to preserve its control over Wallachia and Moldavia. At the same time, the Ottoman political and economic supervision increased, and so did corruption. Notwithstanding its own decisions, the Ottoman Empire started to make use of the Romanian territories as if they were its own imperial possessions. Thus, at the Passarowitz Peace talks (1718), the Turks ceded Oltenia to the Habsburg Empire, which held it until the conclusion of the Belgrade Peace (1739). In 1775, the Habsburgs received a similar "donation" - this time it was Bukovina, to be followed, in 1812, by Bessarabia - the territory between the Prut and the Dnestr which was annexed to Russia.
And yet, the Phanariot regime (set up in Moldavia and Wallachia in 1711 and 1716, respectively, and lasting until 1821) represented more than a curtailment of the two countries' autonomy rights, as some of those princes espoused a reforming policy close to enlightened despotism, in an endeavour to bring Romanian society in line with the new socio-economic trends of Europe. 

       Important reforms were introduced, like the abolition of serfdom, or a series of legal and administrative changes. Concurrently with the Romanian cultural movement, the Phanariots would promote a neo-Greek style. Greek influence in the Church and cultural life expanded.

       The works of important scholars like Constantin Cantacuzino and Dimitrie Cantemir were continued in Transylvania by a brilliant group of Romanian intellectuals like Gheorghe Sincai, Petru Maior, Samuil Micu and Ioan Budai Deleanu, who gathered together in what was called the Scoala Ardeleana (Transylvanian School) movement. The outstanding members of this group would disseminate, through their writings, the ideas of enlightenment circulating then in Europe. They did their best to stimulate the Romanians' national spirit, by advocating the use of Romanian language and history in schools. 

       The national movement was backed by a social one, which culminated in the 1784 peasant uprising led by Horea, Closca and Crisan.
       The counterpart of the Transylvanian uprising, the 1821 Wallachian revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu, represents an important event in the Romanian people's struggle to assert its national rights. For several months, Wallachia focused the attention of international public opinion; the relationships between Moldavia, Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire underwent some changes in 1828 - 1829 which gave the Principalities broader autonomy. As the result of the Treaty of Adrianople (1829), a virtual Russian protectorate over the principalities was imposed, reducing the Ottoman suzerainty to a few legal formalities. The Russian protectorate, despite the promulgation of constitutions, increased the Romanians' resentment towards Russia. Liberal and Western-educated boyars demanded new political reforms and an end to foreign domination. As the Romanians' sense of self-awareness grew, and the formation process of the Romanian nation beyond political bounds acquired momentum, the social and national movements grew into a vast revolutionary process.

       The 1848 revolution covered all of the Romanian geographical area but Bassarabia, stimulating national consciousness. Moldavians, Wallachians and Transylvanians represented by Mihail Kogalniceanu, Nicolae Balcescu, and Simion Barnutiu voiced their decision to do away with the old social and political structure, to break new ground for national unity. One of the targets of the 1848 revolution was to bring the Romanian people close to modernity. Unfortunately, Turkey and Russia joined forces in the effort to stifle it, and eventually succeeded. The revolutionary programme, however, lived on as a national yearning and hope.

       The Crimean War (1853-1856) and its aftermath brought the question of the Romanian Principalities to the forefront of European countries. Their future political status became a concern not only for the surrounding empires - Habsburg, Ottoman and Tsarist Russia - but also for other powers such as France, Prussia, and Britain. The problem was being discussed at international conferences and congresses. Meanwhile, the movement for national and political unity gained momentum.

       The Paris Treaty (1856) stipulated that the Russian protectorate, strengthened in 1829 by the Adrianople Peace Treaty, be replaced by the collective guarantee of European states; it also stipulated the autonomy of the Romanian Principalities, which paved the way to the setting up of the modern Romanian state. In 1857, the assemblies of Moldavia and Wallachia voted to create a union of the two Principalities.

       On January 24, 1859, the historic act of political unity between Moldavia and Wallachia under one single rule, that of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, turned a centuries-old dream into real fact. The age of the Union featured a vast and comprehensive reform programme relating to institutions, economy, and education. In 1862, Bucharest became the official capital of Romania. By initiating these changes on his own authority, Cuza asserted the de facto independence of Romania, as the united principalities were now known. But his authoritarian methods earned him many enemies who, in 1866, joined together and forced his abdication.

       In February 1866, Cuza was obliged to renounce the throne in favour of the German Prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. After confirmation, Carol went to Romania, called a convention in order to draft the constitution, and visited the sultan of Turkey who graciously received him. He took the title of prince Carol I, and had a long and contented reign. A wise man, Carol promoted a policy that strengthened his predecessor's achievements, and worked toward completing national unity. In 1866, a new modern liberal Constitution was drafted, which was inspired by the Belgian one.

       In 1875, the re-opening of the Eastern Question dossier was a favourable moment for the modern Romanian state to reassert its independence. On May 9, 1877, the Assembly of Deputies, synthesising the aspirations of the Romanian people, proclaimed independence, with foreign minister Mihail Kogalniceanu making the decision known to the world. Romania's independence was further consolidated by the country's military involvement, alongside Russia and the Balkan peoples, in the anti-Ottoman war of 1877 - 1878. A Romanian army crossed the Danube and participated in the siege of Pleven and Vidin (now in Bulgaria).

       The San Stefano and Berlin treaties (1878) sanctioned the independence of Romania, later acknowledged by the European powers. These international documents re-established Romania's rights over Dobrudja, which was reunited with Romania.
Once Turkish control had been removed, Romania was able to organise its state administration on a modern basis. On 14/26 March, 1881 , the parliament voted a new form of government, the kingdom, with ruling Prince Carol and his wife - Elisabeth of Wied -, being crowned King and Queen of Romania (10th/22nd May, 1881). The king was given a crown made of steel from a cannon seized at Pleven from the Turks. As an independent state, Romania started to foster an economic policy directed toward increasing production. Independent Romania furthered a policy which allowed it to play an important role in the concert of European nations.

       The 1878-1914 period was crucial in the history of the Romanians. The economy expanded; politics polarised around two parties - conservative and liberal. In 1883, Romania joined the alliance with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. One of the reasons for this choice can be related to its strained relations with Russia after the decision of the Tsarist government in 1878 to occupy Southern Bessarabia.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Romania recorded an outstanding development of culture and science, which matched European standards. It was the time when great scientists like doctors Victor Babes, Gheorghe Marinescu and Constantin Levaditi, chemists Petru Poni and Constantin Istrati, mathematicians Spiru Haret and Traian Lalescu, historians Alexandru D. Xenopol, Dimitrie Onciul and Nicolae Iorga, and linguists Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Alexandru Cihac, Lazar Saineanu, Sextil Puscariu, came to the fore.
With Romania being an independent kingdom, the hopes of all the Romanians who lived on territories which were still under foreign occupation, i.e. Bukovina, Bessarabia, and most of all Transylvania, turned to their fatherland. The policy of forced assimilation in the above-mentioned territories had terrible consequences. Transylvanian Romanians, who continued to be dominated by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (set up in 1867, when the province was incorporated into the Hungarian Kingdom and lost its autonomy), intensified their national liberation movement. 

       Toward the end of the 19th century (1892), they drafted a Memorandum addressed to Emperor Franz Joseph. This important document, known also to the European media, put forward the claims of the Romanians who lived in Austria-Hungary; it made a sharp criticism of the Hungarian government's policy. At that time, the National Romanian Party played an important part in defending the Romanian national identity.
The foundation of the Romanian national state was completed during the final episode of World War I, a period of social and national unrest in Central and Eastern Europe. 

       King Carol I died in the fall of 1914, and his nephew, Ferdinand I, came to the throne. He was married to Queen Mary, a niece of Queen Victoria of England.

       After a two years' period of neutrality, in 1916, Romania joined France, Britain, Russia and Italy in war, with a view to liberating the Romanians from under Austria-Hungary's rule. The Romanians, ill-prepared, marched into Transylvania; German, Austrian and Hungarian forces defeated them, then pushed through passes in the Carpathians onto the Wallachian plain. Meanwhile, German, Turkish and Bulgarian forces pushed into Dobrudja. Bucharest was besieged in December, but Romanian forces continued to hold out in Moldavia. The Romanians won victories at Marasesti, Marasti and Oituz in 1917, but this was to no consequence, as they were forced to sign the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1918, and cease war. Romania re-entered the war prior to the armistice in 1918 and the Allied victory.

       After 1918, Romania made important steps forward toward strengthening national state life, by enacting major reforms: the universal ballot (1918), the land reform (1921) and the Constitution of 1923. Benefitting from large natural resources and boasting a constitutional regime based on a democratic system, the country recorded a strong upsurge of development. 

       The depression of 1929-1933 caused social unrest and instability within the country and paved the way for Carol, King Ferdiand's son, who was in exile with Elena Lupescu, his mistress. He ascended the throne in 1930, as Carol II, and brought Elena along. 

       A fascist movement was founded in 1927 by Corneliu Codreanu, who later renamed his followers the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard grew in strength during the 1930s, and King Carol had thousands of them imprisoned, and Codreanu shot. 

       In 1938, King Carol II abolished the constitution and proclaimed a royal government. As far as foreign policy - as represented by the great Romanian diplomat Nicolae Titulescu - was concerned, it militated for European security, with Romania playing a major role within the Society of Nations at Geneva; it also masterminded regional alliances like the Little Entente (1921), comprising Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Balkan Entente (1934), including Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey.
       In 1940, Romania underwent severe territorial losses: Bassarabia and the northern part of Bukovina were snatched by the Soviet Union (June 26-28), northern Transylvania was annexed by Hungary under the Vienna Diktat (August), while Bulgaria seized the southern part of Dobrudja i.e. the Quadrilateral area (September). This was mainly due to the fact that Romania had strained relations with both the U.S.S.R. and Germany, which joined together in the Ribentropp-Molotov Pact (1939), establishing the spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.
       The serious crisis of 1940 led to the abdication of King Carol II in favour of his son, Mihai I (Michael of Romania). In the fall of 1940, a Nazi military mission entered Romania. This situation, together with the hope of regaining Bassarabia and the northern part of Bukovina, and the danger of Bolshevism, made the government (led by Ion Antonescu) decide to side with Germany, and declare war on the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), and subsequently, on the U.S.A. and the U.K. Ion Antonescu became Romania's state leader. The military defeats after 1942 led to many attempts made by Antonescu's government and the democratic opposition to break Romania from the alliance with Germany.
       As a result of a coup d'état supported by the major political parties and King Michael's personal involvement, on August 23, 1944, the Antonescu regime was overthrown. Romania turned arms against Germany and placed its whole military and economic capability at the service of the anti-fascist coalition. Romania took part in the war until the May 1945 victory. After having pushed the enemy out of the country, the Romanian army fought to liberate Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
       The Paris Peace Treaty (1947), stating the 1940 Vienna Diktat null and void, made Romania re-establish its sovereign rights over Transylvania. But Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and the Herta area passed under Soviet occupation.

       During the 1970s, Ceausescu attempted to modernise the Romanian economy further, by investing huge amounts of money borrowed from Western credit institutions. Due to his grandiose development projects, the Romanian people were submitted to a rigorous austerity programme in the 1980s since Ceausescu wanted to pay off the country's accumulated foreign debt within a short period. The standards of living plunged considerably as Romania exported most of its food and fuel production. The populace was controlled by the secret police (Securitate) and the government, dominated by Ceausescu's family, squandered much of the nation's remaining wealth on megalomaniac constructions and feasts. 

       For nearly 25 years, Ceausescu's regime slowly dragged the Romanians into an economic, social and moral deadlock. All these years were dominated by lies, corruption, terror, violation of human rights, and isolation from the Western world. When communist regimes across Eastern Europe fell in 1989, Ceausescu resisted the trend and reassessed his unpopular policies. 

       In mid-December of that year, however, antigovernment demonstrations erupted in the country's cities, and, when the Romanian army joined the uprising against him, Ceausescu fled. He was arrested by the new provisional government, tried and executed (December 25, 1989).

       The former traditional parties - the Peasants' Christian and Democratic National Party, the Liberal National Party and the Democratic Social Party reappeared on Romania's political stage along with the Front of National Salvation (FSN) made up after December 1989. In 1992 the FSN broke up into two factions: the Party of the Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR) and the Democratic Party (PD). 

       Although the 1990 elections were definitely won by the FSN, in 1992 the results indicated a visible increase of the opposition political forces' popularity; in 1996 the PDSR lost political power, the elections being won by the alliance of the opposition forces, i.e. the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) and the PD. In 1990 and 1992 Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania; in 1996 victory was achieved by Emil Constantinescu, the candidate of the CDR, backed up by the PD and the Democratic Union of the Magyars in Romania (UDMR).

       A factor of stability and equilibrium in South Eastern Europe, Romania has embarked upon integration within the European Union and the NATO structures. In 1993 Romania became a member of the European Council and of the Partnership for Peace - a formula of cooperation between NATO and the associate states on their way to membership.
       Steps have been taken for the transition to a market economy based on privatisation. Beginning with early 1997, significant efforts were made by the newly set up government, with Victor Ciorbea as a prime minister and its other members from the coalition between the CDR, the PD and the UDMR.

       By the end of 1997, subsequent to disagreements between CDR and PD, Victor Ciorbea was replaced by another member of the Democratic Convention, Radu Vasile, who became a prime minister in April 1998.
Romania has continued to strive towards hastening the process of economic and political reform, towards strengthening democracy and its institutions.
       

       Romania has become a potential candidate to the negotiations regarding its adhesion to the European Union.

       A strategic partnership with USA has been set up and further actions were carried on towards Romania’s admission within NATO.

       Vlad the Impaler used to sign himself Draculea or Draculya - the Devil's son -, a name which was distorted into Dracula.
       Dracula's renown reached the West through the Saxons from the Transylvanian towns of Brasov (Kronstadt) and Sibiu (Hermannstadt), who often gave shelter to those who claimed the Wallachian throne. In order to escape the peril of losing his throne, Vlad would punish the Saxons. Sibiu and the neighboring area were pillaged and burnt down by Vlad, and many Saxons were impaled. The same happened to the Saxon merchants who came on business to Târgoviste.
       

       In fact, Vlad was called Tepes (the Impaler) only after his death (1476). He ruled in Wallachia between 1456-1462 and in 1476. In 1462, having been defeated by the Turks, Vlad took refuge in Hungary. In 1476, with the help of the Hungarian king Matia Corvin and the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great, Vlad took over the Wallachian throne again for a month. A battle followed, during which Vlad was killed. His body was buried in the church of the Snagov Monastery, on an island near Bucharest. His body lies in front of the altar. In 1935, a richly dressed but beheaded corpse was exhumed at Snagov, a fate known to have overtaken Dracula, whose head was supposedly wrapped, perfumed and dispatched as a gift to the Turkish sultan.

       During his life there were no thieves in all Romanian territory, large cups of pure massive gold could be found next to all the fountains all over the country and no one would have the courage to steal one.   

       They say that impalling was one of Dracula's favorite punishments, but he was not the only one who made use of it at the time. Other German and Spanish princes would do the same. He used the method for boyars, thieves and criminals, Turks, Saxons and those who conspired against him; more than once it happened that a whole forest of sharp stakes with enemies' heads would rise around Târgoviste, the capital of Wallachia at the time.
       Horrified by these atrocities, the Saxons printed books and pamphlets in which they told about Vlad's cruelty. These booklets also reached Germany and Western Europe, where Dracula became known as a bloody tyrant.
       In 1897, the Irish writer Bram Stoker published Dracula, which made Vlad the Impaler famous world-wide. Stoker read the stories about Dracula printed in the 15th and 16th centuries and was struck by his acts of cruelty. He decided to make him his character; he also read several books about Transylvania (a name of Latin origin, meaning "the country beyond the forests"), and thought that this "exotic" land would make a proper setting for Dracula's deeds.
       In fact, Stoker used Vlad only as a source of inspiration, since in his novel, Dracula is not prince Vlad the Impaler, but a Transylvanian count living in a mysterious castle where he lured his victims. His story takes place in the Bistritza area, and the castle lies near the Bârgau Pass (in the Carpathian Mountains). As Stoker had never visited Transylvania, most places and happenings were pure fiction.
Legend and true history about Dracula intermingle and are being kept alive by tourist destinations like the Monastery of Snagov near Bucharest, or Bran Castle near Brasov.

       He was a relative of the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, and he was also supported by Napoleon III. In 1881, Carol and his wife, Elisabeth, were crowned as King and Queen of Romania. Elisabeth of Wied was a German princess. She was a highly cultured person and a poet. Her literary name was Carmen Sylva, and she acted as a patron of arts and culture in Romania. Carol introduced a lot of important reforms and made modern Romania'a constitutional monarchy.
       

       In 1914, Carol died, and his successor was Ferdinand, his brother's son. He became King Ferdinand I (1914-1927); he married Maria (Mary), niece of Queen Victoria. Although a German officer and a member of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family, Ferdinand joined the Entente (France, Russia, U.K.) during the First World War, and, in 1922, he and Maria were crowned at Alba Iulia as monarchs of Greater Romania.
       The son of Ferdinand, Carol, was a controversial figure. He enjoyed adventures and a life of luxury. In 1920, he married Elena (Helen) of Greece and in the next year a boy was born. His name was Mihai (Michael) of Romania. In 1927 Ferdinand died, and because Carol had already given up the throne, Mihai was proclaimed King of Romania. As he was only six years old, a Regency was settled. 

       Three years later, his father, Carol, decided to return to Romania. He did so, and became King Carol II. In 1938, he imposed his personal government. He proved to be an intelligent but unstable character since in decisive moments of the Romanians' history like the summer of 1940, when Romania lost north-western Transylvania, Bessarabia and south Dobrudja, he would not adopt a firm stand. He was forced to abdicate by Marshal Antonescu for his lack of authority as a monarch. 

       His son Mihai swored the oath on September 6, 1940. 

       For nearly four years (1940-1944), the power actually belonged to Ion Antonescu, state leader. But on August 23, 1944, after a coup d'état, Antonescu was arrested, and Romania joined the United Nations alliance. 

       In the next four years, the young king tried hard to oppose the communist onslaught on Romania's politics. But on December 30, 1947 he was forced by the communists to abdicate. He left for Switzerland, where he still lives today. 

       After 1990, he has visited Romania several times and since 1997 has engaged himself in actions to serve his country's interests of integration within Euro-Atlantic structures.

       Christianity first reached Dacia under the Roman Empire as early as the 4th century A. D. By the late 9th century, the Vlachs appear to have accepted a Slavonic liturgy.

       Also a recent study on my family name shows that VLAHOPOL is a name that actually comes from VLAHOPOULOS which has it's roots in a region close to Thessalonik in Greece where the first Vlahopolulos family became bigger and bigger until they moved to the north of the Black Sea on the Romanian coast forming the high class of the Romanian people.      

       The first ecclesiastical metropolitanates for the Romanian provinces were not set up until the l4th century however, and Church Slavonic remained the liturgical language until the l7th century, when Romanian began to replace it. The translation of Scripture and liturgical texts into Romanian was not completed until the l9th century.

The Romanian Orthodox Church kept alive a sense of national identity both under Ottoman Turkish rule and, in Transylvania, under the Hungarian sway. In Transylvania, the church was granted no acknowledgement in the post-Reformation settlement, and, consequently, by an act of union in 1698, a proportion of the Romanian Orthodox clergy and laity in Transylvania accepted papal jurisdiction, and became Eastern-rite Roman Catholics. They were forcibly reintegrated into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1950, after their church was suppressed by the communist government.
The Romanian Orthodox Church became an important factor in the emancipation of ethnic Romanians in Transylvania, and in the integration of the Greater Romania that came into being after 1918. An outstanding figure of the church was the first metropolitan of Transylvania, Andrei Saguna, whose works had a significant influence on the organization of the church at the beginning of the 20th century.
The present Romanian patriarchate was set up in 1925, uniting the Romanian Orthodox population of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire with the autocephalous Romanian church established in Moldavia and Wallachia in 1865, and acknowledged by the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople in 1885. The liturgical language of the modern Romanian church is Romanian. The church is divided into 14 dioceses.
After World War II, the communist regime in Romania never formally made a distinct separation of the church from the state; it allowed the church to maintain two theological faculties, in Bucharest and in Sibiu, as well as six seminaries. The communists also tolerated the existence of monasteries and several ecclesiastical and theological publications. Still, the church was tightly controlled by the state, and the remarkable revival of monastic life that occurred in early communist Romania was severely limited by the government after 1958. The church was largely freed from state control in the early l990s, when the communist regime was overthrown.

       While in prison Ceausescu became a protégé of his mate, the future communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, who would become the communist leader of Romania beginning in 1952. Ceausescu subsequently served as secretary of the Union of Communist Youth (1944-1945). After the communists' full accession to power in Romania in 1947, he headed the nation's ministry of agriculture, and then, from 1950 to 1954, he served as deputy minister of the armed forces. Under Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceausescu eventually came to occupy the second highest position in the party hierarchy, holding important posts in the Politbureau.

       With the death of Gheorghiu-Dej in March 1965, Ceausescu succeeded to the leadership of Romania's Communist Party as first, and then general secretary; with his assumption of the presidency of the State Council (December 1967), he became head of state as well. 

       He soon won popular support for his independent political course, which openly challenged the dominance of the Soviet Union over Romania. In the 1960s Ceausescu ended Romania's active participation in the Warsaw Pact military alliance, and he condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces (1968) and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (1979). In 1974 Ceausescu became president of Romania as well.

       While following an independent policy in foreign relations, Ceausescu resisted all pressures for liberal reforms, and he adhered closely to the communist orthodoxy of centralized administration at home. His secret police (Securitate) maintained rigid controls over free speech and the media, and tolerated no internal opposition. 

       In an effort to pay off the large foreign debt that his government had accumulated in the 1970s, Ceausescu ordered the export of most of the country's agricultural and industrial production. The resulting drastic shortages of food, energy, medicines, and other basic necessities drove Romania from a state of relative economic well-being to near starvation.

       Ceausescu also instituted an extensive personality cult and appointed his wife, Elena, and some members of his family to high posts in the government. Among his grandiose schemes was a plan to bulldoze thousands of Romania's villages and large areas of the city of Bucharest, and move their residents into new apartment buildings. Over one fifth of the built area of central Bucharest, including churches and historic buildings, was demolished during Ceausescu's rule in the '80s.

       Ceausescu's regime collapsed after he ordered armed and security forces to fire on antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Timisoara in December 1989. The demonstrations spread to Bucharest, and on December 22 the army defected to the demonstrators. That same day Ceausescu and his wife fled the capital in a helicopter, but were captured by the armed forces. On December 25 the couple were hurriedly tried and convicted by a military tribunal on charges of mass murder. Ceausescu and his wife were then shot by a firing squad at Târgoviste.