April 18, 2024 • 42 mins
Accusations fly like bullets as host Becky Milligan discovers that King Boris III has been a hunted man for most of his life and has dodged more assassination attempts than James Bond. Did he ignore the one crucial message that could have saved his life? Becky feels the net closing in on the identity of the Butterfly King’s killer.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A note before we start. This episode deals with the
topic of suicide. Please listen with caution. The Western Balkan
Mountains April nineteen twenty five, and the Royal car navigates
(00:21):
the narrow, winding road that snakes through the valley. Rabbits
and rockfall litter the route. On one side of the pass,
there's a sheer drop of one hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
The chauffeur needs.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
His wits about him to keep the tires from flirting.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
With the edge.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
On the backseat of the car are two men, King Boris,
the third of Bulgaria, and his friend, a fellow insect enthusiast.
Each time the car swerves, the King rolls into him.
They're giddy with excitement. They've been out walking and have
found some rare flowers and an exquisite new species of butterfly.
(01:08):
They've high hopes for today's hike. The King's gamekeeper is
up front. He's swapped places with the King so Boris
can chat with his friend. An old bus laboring and
puffing up the steep pass forces the chauffeur to slow
his speed. The King glances out of the window, squinting
(01:32):
into the early morning sun. He sees something glinting in
the undergrowth. Then a flash, and he instinctively ducks. It's
an ambush. The first bullet is aimed at the front seat,
(01:54):
the King's usual seat. It kills the gamekeeper instantly. The
next one kills the King's friend, and the chauffeur, blinded
by his shattered windscreen, loses control of the car. It
starts veering towards the cliff edge. As the bullets keep coming.
(02:15):
Boris seizes the steering wheel and yanks the car back
from the edge just in time. Under a shower of gunfire,
King Boris leaps from the car and races towards the bus.
He jumps in, pushes the driver aside, and screeches off
in the direction of a military garrison. A few minutes
(02:40):
later and the King is back, with the bus, now
full of armed soldiers. The soldiers chase the assailants deep
into the mountains. It's clear these aren't ordinary robbers. They're
far too skilled. These men organized terrorists with one very
(03:03):
specific and very royal target. Tomorrow's newspaper headlines will rave
about the King's cool head, about his gallantry, his lucky
escape from the murderous plot of communist revolutionaries. He'll be
hailed across the world as a hero. But kneeling beside
(03:26):
his friend's dead bodies, King Boris doesn't feel heroic. The
attempt on his life might have failed this time, but
the King knows they'll get him in the end, because
this is only the very beginning of the plot to
kill him from Blanchard House and exactly right, media, this
(03:53):
is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan h Chapter six,
(04:38):
an inside job. What I really like is the the
really old a gramophone.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Gramophone. Yes, it's a wind up one, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I'm back at Rana Palace. Not in the plush drawing
room where I usually meet King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa.
I'm in the building next door, where one of Simeon's
aides is proudly showing me around what was once the
Palace powerhouse. King Boris's office, complete with gramophone.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Can we play it?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yes, let's play Bulgarian Royal national anthem.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh I thought it was a bit of chah.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, here we go. You can imagine Boris sitting at
the big desk in his office, listening to his gramophone
head in hands, the weight of the world on his shoulders.
It wasn't an easy job being Bulgaria's king. It's a
(05:53):
beautiful desk, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And are these all his uniforms here? Absolutely military uniforms,
aren't they industry?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
In films with his decorations and medals, you can see
the White Cross, the Bravery for Bravery Cross. Yes, he
was awarded by King Thirtinane during the First World War
with this medal and was maybe the most precious In
(06:20):
some way.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Boris's courage was legendary, but it was also very necessary.
In the interwar period when Boris was on the throne,
Bulgaria was a brutal place. Political assassinations and targeted killings
were commonplace. Rival factions fought and murdered each other in
(06:47):
the race for power. Ruling over such a viper's nest
was no picnic.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The king's governments were.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
More or less democratically elected, but few politicians really respected
the wishes of the ballot box. Rival parties often tried
their luck by force. They weren't trying to ousk Boris,
they just wanted to unseat his cabinet. Poor Boris had
only been in the job five years before the first
(07:17):
Coupdetta happened that one, backed by the military, toppled his
leftist government and brought a block of bourgeois right wingers
to power. And to make it absolutely clear that they
meant business, they chopped the fingers off the ex prime minister,
(07:38):
then allegedly sent his head in a biscuit tin to
the palace. I did tell you those Bulgarians were brutal.
So Boris knew all too well that there was a
biscuit tin somewhere out there with his name on it too.
It was just a matter of time.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Don't forget, Kings were always being murdered.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Boris didn't care for his new right wing government, but
he just had to suck it up. His job was
to try to keep everyone sweet. Historian Tessa Dunlop, he is.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
A man who begins feeling anxious at the beginning of rain.
He's got partisans, murderers, discontent, army leaders, communists, is all
kicking off in the.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Witches cauldron that is the Balkans.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Bulgaria the bad boy of the Balkans, and there were
quite a lot of bad boys, to be honest with you,
in the Balkans.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
A few months after the right wing coup, the Bulgarian
Bolsheviks the Communists had to go at seizing power themselves,
but their attempt at a power grab failed dismally. It
was brutally repressed by Boris's right wing government. Pushed underground,
the Bolsheviks and Communists became bitter.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
If a Red Revolution.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Was to succeed in Bulgaria, they realized they needed a
major change of strategy, so they came up with a
new plan of action, a targeted campaign of terror, and
their bullseye.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Was King Boris.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Boris would have known the Communists had marked him out,
and he must have felt so alone in that knowledge.
In the early years of his reign, he was still unmarried,
plus his brother and his sisters were in exile in
Germany with their father, Foxy Ferdinand. Did the king fear
his life was unraveling before it had really begun.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
He's pretty fearful. His hands tremble quite a lot to
begin with, but he he grows a bit of a
second skin.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Tessa means he had to toughen up, and that would
prove invaluable. But what he really needed was nine lives,
because the next assassination attempt was already brewing.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The podcast studio is here. Oh wow, with a candle,
call Ah brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
My producer Eja and I have come to Sofia to
see Anna Blagover. You'll remember she co hosts the Bulgarian
podcast The Urban Detective. We were talking to her in
the last episode about how the Soviets and the Communists
erased large parts of Bulgaria's history when they invaded Sofia.
(10:32):
That was in nineteen forty four, just a year after
King Boris was poisoned. And it's that which makes the
royal family, particularly Maria Louisa, deeply suspicious that the Soviets
were behind her father's murder. But right now we want
to talk to Anna about her dad.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
My father was an investigative journalist, and in fact, he
wrote a book about famous Kuda Dat's and political assassinations
in history. He attempted to rank the political assassinations based
on their influence.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Now, Anna's dad was particularly interested in all the murders
and acts of terrorism that took place during King Boris's reign,
primarily because there were so many of them, but also
because King Boris was so often the target.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
One of the Greatestterrist acts. And actually the one that
my father ranked number one was the Saint Nidelia Church
very close to where we are in the center of Sofia.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Let's look at the number one assassination on Anna's dad's list.
Bear with me, because at first glance it sounds rather obscure.
In nineteen twenty five, just hours after Boris had been
ambushed on that mountain pass, a retired high ranking RB
general was suddenly gunned down in Sofia. Quite why no
(11:59):
one really knew. But this general was also a member
of parliament and a political big shot, so as befits
a dignitary.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
His funeral was an.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
All bells and whistles affair. It was held at the
sent Nadalia Cathedral and it was attended by Bulgaria's great
and good. The priest opened the Gospel and began reading
from Saint John, He that heareth my word hath everlasting life,
(12:36):
And at that exact moment the bomb was so powerful
it blew off the roof of the nave. Dismembered bodies
and corpses littered the church. Two hundred and thirteen men,
(13:00):
women and children were murdered in that attack over four
hundred others were wounded, but none of them were the
intended target. They were just terrible collateral damage. The real
target of that bombing escaped without a scratch. I imagine you
can guess who the real target was. Yes, King Boris,
(13:23):
but he survived unharmed because he wasn't there. He'd been
attending the funerals of his friends who died in that
ambush in the mountains and was running late. And who
were the bombers?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yes, the Reds again.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
The Communists said. The time O wing of the Communists
party bombed the church in the hopes to kill Boris.
It was one of the bloodiest theorist acts in our history,
and it actually precipitated a response of persecution of those
Communists as a blood bug after a blood buf.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
But the Communists were foiled again and again. They were
brutally punished by Boris's government, but the Communists were determined.
They kept trying and trying. A couple of years later,
a communist activist broke into the palace at first light
(14:25):
with a pistol, ready to kill the king as he
slept in his bedchamber. Foiled again. The king was already
up and about Boris was an early riser. He was
probably out catching butterflies, and these assassination attempts just keep coming.
(14:48):
In the winter of nineteen thirty four, the king was
on a train to the Bulgarian coast when a bomb
went off in the engine. Boris was again unhurt. In fact,
he even dressed the engine driver's burns before leaping into
his seat and driving the burning train to safety. Nothing
(15:14):
was proved, but that assassination attempt had all the markings
of a Communist attack.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
He survived ambush. He was the original James Bond of
Bulgaria in many respects, but he just didn't have the dashing,
good looks in the charisma to go with it.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think he was quite dashing, actually.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So. Bulgaria's own communists had been trying for years to
get Boris out of the picture. They were seriously persistent,
but in the end someone succeeded, as we know, after
all those attempts on his life, the king finally died
on the twenty eighth of August nineteen forty three. Was
(15:59):
it the Communist did they finally pull it off? The
Communists certainly had a motive. They were politically weakened and
brutally repressed under King Boris, And what about the means?
The Soviet Union would surely have been happy to help
out their Bulgarian comrades by handing over a file of
(16:22):
their very best poison, anything for another Red Revolution. And
the Communists had form too. They bombed trains, cathedrals and
mountain passes. They made sure they were never short of opportunity.
But let's not jump to conclusions, because there is another possibility.
(16:46):
I want to take you somewhere quite different. I want
to try and take you inside King Boris's head. Boris
often sought solace in mountains, looking for rare plant species
or just hiking. It was a passion he shared with
(17:06):
his uncle, King Albert of Belgium. But in nineteen thirty four,
King Albert died in a mountaineering accident. He leant against
a boulder which had given way under his weight. That
was the official story, anyway, But in his excellent book
Crown of Thorns, the author Stephen Gruef tells us that
(17:28):
Boris wasn't convinced by that story. Boris believed his uncle
had deliberately leapt to his death. And what's more, according
to Gruef. The king told many friends that his uncle
had the right idea, that he somehow envied him.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
Sar Boris was really on a big pressure, really big pressure.
This pressure pressure for Boris.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Was not easy.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Our Bulgarian historians, Vladimir's Taski and George bos Duganov put
it delicately because this is a very sensitive subject. But
I do think we have to examine whether King Boris
may have wanted to take his own life. The pressure
(18:17):
he was under during the Second World War was phenomenal,
and on a number of occasions the king mentioned to
his staff that he wished someone would just shoot him dead,
or that he felt like shooting himself.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during a war,
with everything and you are alone on the top of
the power pyramid.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In fact, on the way back from that dreadful meeting
with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in nineteen forty three,
he reportedly told his aid he wished.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The plane would crash.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
He was constantly saying he'd had enough of being king,
that it would be better if he were dead. After
he flew back to Bulgaria from the Wolf's Lair, Boris
went hiking in the mountains with his brother Kirol and
some close aids, and at a certain point he broke
away from the rest of the party and disappeared. He
(19:21):
was eventually spotted by his secretary. He was standing very
still on the precipice of a huge rock, just staring
into the abyss Ah.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Yes, that's what the secretary said that he saw him.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, so the rumor was what was the rumor from that.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
Whether he had suicidal thoughts because of this last meeting,
which was so dramatic and with no way out.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
But Simeon doesn't believe his father was planning to jump
all for that matter, to poison himself with pills and
toxins for one very simple reason. King Boris was an
extremely religious man.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
My father was found to believing I think to have
considered suicide.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Do you think so?
Speaker 7 (20:13):
And not only I think, I'm sorry to say it's nonsense.
I think that this is part of the moment's mood
and people see things like that, But to me, it's
really part of not very serious thinking.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Really, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yes, okay, so Boris was indeed a man pushed to
his limits, but his children are absolutely certain he wasn't
serious about taking his own life. He was very serious
about his faith. Though Boris believed in the power of prayer.
(20:53):
He prayed constantly for guidance and for protection, which is
probably why he became so interesting in a Christian group
called the White Brotherhood. Now, despite the name, this is
not a white supremacist group. Far from it. The White
Brotherhood was all about finding universal kinship in a fracturing world.
(21:17):
Think meditation, music, and the white in their name referred
only to the ceremonial robes they wore. They just wanted
a better future for everyone, and Boris certainly feared what
the future held in store for him, and that's ultimately
what drew him to the White Brotherhood. They claimed they
(21:38):
knew the answers. The White Brotherhood is still going strong today.
In fact, eight members of the group are putting on
a concert for us in Sofia. They believe that respect
for music and for nature bring peace and harmony to
the world. You can't blame a stressed out king for
(21:59):
liking the found at that. Now, just to be clear,
I'm not lining up the White Brotherhood as a suspect
in Boris's murder. I think they genuinely wanted to help him.
But I want to tell you about them because well,
they kind of guessed what was coming to Boris and
they wanted to try to stop it. It's all a
(22:21):
bit freaky.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Actually.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
The White Brotherhood was founded at the turn of the
last century by a Bulgarian man called Peter Danov, better
known as the Master. He was a masterful musician. The
pieces you're listening to were actually written by him. As
I've said, it's a Christian movement, but members often dressed
(22:46):
like druids in white flowing robes. They danced barefoot in
the mountains. Rumors circulated around Bulgaria that the King had
joined the White Brotherhood, that he'd become a disciple, which.
Speaker 7 (23:01):
Is not the case. That's part of one of the
very sweet mythologies.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay, so King Boris may not have been a fully
signed up member of the White Brotherhood, but Simeon does
admit that his father was a big fan of their
ecological ideas and ideals, as is Simeon himself. It's true
they were pretty revolutionary for the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 7 (23:31):
It was a mixture of Christianity of Eastern but everything
very I would say peace, loving, nature, loving God fearing
what have you? Actually very advanced on their time.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
They're a very prayerful group.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
Of jinsh going the imito.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But it wasn't just the Master's prayers which attracted Boris.
It was the Master's predictions. Because it was claimed that
Peter Denov was a prophet.
Speaker 8 (24:09):
He was like a man who can see in the future.
He was knowing what is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
That's mom chill Karamitev. He's a Bulgarian filmmaker and a
member of the White Brotherhood. Now the White Brotherhood. They
love their prophecies. Remember when the king was ambushed on
that road high up in the mountains in nineteen twenty five. Well,
a couple of days before, a disciple who worked in
(24:37):
the palace predicted that the King's life was in danger
somewhere in the highest peaks. The White Brotherhood called it,
but the prophecies didn't end there. Fast forward to World
War II. The Master warned King Boris to stay safe.
He'd need to stay out of the war. He would
(24:59):
need Bulgaria to stay neutral.
Speaker 8 (25:02):
The Master said to King Boris, don't go to Germany
because he was invited by Hitler to go there, and
he didn't follow this advice, and he met Hitler, and
very soon after his return in Bulgaria he was dead.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
But the king did change the date of his last
meeting with Hitler because the original date Hitler had summoned
him to the Wolf's Lair it was August the thirteenth,
which in nineteen forty three happened to fall on a Friday.
Boris had a very bad feeling about the whole Friday
the thirteenth thing.
Speaker 7 (25:43):
The fact that he was summoned on the thirteenth of
August by Hitler. He delayed it by a day, which
upset the other men. Obviously because of fearing the thirteenth.
He was a superstitious man. There was something irrational in
my father's behavior.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
The White Brotherhood believed the king should have paid more
attention to the Master's prophecies. If King Boris had followed
the advice the stories told to him, he would have survived.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He wouldn't have been killed. I say, maybe I think
it does everyone sort of agree with that.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I mean that, you know, if he'd just taken that advice,
if he just listened to the person you call the Master,
he would have survived. Probably make of that what you will,
but that's not all. Here's the really spooky bit. He
(26:47):
may not have taken their advice about Hitler, but according
to the historian Stephan Grueth in his book Crown of Thorns,
it sounds like Boris had also been warned of the
exact date of his his own demise. Remember how the
king lay dying in his chamber in the late summer
(27:08):
of nineteen forty three, covered in those strange spots, with
all his organs failing. He was barely conscious, yet very suddenly,
the day before his death, he opened his eyes and
demanded to know the time. When he was told it
was twenty past four, he shook his head tomorrow at
(27:32):
the same time, he said tomorrow at the same time.
The next day, on the twenty eighth of August, at
precisely twenty two minutes past four, the king was pronounced dead. Now,
(27:58):
as this podcast is about the murder of King Boris,
inevitably we focus a lot on the sad stuff, on
the times when things for Boris were fraught and difficult,
when he was stressed and scared and felt torn in
every direction. But there were happier times too, did the
White Brotherhood predict the lonely king would one day find
(28:21):
a soulmate. We don't know, but we do know he
did fall in love. We haven't really touched on the
romantic side of Boris's personal story yet, and I think
(28:42):
we need to because some people think that's where we'll
find Boris's killer.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Well, he did take a while to get married. I
think he was like properly old.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Boris didn't stay a lonely bachelor forever. In October nineteen thirty,
aged thirty, Boris finally got lucky, so to speak. He
married Princess Giovanna, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel the
third and Queen Eleanor of Italy.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I think Boris, you know, had his interests in pulling
levers and pinning butterflies onto boards, not in lots and
lots and lots of sex. But back then Boris's marriage
had huge political significance.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It certainly did, and by the time Boris died in
nineteen forty three, when the war was raging, the marriage
was a political hot potato, which is why quite a
few rumors circulated that his murder was an Italian job.
By August nineteen forty three, Mussolini had been deposed and
(29:52):
Italy was just about to switch sides to join the
Allies the British and Americans. Now that would have put
Italy on the opposite side to Bulgaria, made them enemies.
And it was Giovanna's father, the King of Italy, who
had been doing all the negotiating with the Americans, because
he knew if Germany invaded Italy that would mean bye
(30:16):
bye to the Italian royal family. So could the Italian
royals have thrown Boris under the bus to try to
secure their own dynasty. I mean, they certainly had a motive.
Their son in law, Boris was an ally of Hitler.
And there's another thing that really got up the nose
of the Italian royal family Boris's baptism. Oh King Boris
(30:44):
was born to Catholic parents, so his father, Foxy Ferdinand
didn't hesitate to baptize Boris a Roman Catholic too. But
Bulgaria is an Eastern Orthodox country, and as a bug
you'd kind of expect the heir to the throne to
share the national faith. Ferdinand clocked his mistake pretty quickly.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
You've married an Italian girl, a fervent Catholic. You've signed
up and changed the constitution so that your firstborn will
be a Catholic, and then you think, oh, no, I
better reverse that decision.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Foxy Ferdinand booked Boris another baptism ceremony pronto.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
So Boris, having been christened a Catholic, is then re
christened or baptized into the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Hallelujah.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
You know, he's certainly like covered both stumps as Boris.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Covered both stumps is one of those quaint British sayings.
It refers to cricket but translated into baseball, and it
would be like saying he was covering all the bases. Anyway,
Fox's defensive play was enough to satisfy the Bulgarian people,
but it didn't go down quite so well in Rome.
The Pope excommunicated him, poor old Foxy. Anyway, fast forward again,
(32:12):
and here's now Orthodox Boris on his wedding day, marrying
an Italian Catholic princess in the Catholic cathedral in Assisi.
They also had a blessing in an Orthodox church. Now
by all accounts, Boris really loved Giovanna, but he also
had a royal duty to marry. To provide an heir
(32:34):
to the throne.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
You need progeny. First of all, he had to acquire
a womb that he considered suitable.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
The problem was the royal womb Boris had found belonged
to a Catholic, and a Catholic is supposed to bring
up her children as Catholics. Now that put Boris, the
king of an Orthodox country, in a tricky situation. But
he didn't want to annoy his new ina or the Pope,
(33:02):
so he promised his firstborn child would be baptized a Catholic.
But when his daughter was born, Boris renewed on his promise.
Maria Louisa was baptized into the Orthodox faith, and the
church was so relieved it even bent the rules.
Speaker 9 (33:20):
Well, I'm called Maria Louisa, and that's it, because in
the Orthodox Church you don't have more than one.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Name, except she does.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Of course, because it's a double burialed name. They had
to have a special permission with the church and they
make it like one name. But Maria Aluisa, after my
paternal grandmother.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But when Simeon was born four years later, he was
also baptized into the Orthodox faith. Queen Giovanna accepted this,
but what about her family? Were the Italian King and
Queen horrified that their grandchildren were not Catholics? I mean,
they quite liked their son in law Boris, but he'd
(34:01):
basically just hoodwinked them. Is this what they wanted for
their daughter? And here's another thing. Remember Joseph Gebels, the
Nazi propaganda minister who kept a diary. He wrote that
King Boris had been poisoned with snake venom. But when
we ran that theory past our snake expert mark O'Shea,
(34:24):
he pretty much rubbished.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Turns out it's pretty impossible to get a snake to
bite someone if it doesn't feel like it. Plus the
snake has to bite in the right place with the
right amount of venom. So admittedly Gebels was a bit
off the mark with the whole snake venom idea. But
(34:47):
a few days after he penned that, Gerbels wrote one
more entry about the murder, and this time he pointed
the finger of blame fairly and squarely at someone specific
in the Italian royal family.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Goebbels claims that it was my mother's sister Princess Mafalda
that she had poisoned him.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Now, Princess Mafalda was married to the German Prince Philip
of Hesse, who was disillusioned with the Nazi Party and
everything hit the stood for and Mafalda was absolutely on
the same page as her husband and her parents. She
wouldn't have been impressed that her brother in law Boris
was in league with the Fura. So, according to Goebels,
(35:41):
Mafalder paid a little visit to Bulgaria, to the palace
with a bottle of poison in her bag. Four weeks
after her departure, the king was dead. Could Mafalda be
the royal assassin?
Speaker 7 (35:58):
This is nonsense, because I was at the station to
receive my aunt after my father was dead, because she
came to the funeral.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Let's not forget that Simeon was an eye witness, and
neither he nor Maria Louisa can recall Aunt Mafalda paying
a visit before Boris' death. In fact, no one can
remember Mafalda coming to visit her sister and brother in
law before the funeral for one simple reason.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
She didn't come, So there was no way that she
could have poisoned him.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
So you know that for a fact, awaitnessed.
Speaker 9 (36:39):
Yes, definitely not Italian, because why you know it, Italians
had no advantage whatsoever.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
Gebel was blaming the Italian court because the Nazis were
very upset when Italy changed sides before my father's death.
But that's why I say that sometimes documents which are
supposed to be what you call it official, can also
be misleading.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Point taken, it's all propaganda. That's the very last time
I cite the diary of Joseph Goebel's promise. I suppose
there's something else I may have overlooked. Families and particularly sisters,
tend to talk. Mafalda would have known King Boris was
unhappy with Hitler and that he was also in secret
(37:28):
talks about switching sides. She'd have respected him, she wouldn't
have wanted him dead. There's a PostScript to Mifalda's story.
It's not a happy ending. The Nazis found out that
she and her husband had been helping Jews get to safety,
(37:49):
and while Mafalda was in Bulgaria supporting her sister at
Boris's funeral, her husband was arrested. And sent to a
concentration camp. When Mafalda returned to Italy, the Nazis tricked
her into visiting the German embassy in Rome, claiming they
had a message for her from her husband, But when
(38:11):
she arrived, she was immediately arrested for subversive activities and
sent to a concentration camp called Buchenwald. Mefalder grew very
sick and thin at the camp, and then the Allies
(38:32):
started to bomb. You see, there was a munitions factory
right next door, a prime target, and during one raid,
Princess Mafalda was badly wounded. The ESSs doctors made a
half hearted attempt to operate, but she died of her
injuries in the summer of nineteen forty four, exactly a
(38:55):
year after her brother in law Boris. So where does
that leave us? Suicide is off the list. Simeon's adamant
about that, And despite their differences in faith and in politics,
it can't have been the Italians. They were too fond
(39:16):
of Boris. But I cannot dismiss the Communists. They tried
to kill the king again and again, but I still
don't have concrete proof. I don't even have a name
for the poison that was used to kill the king.
You know, at a certain point in every investigation I've
(39:40):
ever done, something unexpected always turns up, And in my experience,
it most often comes at that exact moment I think
I'm done, Just as I'm about to take stock of
what I know and draw up my final conclusions, I
receive an intriguing voicemail. It's very cryptic. It suggests we
(40:05):
meet up in Sofia to talk about the death of
King Boris the Third And who's the message from. Well,
when he says his name, I'm honestly speechless because this
voicemails from someone who has a microscopic knowledge of King Boris,
a man who claims he knows exactly how the king died.
(40:29):
He almost never gives interviews, but now he's offering to
tell us.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
All he knows.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
He says, it's time the world knows the whole truth
about what killed the Butterfly King. That's next time coming
up on the Butterfly King.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
I I simply regret, and now that you bring it up,
I think of it again. It's this one has to
make one's piece with these things.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Painful revelations for the Royal Children and We're Delta brand
new line of inquiry.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Cocaine can cause the arteries to your heart to spasm
to close down.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Are you saying King Boris may have been on cocaine?
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
(41:41):
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmanow and Toby Matamoon. Sound design
and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans, artwork
by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika Schortino Nolan.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
(42:04):
executive producer and head of Content at Blanchard House is
Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are
Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer
Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book
(42:26):
Hitler and the King by John Hall Spencer
A note before we start. This episode deals with the
topic of suicide. Please listen with caution. The Western Balkan
Mountains April nineteen twenty five, and the Royal car navigates
(00:21):
the narrow, winding road that snakes through the valley. Rabbits
and rockfall litter the route. On one side of the pass,
there's a sheer drop of one hundred feet.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
The chauffeur needs.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
His wits about him to keep the tires from flirting.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
With the edge.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
On the backseat of the car are two men, King Boris,
the third of Bulgaria, and his friend, a fellow insect enthusiast.
Each time the car swerves, the King rolls into him.
They're giddy with excitement. They've been out walking and have
found some rare flowers and an exquisite new species of butterfly.
(01:08):
They've high hopes for today's hike. The King's gamekeeper is
up front. He's swapped places with the King so Boris
can chat with his friend. An old bus laboring and
puffing up the steep pass forces the chauffeur to slow
his speed. The King glances out of the window, squinting
(01:32):
into the early morning sun. He sees something glinting in
the undergrowth. Then a flash, and he instinctively ducks. It's
an ambush. The first bullet is aimed at the front seat,
(01:54):
the King's usual seat. It kills the gamekeeper instantly. The
next one kills the King's friend, and the chauffeur, blinded
by his shattered windscreen, loses control of the car. It
starts veering towards the cliff edge. As the bullets keep coming.
(02:15):
Boris seizes the steering wheel and yanks the car back
from the edge just in time. Under a shower of gunfire,
King Boris leaps from the car and races towards the bus.
He jumps in, pushes the driver aside, and screeches off
in the direction of a military garrison. A few minutes
(02:40):
later and the King is back, with the bus, now
full of armed soldiers. The soldiers chase the assailants deep
into the mountains. It's clear these aren't ordinary robbers. They're
far too skilled. These men organized terrorists with one very
(03:03):
specific and very royal target. Tomorrow's newspaper headlines will rave
about the King's cool head, about his gallantry, his lucky
escape from the murderous plot of communist revolutionaries. He'll be
hailed across the world as a hero. But kneeling beside
(03:26):
his friend's dead bodies, King Boris doesn't feel heroic. The
attempt on his life might have failed this time, but
the King knows they'll get him in the end, because
this is only the very beginning of the plot to
kill him from Blanchard House and exactly right, media, this
(03:53):
is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan h Chapter six,
(04:38):
an inside job. What I really like is the the
really old a gramophone.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Gramophone. Yes, it's a wind up one, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I'm back at Rana Palace. Not in the plush drawing
room where I usually meet King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa.
I'm in the building next door, where one of Simeon's
aides is proudly showing me around what was once the
Palace powerhouse. King Boris's office, complete with gramophone.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Can we play it?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yes, let's play Bulgarian Royal national anthem.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh I thought it was a bit of chah.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, here we go. You can imagine Boris sitting at
the big desk in his office, listening to his gramophone
head in hands, the weight of the world on his shoulders.
It wasn't an easy job being Bulgaria's king. It's a
(05:53):
beautiful desk, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And are these all his uniforms here? Absolutely military uniforms,
aren't they industry?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
In films with his decorations and medals, you can see
the White Cross, the Bravery for Bravery Cross. Yes, he
was awarded by King Thirtinane during the First World War
with this medal and was maybe the most precious In
(06:20):
some way.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Boris's courage was legendary, but it was also very necessary.
In the interwar period when Boris was on the throne,
Bulgaria was a brutal place. Political assassinations and targeted killings
were commonplace. Rival factions fought and murdered each other in
(06:47):
the race for power. Ruling over such a viper's nest
was no picnic.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The king's governments were.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
More or less democratically elected, but few politicians really respected
the wishes of the ballot box. Rival parties often tried
their luck by force. They weren't trying to ousk Boris,
they just wanted to unseat his cabinet. Poor Boris had
only been in the job five years before the first
(07:17):
Coupdetta happened that one, backed by the military, toppled his
leftist government and brought a block of bourgeois right wingers
to power. And to make it absolutely clear that they
meant business, they chopped the fingers off the ex prime minister,
(07:38):
then allegedly sent his head in a biscuit tin to
the palace. I did tell you those Bulgarians were brutal.
So Boris knew all too well that there was a
biscuit tin somewhere out there with his name on it too.
It was just a matter of time.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Don't forget, Kings were always being murdered.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Boris didn't care for his new right wing government, but
he just had to suck it up. His job was
to try to keep everyone sweet. Historian Tessa Dunlop, he is.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
A man who begins feeling anxious at the beginning of rain.
He's got partisans, murderers, discontent, army leaders, communists, is all
kicking off in the.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Witches cauldron that is the Balkans.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Bulgaria the bad boy of the Balkans, and there were
quite a lot of bad boys, to be honest with you,
in the Balkans.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
A few months after the right wing coup, the Bulgarian
Bolsheviks the Communists had to go at seizing power themselves,
but their attempt at a power grab failed dismally. It
was brutally repressed by Boris's right wing government. Pushed underground,
the Bolsheviks and Communists became bitter.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
If a Red Revolution.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Was to succeed in Bulgaria, they realized they needed a
major change of strategy, so they came up with a
new plan of action, a targeted campaign of terror, and
their bullseye.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Was King Boris.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Boris would have known the Communists had marked him out,
and he must have felt so alone in that knowledge.
In the early years of his reign, he was still unmarried,
plus his brother and his sisters were in exile in
Germany with their father, Foxy Ferdinand. Did the king fear
his life was unraveling before it had really begun.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
He's pretty fearful. His hands tremble quite a lot to
begin with, but he he grows a bit of a
second skin.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Tessa means he had to toughen up, and that would
prove invaluable. But what he really needed was nine lives,
because the next assassination attempt was already brewing.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The podcast studio is here. Oh wow, with a candle,
call Ah brilliant.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
My producer Eja and I have come to Sofia to
see Anna Blagover. You'll remember she co hosts the Bulgarian
podcast The Urban Detective. We were talking to her in
the last episode about how the Soviets and the Communists
erased large parts of Bulgaria's history when they invaded Sofia.
(10:32):
That was in nineteen forty four, just a year after
King Boris was poisoned. And it's that which makes the
royal family, particularly Maria Louisa, deeply suspicious that the Soviets
were behind her father's murder. But right now we want
to talk to Anna about her dad.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
My father was an investigative journalist, and in fact, he
wrote a book about famous Kuda Dat's and political assassinations
in history. He attempted to rank the political assassinations based
on their influence.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Now, Anna's dad was particularly interested in all the murders
and acts of terrorism that took place during King Boris's reign,
primarily because there were so many of them, but also
because King Boris was so often the target.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
One of the Greatestterrist acts. And actually the one that
my father ranked number one was the Saint Nidelia Church
very close to where we are in the center of Sofia.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Let's look at the number one assassination on Anna's dad's list.
Bear with me, because at first glance it sounds rather obscure.
In nineteen twenty five, just hours after Boris had been
ambushed on that mountain pass, a retired high ranking RB
general was suddenly gunned down in Sofia. Quite why no
(11:59):
one really knew. But this general was also a member
of parliament and a political big shot, so as befits
a dignitary.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
His funeral was an.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
All bells and whistles affair. It was held at the
sent Nadalia Cathedral and it was attended by Bulgaria's great
and good. The priest opened the Gospel and began reading
from Saint John, He that heareth my word hath everlasting life,
(12:36):
And at that exact moment the bomb was so powerful
it blew off the roof of the nave. Dismembered bodies
and corpses littered the church. Two hundred and thirteen men,
(13:00):
women and children were murdered in that attack over four
hundred others were wounded, but none of them were the
intended target. They were just terrible collateral damage. The real
target of that bombing escaped without a scratch. I imagine you
can guess who the real target was. Yes, King Boris,
(13:23):
but he survived unharmed because he wasn't there. He'd been
attending the funerals of his friends who died in that
ambush in the mountains and was running late. And who
were the bombers?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yes, the Reds again.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
The Communists said. The time O wing of the Communists
party bombed the church in the hopes to kill Boris.
It was one of the bloodiest theorist acts in our history,
and it actually precipitated a response of persecution of those
Communists as a blood bug after a blood buf.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
But the Communists were foiled again and again. They were
brutally punished by Boris's government, but the Communists were determined.
They kept trying and trying. A couple of years later,
a communist activist broke into the palace at first light
(14:25):
with a pistol, ready to kill the king as he
slept in his bedchamber. Foiled again. The king was already
up and about Boris was an early riser. He was
probably out catching butterflies, and these assassination attempts just keep coming.
(14:48):
In the winter of nineteen thirty four, the king was
on a train to the Bulgarian coast when a bomb
went off in the engine. Boris was again unhurt. In fact,
he even dressed the engine driver's burns before leaping into
his seat and driving the burning train to safety. Nothing
(15:14):
was proved, but that assassination attempt had all the markings
of a Communist attack.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
He survived ambush. He was the original James Bond of
Bulgaria in many respects, but he just didn't have the dashing,
good looks in the charisma to go with it.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think he was quite dashing, actually.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
So. Bulgaria's own communists had been trying for years to
get Boris out of the picture. They were seriously persistent,
but in the end someone succeeded, as we know, after
all those attempts on his life, the king finally died
on the twenty eighth of August nineteen forty three. Was
(15:59):
it the Communist did they finally pull it off? The
Communists certainly had a motive. They were politically weakened and
brutally repressed under King Boris, And what about the means?
The Soviet Union would surely have been happy to help
out their Bulgarian comrades by handing over a file of
(16:22):
their very best poison, anything for another Red Revolution. And
the Communists had form too. They bombed trains, cathedrals and
mountain passes. They made sure they were never short of opportunity.
But let's not jump to conclusions, because there is another possibility.
(16:46):
I want to take you somewhere quite different. I want
to try and take you inside King Boris's head. Boris
often sought solace in mountains, looking for rare plant species
or just hiking. It was a passion he shared with
(17:06):
his uncle, King Albert of Belgium. But in nineteen thirty four,
King Albert died in a mountaineering accident. He leant against
a boulder which had given way under his weight. That
was the official story, anyway, But in his excellent book
Crown of Thorns, the author Stephen Gruef tells us that
(17:28):
Boris wasn't convinced by that story. Boris believed his uncle
had deliberately leapt to his death. And what's more, according
to Gruef. The king told many friends that his uncle
had the right idea, that he somehow envied him.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
Sar Boris was really on a big pressure, really big pressure.
This pressure pressure for Boris.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Was not easy.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Our Bulgarian historians, Vladimir's Taski and George bos Duganov put
it delicately because this is a very sensitive subject. But
I do think we have to examine whether King Boris
may have wanted to take his own life. The pressure
(18:17):
he was under during the Second World War was phenomenal,
and on a number of occasions the king mentioned to
his staff that he wished someone would just shoot him dead,
or that he felt like shooting himself.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during a war,
with everything and you are alone on the top of
the power pyramid.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
In fact, on the way back from that dreadful meeting
with Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in nineteen forty three,
he reportedly told his aid he wished.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The plane would crash.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
He was constantly saying he'd had enough of being king,
that it would be better if he were dead. After
he flew back to Bulgaria from the Wolf's Lair, Boris
went hiking in the mountains with his brother Kirol and
some close aids, and at a certain point he broke
away from the rest of the party and disappeared. He
(19:21):
was eventually spotted by his secretary. He was standing very
still on the precipice of a huge rock, just staring
into the abyss Ah.
Speaker 7 (19:35):
Yes, that's what the secretary said that he saw him.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, so the rumor was what was the rumor from that.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
Whether he had suicidal thoughts because of this last meeting,
which was so dramatic and with no way out.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
But Simeon doesn't believe his father was planning to jump
all for that matter, to poison himself with pills and
toxins for one very simple reason. King Boris was an
extremely religious man.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
My father was found to believing I think to have
considered suicide.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Do you think so?
Speaker 7 (20:13):
And not only I think, I'm sorry to say it's nonsense.
I think that this is part of the moment's mood
and people see things like that, But to me, it's
really part of not very serious thinking.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Really, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yes, okay, so Boris was indeed a man pushed to
his limits, but his children are absolutely certain he wasn't
serious about taking his own life. He was very serious
about his faith. Though Boris believed in the power of prayer.
(20:53):
He prayed constantly for guidance and for protection, which is
probably why he became so interesting in a Christian group
called the White Brotherhood. Now, despite the name, this is
not a white supremacist group. Far from it. The White
Brotherhood was all about finding universal kinship in a fracturing world.
(21:17):
Think meditation, music, and the white in their name referred
only to the ceremonial robes they wore. They just wanted
a better future for everyone, and Boris certainly feared what
the future held in store for him, and that's ultimately
what drew him to the White Brotherhood. They claimed they
(21:38):
knew the answers. The White Brotherhood is still going strong today.
In fact, eight members of the group are putting on
a concert for us in Sofia. They believe that respect
for music and for nature bring peace and harmony to
the world. You can't blame a stressed out king for
(21:59):
liking the found at that. Now, just to be clear,
I'm not lining up the White Brotherhood as a suspect
in Boris's murder. I think they genuinely wanted to help him.
But I want to tell you about them because well,
they kind of guessed what was coming to Boris and
they wanted to try to stop it. It's all a
(22:21):
bit freaky.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Actually.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
The White Brotherhood was founded at the turn of the
last century by a Bulgarian man called Peter Danov, better
known as the Master. He was a masterful musician. The
pieces you're listening to were actually written by him. As
I've said, it's a Christian movement, but members often dressed
(22:46):
like druids in white flowing robes. They danced barefoot in
the mountains. Rumors circulated around Bulgaria that the King had
joined the White Brotherhood, that he'd become a disciple, which.
Speaker 7 (23:01):
Is not the case. That's part of one of the
very sweet mythologies.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay, so King Boris may not have been a fully
signed up member of the White Brotherhood, but Simeon does
admit that his father was a big fan of their
ecological ideas and ideals, as is Simeon himself. It's true
they were pretty revolutionary for the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 7 (23:31):
It was a mixture of Christianity of Eastern but everything
very I would say peace, loving, nature, loving God fearing
what have you? Actually very advanced on their time.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
They're a very prayerful group.
Speaker 6 (23:48):
Of jinsh going the imito.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
But it wasn't just the Master's prayers which attracted Boris.
It was the Master's predictions. Because it was claimed that
Peter Denov was a prophet.
Speaker 8 (24:09):
He was like a man who can see in the future.
He was knowing what is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
That's mom chill Karamitev. He's a Bulgarian filmmaker and a
member of the White Brotherhood. Now the White Brotherhood. They
love their prophecies. Remember when the king was ambushed on
that road high up in the mountains in nineteen twenty five. Well,
a couple of days before, a disciple who worked in
(24:37):
the palace predicted that the King's life was in danger
somewhere in the highest peaks. The White Brotherhood called it,
but the prophecies didn't end there. Fast forward to World
War II. The Master warned King Boris to stay safe.
He'd need to stay out of the war. He would
(24:59):
need Bulgaria to stay neutral.
Speaker 8 (25:02):
The Master said to King Boris, don't go to Germany
because he was invited by Hitler to go there, and
he didn't follow this advice, and he met Hitler, and
very soon after his return in Bulgaria he was dead.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
But the king did change the date of his last
meeting with Hitler because the original date Hitler had summoned
him to the Wolf's Lair it was August the thirteenth,
which in nineteen forty three happened to fall on a Friday.
Boris had a very bad feeling about the whole Friday
the thirteenth thing.
Speaker 7 (25:43):
The fact that he was summoned on the thirteenth of
August by Hitler. He delayed it by a day, which
upset the other men. Obviously because of fearing the thirteenth.
He was a superstitious man. There was something irrational in
my father's behavior.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
The White Brotherhood believed the king should have paid more
attention to the Master's prophecies. If King Boris had followed
the advice the stories told to him, he would have survived.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
He wouldn't have been killed. I say, maybe I think
it does everyone sort of agree with that.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I mean that, you know, if he'd just taken that advice,
if he just listened to the person you call the Master,
he would have survived. Probably make of that what you will,
but that's not all. Here's the really spooky bit. He
(26:47):
may not have taken their advice about Hitler, but according
to the historian Stephan Grueth in his book Crown of Thorns,
it sounds like Boris had also been warned of the
exact date of his his own demise. Remember how the
king lay dying in his chamber in the late summer
(27:08):
of nineteen forty three, covered in those strange spots, with
all his organs failing. He was barely conscious, yet very suddenly,
the day before his death, he opened his eyes and
demanded to know the time. When he was told it
was twenty past four, he shook his head tomorrow at
(27:32):
the same time, he said tomorrow at the same time.
The next day, on the twenty eighth of August, at
precisely twenty two minutes past four, the king was pronounced dead. Now,
(27:58):
as this podcast is about the murder of King Boris,
inevitably we focus a lot on the sad stuff, on
the times when things for Boris were fraught and difficult,
when he was stressed and scared and felt torn in
every direction. But there were happier times too, did the
White Brotherhood predict the lonely king would one day find
(28:21):
a soulmate. We don't know, but we do know he
did fall in love. We haven't really touched on the
romantic side of Boris's personal story yet, and I think
(28:42):
we need to because some people think that's where we'll
find Boris's killer.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Well, he did take a while to get married. I
think he was like properly old.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Boris didn't stay a lonely bachelor forever. In October nineteen thirty,
aged thirty, Boris finally got lucky, so to speak. He
married Princess Giovanna, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel the
third and Queen Eleanor of Italy.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Our historian Tessa Dunlop.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
I think Boris, you know, had his interests in pulling
levers and pinning butterflies onto boards, not in lots and
lots and lots of sex. But back then Boris's marriage
had huge political significance.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It certainly did, and by the time Boris died in
nineteen forty three, when the war was raging, the marriage
was a political hot potato, which is why quite a
few rumors circulated that his murder was an Italian job.
By August nineteen forty three, Mussolini had been deposed and
(29:52):
Italy was just about to switch sides to join the
Allies the British and Americans. Now that would have put
Italy on the opposite side to Bulgaria, made them enemies.
And it was Giovanna's father, the King of Italy, who
had been doing all the negotiating with the Americans, because
he knew if Germany invaded Italy that would mean bye
(30:16):
bye to the Italian royal family. So could the Italian
royals have thrown Boris under the bus to try to
secure their own dynasty. I mean, they certainly had a motive.
Their son in law, Boris was an ally of Hitler.
And there's another thing that really got up the nose
of the Italian royal family Boris's baptism. Oh King Boris
(30:44):
was born to Catholic parents, so his father, Foxy Ferdinand
didn't hesitate to baptize Boris a Roman Catholic too. But
Bulgaria is an Eastern Orthodox country, and as a bug
you'd kind of expect the heir to the throne to
share the national faith. Ferdinand clocked his mistake pretty quickly.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
You've married an Italian girl, a fervent Catholic. You've signed
up and changed the constitution so that your firstborn will
be a Catholic, and then you think, oh, no, I
better reverse that decision.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Foxy Ferdinand booked Boris another baptism ceremony pronto.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
So Boris, having been christened a Catholic, is then re
christened or baptized into the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Hallelujah.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
You know, he's certainly like covered both stumps as Boris.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Covered both stumps is one of those quaint British sayings.
It refers to cricket but translated into baseball, and it
would be like saying he was covering all the bases. Anyway,
Fox's defensive play was enough to satisfy the Bulgarian people,
but it didn't go down quite so well in Rome.
The Pope excommunicated him, poor old Foxy. Anyway, fast forward again,
(32:12):
and here's now Orthodox Boris on his wedding day, marrying
an Italian Catholic princess in the Catholic cathedral in Assisi.
They also had a blessing in an Orthodox church. Now
by all accounts, Boris really loved Giovanna, but he also
had a royal duty to marry. To provide an heir
(32:34):
to the throne.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
You need progeny. First of all, he had to acquire
a womb that he considered suitable.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
The problem was the royal womb Boris had found belonged
to a Catholic, and a Catholic is supposed to bring
up her children as Catholics. Now that put Boris, the
king of an Orthodox country, in a tricky situation. But
he didn't want to annoy his new ina or the Pope,
(33:02):
so he promised his firstborn child would be baptized a Catholic.
But when his daughter was born, Boris renewed on his promise.
Maria Louisa was baptized into the Orthodox faith, and the
church was so relieved it even bent the rules.
Speaker 9 (33:20):
Well, I'm called Maria Louisa, and that's it, because in
the Orthodox Church you don't have more than one.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Name, except she does.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Of course, because it's a double burialed name. They had
to have a special permission with the church and they
make it like one name. But Maria Aluisa, after my
paternal grandmother.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But when Simeon was born four years later, he was
also baptized into the Orthodox faith. Queen Giovanna accepted this,
but what about her family? Were the Italian King and
Queen horrified that their grandchildren were not Catholics? I mean,
they quite liked their son in law Boris, but he'd
(34:01):
basically just hoodwinked them. Is this what they wanted for
their daughter? And here's another thing. Remember Joseph Gebels, the
Nazi propaganda minister who kept a diary. He wrote that
King Boris had been poisoned with snake venom. But when
we ran that theory past our snake expert mark O'Shea,
(34:24):
he pretty much rubbished.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
It.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Turns out it's pretty impossible to get a snake to
bite someone if it doesn't feel like it. Plus the
snake has to bite in the right place with the
right amount of venom. So admittedly Gebels was a bit
off the mark with the whole snake venom idea. But
(34:47):
a few days after he penned that, Gerbels wrote one
more entry about the murder, and this time he pointed
the finger of blame fairly and squarely at someone specific
in the Italian royal family.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Goebbels claims that it was my mother's sister Princess Mafalda
that she had poisoned him.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Now, Princess Mafalda was married to the German Prince Philip
of Hesse, who was disillusioned with the Nazi Party and
everything hit the stood for and Mafalda was absolutely on
the same page as her husband and her parents. She
wouldn't have been impressed that her brother in law Boris
was in league with the Fura. So, according to Goebels,
(35:41):
Mafalder paid a little visit to Bulgaria, to the palace
with a bottle of poison in her bag. Four weeks
after her departure, the king was dead. Could Mafalda be
the royal assassin?
Speaker 7 (35:58):
This is nonsense, because I was at the station to
receive my aunt after my father was dead, because she
came to the funeral.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Let's not forget that Simeon was an eye witness, and
neither he nor Maria Louisa can recall Aunt Mafalda paying
a visit before Boris' death. In fact, no one can
remember Mafalda coming to visit her sister and brother in
law before the funeral for one simple reason.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
She didn't come, So there was no way that she
could have poisoned him.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
So you know that for a fact, awaitnessed.
Speaker 9 (36:39):
Yes, definitely not Italian, because why you know it, Italians
had no advantage whatsoever.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
Gebel was blaming the Italian court because the Nazis were
very upset when Italy changed sides before my father's death.
But that's why I say that sometimes documents which are
supposed to be what you call it official, can also
be misleading.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Point taken, it's all propaganda. That's the very last time
I cite the diary of Joseph Goebel's promise. I suppose
there's something else I may have overlooked. Families and particularly sisters,
tend to talk. Mafalda would have known King Boris was
unhappy with Hitler and that he was also in secret
(37:28):
talks about switching sides. She'd have respected him, she wouldn't
have wanted him dead. There's a PostScript to Mifalda's story.
It's not a happy ending. The Nazis found out that
she and her husband had been helping Jews get to safety,
(37:49):
and while Mafalda was in Bulgaria supporting her sister at
Boris's funeral, her husband was arrested. And sent to a
concentration camp. When Mafalda returned to Italy, the Nazis tricked
her into visiting the German embassy in Rome, claiming they
had a message for her from her husband, But when
(38:11):
she arrived, she was immediately arrested for subversive activities and
sent to a concentration camp called Buchenwald. Mefalder grew very
sick and thin at the camp, and then the Allies
(38:32):
started to bomb. You see, there was a munitions factory
right next door, a prime target, and during one raid,
Princess Mafalda was badly wounded. The ESSs doctors made a
half hearted attempt to operate, but she died of her
injuries in the summer of nineteen forty four, exactly a
(38:55):
year after her brother in law Boris. So where does
that leave us? Suicide is off the list. Simeon's adamant
about that, And despite their differences in faith and in politics,
it can't have been the Italians. They were too fond
(39:16):
of Boris. But I cannot dismiss the Communists. They tried
to kill the king again and again, but I still
don't have concrete proof. I don't even have a name
for the poison that was used to kill the king.
You know, at a certain point in every investigation I've
(39:40):
ever done, something unexpected always turns up, And in my experience,
it most often comes at that exact moment I think
I'm done, Just as I'm about to take stock of
what I know and draw up my final conclusions, I
receive an intriguing voicemail. It's very cryptic. It suggests we
(40:05):
meet up in Sofia to talk about the death of
King Boris the Third And who's the message from. Well,
when he says his name, I'm honestly speechless because this
voicemails from someone who has a microscopic knowledge of King Boris,
a man who claims he knows exactly how the king died.
(40:29):
He almost never gives interviews, but now he's offering to
tell us.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
All he knows.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
He says, it's time the world knows the whole truth
about what killed the Butterfly King. That's next time coming
up on the Butterfly King.
Speaker 7 (40:53):
I I simply regret, and now that you bring it up,
I think of it again. It's this one has to
make one's piece with these things.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Painful revelations for the Royal Children and We're Delta brand
new line of inquiry.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Cocaine can cause the arteries to your heart to spasm
to close down.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Are you saying King Boris may have been on cocaine?
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
(41:41):
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nankmanow and Toby Matamoon. Sound design
and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans, artwork
by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika Schortino Nolan.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
(42:04):
executive producer and head of Content at Blanchard House is
Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers are
Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Daniel Kramer, with consulting producer
Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book
(42:26):
Hitler and the King by John Hall Spencer
Hosts And Creators
Emma Jane Kirby
Becky Milligan
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