March 21, 2024 • 53 mins
It’s 1943 during a crucial turning point in the Second World War. Caught in the crossfire, King Boris III of Bulgaria has a make-or-break meeting with a key ally. Boris is a reluctant politician and a family man, sucked into the bloodiest conflict in history. Someone resents his influence and wants him out of the way for good. Could Boris’s fate be linked to the company he keeps?
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and Exactly Right Media.
From Blanchard House
Host: Becky Milligan
Writer and Producer: Emma Jane Kirby
Original Music: Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nanke-Mannell and Toby Matimong
Sound Design and Engineering: Toby Matimong and Daniel Lloyd-Evans
Managing Producer: Amica Sciortino Nowlan
Creative Director: Rosie Pye
Executive Producer and Head of Content: Laurence Grissell
From Exactly Right
Consulting Producer: Kyle Ryan
Artwork: Vanessa Lilak
Executive Producers: Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye Europe.
Speaker 8 (02:20):
August nineteen forty three, location classified across the globe. The
Second World War, the deadliest war in history, is raging.
This summer is a crucial turning point in the Southwest Pacific.
The US has just overcome the Japanese on the Eastern Front.
(02:41):
The Soviets have inflicted huge losses on Nazi Germany. Mussolini
has fallen, and Italy is about to defect to the Allies.
The balance of power is wavery Could we possibly cut
the typewriter effects?
Speaker 9 (02:57):
Please?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thanks.
Speaker 8 (02:59):
I think it's just a bit of a cliche, so
as I was saying, this location's classified, it's a military complex.
But what I can tell you is there's a plane
coming into land on a narrow air strip, a military
plane in the middle of dense woodland. It's baking hot,
(03:23):
the grass is scorched. There's a pungent smell of pine.
And this place is top secret. Almost no one knows
it exists. The bunker walls are seven meters thick. They're
surrounded by ten kilometers of mines. I'm Becky Milligan and
I reported and broke stories for the BBC for almost
(03:44):
thirty years. You can trust me to report the facts,
the truth. It's what I do. But I warn you
to be on your guard because where I'm about to
take you the truth is extremely hard to find.
Speaker 10 (03:59):
War is a terrible thing. You never know who your
enemy or your friend is. You just don't know who
is who.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
Millions have already died in this war, and millions more
lives are now at stake. Trust is fraying between the
conflict's key players as countries u turn and switch sides.
The passenger in the plane has just landed in the
midst of it. He knows this place, He's been here before.
(04:28):
He's sweating, but not just because of the heat. He's nervous,
really nervous. Tomorrow morning he has the most crucial meeting
of his life for him.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Pretty much everything's riding on it.
Speaker 11 (04:44):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during the war
and you are alone.
Speaker 12 (04:49):
On the top of the power pyramid?
Speaker 11 (04:52):
What kind of pressure?
Speaker 8 (04:53):
Jev the man is, his Majesty King Boris the third
of Bulgaria. Look on the map and you'll see Bulgaria's
a small country in southeastern Europe, in the Balkans, squashed
between Romania to the north and Greece and Turkey to
the south, and at this moment in the conflict, Bulgaria
finds itself in a very tight spot. This meeting is
(05:16):
crucial to the direction of the wall. The reception seems
cordial enough, but only a fool would take a man
at his word. Here this is the last place on
earth the king wants to be. That night, he sleeps
in a concrete bunker. It's airless, stifling. The king tosses
(05:41):
and turns. Next morning the meeting takes place. It lasts
eight hours, eight long and very difficult hours, and it
all takes place behind closed doors with no wis witnesses.
(06:01):
There are just two men in that room, the Bulgarian
King and actually, no, let's not go into that room
quite yet, because that meeting was ugly. The king returns
home to Bulgaria, but after a day or so he
(06:23):
starts to feel a bit unwell. He's usually fit and sporty,
but soon he's so sick he has to take to
his bed. He goes seriously downhill, until after six days of.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Agony lask sushal as a continent.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
The forty nine year old monarch is dead. The news
reports tell us he died suddenly of a heart attack.
That was the official line, and it's been the official
line ever since.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Does she bear salient?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But hang on a minute.
Speaker 8 (07:12):
This is where my journalistic instincts kick in. Suddenly, since
when does a sudden death span six days? And here's
another thing that strikes me as odd. King Boris's skin
was covered with spots. Now, I'm no doctor, but that
does not sound like a heart attack to me. And
(07:34):
I'm not the only one. Plenty of people think the
official cause of death was a complete lie.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
The blotches do sound like a hypersensitive reaction to me
to something they do.
Speaker 12 (07:45):
Maybe a poison poison.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
The king was poisoned.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
I think it's a poisoning.
Speaker 12 (07:51):
Poison, a cocktail of doxins. I'm convinced that something was
put into his soup.
Speaker 11 (07:58):
Dis blameless king has fallen, a victim to the most
vulgar murder.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
In the middle of a global war, and with Bulgaria's
future hanging in the balance. The king is dead? Who
killed him? And why? From Blanchard House and exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Media.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
This is the Butterfly King.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I'm Becky Milligan.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Chapter one, The Mender of Broken Dishes. Let me tell
you a little bit about me. I'm Becky Milligan, and
I covered stories all over the world for the BBC
Walls in Afghanistan, arm scandals in Sierra Leone, and I've
uncovered a whole raft of abuse and misconduct in the
(09:35):
British Parliament. But I've never investigated a story quite like
this one before because regicide, the killing of a king,
that's a big brief to take on. But once my
curiosity is peaked, I just can't walk away because for years,
people across Bulgaria, people in the know, have been saying
(09:58):
that someone signed Boris the Third of Bulgaria, the last
crowned king of Bulgaria, and I'm determined to find out
who that was. I start all my investigations by interviewing
every witness I can find. And although this story has
(10:18):
its roots in the nineteen forties, I've tracked down two
people who lived through it. They're in their eighties now,
but they're rather important leads in more ways than one
because they're actually members of the royal family. They're King
Boris's children, his son and his daughter, and they've invited
(10:39):
me and my producer EJ to visit them at their home.
It's just outside Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. Good morning, Are you
okay to take us to Rana Palace?
Speaker 13 (10:53):
Do you know here?
Speaker 12 (10:54):
It is on the map?
Speaker 8 (10:56):
Brana Palace. Imagine jumping into a can in London telling
the driver to take you to Buckingham Palace, only to
have him turn around and ask you for the address. Well,
that's exactly what happens in Bulgaria. King Simeon his home.
To be fair, the whole royal thing here is a
(11:19):
bit confusing these days. Bulgaria's a republic. It no longer
has a monarchy. That was all scrapped under the communists
who arrived at.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The end of the war.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
Except Bulgaria does still have a sort of king, and
that sort of king is Simeon. Simeon was forced into
exile after the war, but he never actually abdicated, so
technically he is still king, if only in name. But actually,
(11:51):
let's save some of the more complex constitutional details for later,
because if it's confusing for a Bulgarian, just do you see.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Where it is?
Speaker 8 (12:07):
So this is.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It's like a big park.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
I'm clearly getting nowhere here, so I call for back
up from the receptionist at our hotel.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay, so he'll drag us.
Speaker 8 (12:24):
Yes, brilliant, thank you so much, Thank you for your health.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Right half an hour later and I.
Speaker 8 (12:32):
Can't quite see the palace at the moment, but I
think this is the park. It looks quite barren. Let's
just say this is not the Palace of Versailles. It's
a bit like a scrap metal yard. In fact, it
looks a bit like a dumpinger in a way. I
hope this is the right place at the moment, it
doesn't feel like it true despite appearances, it is the
(12:57):
right place. Varana Palace was where King Boris lived too.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It was his country pad.
Speaker 8 (13:04):
Yeah, the next one.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So I think we go up here?
Speaker 8 (13:08):
This is more like it's relief. Didn't fancy getting out
where that dog.
Speaker 12 (13:14):
Was looking at us like that.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
Still very desolately dilapidated though, Is that it really is?
I think this is where we are, yes, I think so.
I think I think we've we're being dumped in its heyday.
(13:37):
Rana must have been a dyllic. It's surrounded by mixed
woodlands and long tree lined avenues. Some of the trees
were planted by Boris himself and by Ferdinand, Boris's father.
They weren't just weekend gardeners. They were both serious botanists.
Speaker 9 (13:56):
Shut the gate quickly.
Speaker 8 (14:03):
So there are signposts here, it says in English, as
well as Bulgarian palace. So are we gonna set off
up here? Rana was really Boris's go to place. He
was a country by at heart, and he loved the
(14:24):
great outdoors, to be in nature, peace and quiet, and.
Speaker 13 (14:29):
He liked mounting butterflies.
Speaker 8 (14:32):
Yes, she said mounting butterflies. She's Tessa Dunlop, a historian
and an expert on both Royal and Eastern European history.
You might find her a little blunt. She certainly likes
to tell it how it is.
Speaker 13 (14:46):
They caught them, and he mounted them, and he spent
hours working out which kind of butterfly they was.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
I mean he was a geek.
Speaker 8 (14:52):
Well, he certainly knew his insects. Back to front Entomology
was his great passion, and his knowledge was set to none.
He was well respected in the natural history world. Boris
was at his happiest pottering around his grounds with his
old floppy hat and butterfly nets. He was a gentle soul,
(15:12):
the kind of king who wouldn't hurt to fly. Well, actually,
he probably would hurt to fly if it was a
rare one and he wanted it for his scrapbook. But
you can see where I'm coming from. He was inoffensive.
All that pomp and splendor, it just wasn't him.
Speaker 13 (15:27):
He found himself really pretty unexceptional. He got terribly anxious
about sort of standing up in parliament, especially early on.
He said, little do they know that I have to
go to the loo five times before I confront them.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I think what she's trying to say is that King
Boris was not at all what you might expect in
a king.
Speaker 13 (15:46):
You know, he was not a man who was imbued
with huge amounts of confidence, And I expect part of
that was his physical appearance and his size. It helps
if you're a big man.
Speaker 8 (15:57):
Why does history always demand handsome Here I'm starting to
feel rather sorry for Boris.
Speaker 13 (16:03):
He was small to look at, eminently unremarkable. You wouldn't
notice him in a room, diminutive, aggressive building, early on,
watery gray eyes, the long, protruding Habsburg knows I mean
The only Afrodizsiac attached to Boris was the fact he
was a monarch, and that does some things for some women,
(16:24):
doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Well, I wouldn't know, Tessa. Anyway. Back to Varana Palace.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
These lookers, though they might be the sort of more
modern quarters where Simeon lives.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Actually, do you.
Speaker 14 (16:37):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
Oh, there's another guard dog. Let's go and find a
doorbell somewhere. Goodness knows where you find a doorbell on
a palace. Maybe it's up here. I suppose when most
of us think of a palace, we'd think of something
we see in the crown or downtown abbey, towering turrets,
(16:59):
Gothic windows, colonnades. Well, Rana's a little more down at heel.
The architecture's charming, a sort of hotch potch of styles,
but it could do with a lick of paint. Simeon's
doing it up bit by bit, but he has to
do that from his own pocket. As he's only a
sort of king, he can't really ask the Bulgarian taxpayers
(17:20):
to foot the bill. So while parts of it are lovely,
the rest is let's say, shabby chic. He early I know, yes,
that's the King's aid Yarville meeting us, and he's precisely
(17:40):
how you'd imagine a king's aid, sharp suited, charming and
perfectly poised, even when the palace guard dog gets a
little frisky.
Speaker 10 (17:51):
I have a dog, so yes, but she's too lovely, lovely.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Good dog she is words sometimes lo.
Speaker 8 (18:03):
Chica is too lovely. She's not your typical guard dog.
Meeting a monarch is a nerve wracking experience. Luckily, Java
tells us we don't have to curtsey to Simeon, but
there are certain royal protocols which we need to stick to,
such as not touching the ornaments and royal bric a
(18:24):
brac in the drawing room. But there are so many
fascinating bits and pieces it's really hard not to including
a rather fine filigree box which was a birthday gift
to Simeon from a fellow king or something, and which
I very nearly break.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yes, I love that sort of thing. That's really very good.
Speaker 12 (18:50):
Please don't break the palace.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
That's lovely. I'm sure he's insured. A king's insured. His majesty.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
Drawing room is light and airy and is everything you'd
imagine in a stately home. The herringbone wooden floor is
scattered with plush Persian rugs, The walls are plastered with
icons and oil portraits, and the elegant chairs on which
we're invited to sit are painted gold and bricaded in
(19:20):
dusky pink silks. And just like in most people's houses,
the mantlepiece is crowded with photos.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
This is someone I recognize.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
Of course. Two years ago, the Pope visit Bulgaria and
he wants a private visit to the royal family.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
Simeon's family is not exactly ordinary. He's descended from the
Saxe Coburg Gotha dynasty. That basically means he's connected to
pretty much every royal clan in Europe, including the Windsors.
King Charles is a kind of distant cousin. In fact,
back in the days before the war, King Boris even
(19:57):
used to take his holidays with the British Royals shooting
in Scotland.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
There's a huge.
Speaker 8 (20:04):
Portrait of Boris hanging on the drawing room wall, and
looking at it you get a strange sense of deja vu.
Speaker 13 (20:12):
Yeah, they do all look like each other. I mean,
you can see quite a strong trace of our current
British royal family. I think in Boris and that strong.
Some would say aristocratic, others inbred profile that he has.
I won't name names, but take a look at him
and then well, yes, peru's the current royal landscape. Think
Prince William a little bit. I mean, poor Prince William.
(20:32):
It's not his fault. As Harry said, he does have
aggressive premitial building.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
Well it's true. There's definitely more William than Harry in Boris.
Speaker 13 (20:41):
Anyway, movingly on, yes, I think.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
We probably should because it's time to meet the King.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
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Speaker 8 (23:40):
Want to see me, thank you so much for making
the time. I'm Becky, missus Emma Jane, and we're delighted
that we're able to talk to you and really appreciate it.
Speaker 9 (23:52):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
King Simeon wears a dark suit and tie. He's got
a thin white mustache that's anchored by a chin strap
beard and okay, yes, he's completely bald. He's one of
those people who seem taller than they really are. He
might be eighty six, but he still knows how to
carry himself. He's very charming. He's also very much an
(24:14):
old school sort of king.
Speaker 9 (24:16):
I'm not the type of person who communicates easily, and
I like to keep my feelings to myself.
Speaker 8 (24:23):
So if you're expecting him to get all confessional and
prince Harry on you, you might be disappointed. But having
said that, once you get to know him, he's quite
the tease. It's important to laugh where we can, because
I'm afraid this story is a dark one. For a
(24:49):
child to lose a parent is always desperately sad, and
Simon was just six years old when his father died
so mysteriously, a mystery which still haunts him.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
To this day. Still, we cannot really either blame anybody
or point our fingers at anybody, and yet we have this.
I would say ghastly suspicion that something was wrong.
Speaker 8 (25:13):
Now, remember that military plane which Boris had taken to
his secret meeting. Simeon got taken to see it after
it landed back in Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
We went to the airport to greet my father when
he came back from this meeting. We were fascinated. My
mother drove us to the airport to see this huge
plane that had landed there.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
Little did Simeon know that his father had just flown
home to meet his death. It all seemed like harmless
fun to a little boy.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Porking.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Boris had a very difficult relationship with his father. Ferdinand
was fiery and Boris was frightened of him. Boris had
lost his mother as a very young boy, and that
meant he lost her gentle protection too. He felt he
never quite measured up to his father's exacting expectations. Ferdinand
was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Boris was
(26:18):
determined not to make the same mistakes with his own children,
so he was a hands on dad. Whenever he got
a day off, he'd head to the hills with the family.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
Oh on the hike. It was always fun because he
would teach us all sorts of things and botaneer or
on nature or on wildlife and so forth. So to
ask this was a great treat. I will say.
Speaker 8 (26:43):
Now I'm not just here to speak to Simeon, because
behind every great king is a bossy big sister.
Speaker 12 (26:52):
So you don't know, how do I get in touch
with you? In half an hour stint becoming.
Speaker 8 (26:59):
Her royal high Maria Louisa is four years senior to Simeon.
She's a plain speaking kind of princess.
Speaker 12 (27:06):
That was a lot of bs.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
Excuse me if Simeon's wary about speaking his mind, Maria
Louisa gives it to you straight, no matter who you are.
Just before the war, King Boris invited British King Edward
the Eighth to the palace. He's the king who abdicated
so he could marry American divorcey Wallace Simpson. Boris proudly
(27:30):
presented his little daughter to Edward, but Maria Louisa refused
to perform.
Speaker 12 (27:36):
I was I think four or what? And I got
bored and I said, now I have to go and play.
And King Edward ants.
Speaker 8 (27:46):
In her black trousers and trainers. Her raw Highness is
more casual than her brother, but still stylish. She broke
her leg last year, so she's walking with a stick.
It's a glittery burgundy red one, and it matches her
polar neck sweater. Occasionally she flashes her cane a look
of contempt. You can see she hates being dependent. She's
(28:09):
as sharp as attack, basically the kind of ninety year
old we all hope to be. Maria Louisa was exceptionally
close to her father, King Boris. In the next room,
there's a tear jerkingly beautiful black and white photo of
them together. She's wearing a string of pearls and she's
(28:29):
drawing or coloring something while Boris looks on dotingly. In
the photo, she's about eight, maybe nine years old. She's
concentrating hard, but her free arm is sloped around her
father's neck, just keeping him with her.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
She was ten when he died.
Speaker 12 (28:46):
He was always there for us, and it was always
a feet when he came and told us stories. And
he would take us sometimes for a little walk in
the forest and tell us stories about gnomes that live
the mushrooms and came out at night, and you know,
wonderful children's stories that we cherished enormously.
Speaker 8 (29:08):
When Maria, Louisa and Simeon talk about King Boris, they
both often look away or stare at the floor for
a second or two while they composed.
Speaker 12 (29:17):
Themselves, as it's very difficult to sort of empty one soul.
A very loving father were time for his children, definitely
for us. He was just loving papa.
Speaker 8 (29:31):
And there wasn't even a proper goodbye. He disappeared so suddenly.
Speaker 12 (29:36):
And the Monday morning he came into a room where
Siona and I were playing, and he just said, I'm
going to Sofia for work, you know, kissed us and
said I'll see you tonight, and we never saw him again.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
They were such a close knit family, but someone out
there clearly didn't care for King Boris at all. Once
on his death thread, the King didn't just slip peacefully away,
as we know, his so called cardiac arrest spanned six
long days and nights. He fought to stay alive that summer.
(30:12):
He really battled against his failing heart.
Speaker 14 (30:16):
Crushing chest pain as if there's a metal band around
your chest, feelings of sweatiness and nausea, the feeling of
impending doom.
Speaker 8 (30:29):
That's Dr Stewart Hamilton. More from him later, but he's
bang on the money with the prediction of doom. Simeon
seen the medical reports from his father's doctors.
Speaker 9 (30:41):
He was feeling sick. Then his liver eventually didn't function,
and there was also in pneumonia, and he lasted for
so long from Monday to Saturday, he lost his conscience.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
The king wasn't short of doctors in that sickroom. The
palace was crawling with them. But it was nineteen forty three.
What did they have to offer Paul Boris except a
bit of oxygen and sedation. Well, here's one thing they
didn't offer him, the comfort of his wife. The queen
was on holiday in the mountains with the royal children.
(31:21):
She wasn't even told her husband was ill until it
was pretty much over. Now that seems deeply odd, and not.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Just to me.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
My mother was.
Speaker 12 (31:31):
I should was convinced he was done in by somebody.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
And here's another thing that makes me suspicious. Once the
king was bedbound, no one was allowed to leave the palace.
They were literally locked in for the first few days.
Even Boris's government was kept in the dark. Whatever happened
in that sickroom stayed in that sickroom.
Speaker 9 (31:55):
Finally, the doctors who came in all that kept everything
very i'd say confidential or secret, and that was also
one of the reasons that people thought there us foul play.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
In the final stage of his illness, King Boris developed
a high fever. When the doctors couldn't control his temperature,
he began convulsing, and on the twenty eighth.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Of August it was all over.
Speaker 8 (32:45):
The King's casket was carried to its final resting place
by train drivers. His enthusiasm for engines and locomotives was legendary.
The railway workers even made him an honorary member of
their guild. He was a skilled engineer. He once joked
that if everything's went badly for him and he lost
his throne, he just head off to America and gets
(33:06):
a job as a mechanic.
Speaker 9 (33:08):
He remember once took us along a railroad because he
was very fond of trains.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
He was desperate to pass on his passion to his children,
so he took little Simeon into a tunnel. A train
appeared suddenly and roared past them in the dark.
Speaker 9 (33:30):
The conductor reported the next station there were some lunatics
who had been walking in the track just when the
train came by and so forth, and of course it
was great fun after it when they realized that it
was my father who had induced us to take this walk.
Speaker 8 (33:52):
Maria Louisa remembers other times when her father's enthusiasm almost
got the better of him.
Speaker 12 (33:58):
We would go off by riding, and not too far
from here was a railroad crossing, and we would stop
because the barriers were down. The trains were coming, and
since my father loved driving trains, we were standing with
the horses there and the train would pass, and if
the machine is recognized my father, of course it would
(34:20):
blow the whistle, and that was catastrophic for the horses
and for US.
Speaker 13 (34:30):
Historian Tessa Dunlop, you know the hours he spent pulling
the levers of locomotives, so much so that the engine
drivers of the Orient Express were told watch out for Boris.
Speaker 12 (34:43):
Because he literally will steal.
Speaker 13 (34:44):
Into your engine and drive off with it. That was
the level of his obsession.
Speaker 8 (34:49):
Boris was a royal who had the common touch. He
fitted in everywhere. Think of the late Queen Elizabeth the Second,
the second longest raining monarch in history, yet somehow well
most Brits thought of her as their own granny. Think
of Princess Diana, who instinctively knew how to charm a crowd.
Unlike his father, Ferdinand, Boris was popular, and whatever you
(35:13):
think about train balls, being a committed railway enthusiast is
hardly a motive for murder. And this is where some
red flags are popping up for me, because I feel
like I'm getting a somewhat filtered version of the truth here.
So far, we've only really heard from Boris's children, and
I mean, is anyone objective about their own parents? Affectionate
(35:41):
stories about Boris are threaded through Bulgarian folklore. There are
countless tales of the King picking up hitchhikers in his
car incognito. He'd drive them around for miles, chatting away.
Simeon told me about one time when Boris pulled his
bet you can't guess who I am prank a hapless
young soldier.
Speaker 9 (36:02):
My father thought of those hilarios, which.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It really was, would he roar with laughter?
Speaker 9 (36:06):
Well, yes, and I suppose a soldier almost fainted. Not
because she says it's the king. It's the king.
Speaker 8 (36:15):
And some of the legends sound like they're straight out
of a fairy tale, like when King Boris was caught
in a rainstorm when he was out butterfly hunting in
the mountains. Apparently he'd often pitch up at a villager's
door in the hope of a hot bowl of broth
and some shelter. Once home, he'd always thank the villager
(36:36):
for their hospitality by sending on parcels and gifts.
Speaker 13 (36:40):
Do we believe that? Do we actually believe that? I
don't think so well, Tessa.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
From what I've read, at least some of these accounts
really are true. There's evidence to back them all up.
But like Tessa, the skeptical journalist in me is starting
to smell a rat because my research shows me that
we're getting very sanitized version of history here. This is
not Disney. It's a real life story rooted in war,
(37:07):
and war was always a dirty business. And if I
dig around a bit in Boris's past, it's not hard
to unearth a less polished reality.
Speaker 13 (37:18):
Without wishing to denigrate Bulgaria in any way.
Speaker 8 (37:21):
I get the feeling she's about to denigrate Bulgaria in
some way.
Speaker 13 (37:25):
It was a nation of peasant's told you, I mean,
we love our peasants now It's quite diregard to be
a peasant, isn't it, But back then less so. It's
kind of weirdly lonely for Boris. He was known as
the lonely King actually, because who'd you hang out with
if your new country doesn't have any proper posh landowners.
There was not much between Boris and the peasants. So
when we say, oh, Boris really got on with the peasants,
(37:46):
I'm like, yeah, who else did he have to play with?
Speaker 8 (37:48):
Really, Boris's bloodline was undeniably blue, but it wasn't so
undeniably Bulgarian. Let me explain with a whistle stop tour
of the country's history. Established in the seventh century, Bulgaria
is one of the oldest countries in Europe, but at
the end of the fourteenth century it fell into the
(38:09):
hands of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, and that's
where it stayed until eighteen seventy eight, until Russia went
to war with Turkey and liberated Bulgaria.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Again.
Speaker 8 (38:21):
Delighted with their newfound independence, the Bulgarians set about reinstating
the monarchy. The problem was, it had been so long
since they'd had a king, they couldn't trace back the bloodline.
They hadn't got a clue who their real royals were.
The solution simple, import a new royal family.
Speaker 13 (38:45):
Where's the obvious place to import a royal from Germany?
It's got an abundance of slightly pointless. The little dukes
and princes of the man are born without quite an
after do so ideally, you want someone who's been gifted
to you with international approval.
Speaker 8 (39:05):
Their first attempt at importing a royal was German Prince
Alexander Battenberg, but he proved so unpopular that they were
soon back to the drawing board. The next bit sounds surreal,
but I promise you it's true. The Bulgarians went shopping
for a king. Three royal headhunters trailed around all the
(39:29):
royal courts of Europe, but to no avail. They just
couldn't find a suitable or willing candidate. Downcast, they decided
to cheer themselves up with a trip to the opera
in Vienna, and sitting right under.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Their noses in the royal box.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
Was the perfect man for the job. They intercepted him
at intermission. Sh it's intermission anyway. He was a suave
German prince by the name of Ferdinand, and he had
away with the ladies and with the men. Actually he
lived for pleasure.
Speaker 13 (40:07):
Yes, he did swing both ways. I think all bisexual.
And of course, if you're a king you can really
do what the hell you like. He is a grand
signior to the point of decadence. He loved fine clothes,
he loved fine wine.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
He liked jewels.
Speaker 13 (40:19):
He wore many jewels on his fingers. He was not
the most quote comfortable of husbands. No, I shouldn't think
he was if he was boning the local No, I mean,
I can't say that.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
On the radio, of course, he was known as Foxy Ferdinand,
and not in a good way. His cousin, the British
Queen Victoria, hated him. She described him as eccentric, effeminate
and totally unfit. Other relatives wrote him off as weird
and ridiculous. But he got the job anyway. There weren't
really any other applicants. Bulgaria's love affair with Foxy didn't
(40:55):
last long. He got a reputation for being sly, un trustworthy,
and crucially, during the First World War he joined the
wrong side, the losing side. His alliance with Germany cost
the lives of one hundred thousand Bulgarian soldiers, and in
the peace treaty that ended the war, Bulgaria was severely punished.
(41:18):
The country lost huge swathes of territory, including the strategically
important Thrace, a region bordering Greece and the Aegeanc and Macedonia,
which was given to Yugoslavia. Do remember the names Thrace
and Macedonia, as they're going to be quite important. A
little further on in our story, Ferdinand had cost his
(41:41):
country dearly. He was forced to abdicate and was exiled,
and his throne, still warm, was handed to his son,
twenty four year old Boris. Was Boris's murder a simple
case of payback for the sins of the father. Ferdinand
might have made some bad choices, but they weren't Boris's choices.
(42:02):
In fact, the two could not have been more different.
While Ferdinand loved a good row, king, Boris hated conflict
of any kind, especially war. He jokingly nicknamed himself the
mender of broken dishes. That's perhaps a tiny bit lost
in translation, but you get the sense. Boris was a diplomat,
(42:24):
the kind of king who picked up the pieces and
glued them back together. Not the kind of king who
threw tantrums and smashed things, and he never aspired to be.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
On the throne.
Speaker 8 (42:37):
But unfortunately that's precisely where he found himself as the
world went to war again in nineteen thirty nine, and
it was in the darkest part of the middle of
that war that Boris died, a brutal and baffling death.
Why murder a peace lover? It was wartime, Maria Louisa.
Speaker 12 (43:02):
There were many, many people who would have been happy
to get rid of.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Him, As I suspected.
Speaker 8 (43:07):
The king had several known enemies, but as far as
the identity of his assassin goes, the clues a few
and far between. Boris's son Simeon, has tried to crack
this case himself in the past, but his sleuthing has
proved fruitless.
Speaker 9 (43:23):
It's amazing. I mean, so many years, so many archives, investigations,
questions or what have you, and there still hasn't been
any proof. And I must say, I mean, as a
sun it's disturbing.
Speaker 8 (43:41):
And there's no nice way to put this. Time's running
out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to
the question that haunts them.
Speaker 12 (43:52):
Never forget it still, you know, you go to a
funeral and it all comes back.
Speaker 9 (43:58):
Not that one looks for the avenger or anything like it,
but simply to know.
Speaker 8 (44:05):
And I want to know too. So I'm going to
pick up this case where Simeon left off. Time to
recap and to fill you in on one of Boris's
dirty little secrets. Remember its wartime, and in war, difficult
choices have.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
To be made.
Speaker 8 (44:26):
We know Boris hated bloodshed, so at the start of
the war, Bulgaria opted for neutrality. But Bulgaria has an
unfortunate geographical position. Rumania, on its northern border, had joined
sides with Hitler. That meant very quickly, there were German
troops breathing right down Bulgaria's neck. Meanwhile, on Bulgaria's southern border,
(44:52):
the Italian Army invaded Greece. They needed back up, and
Hitler was itching to help. Little Bulgaria was sandwiched between
hostile players. She found herself backed into a corner. And
when you're backed into a corner, you have to pick
a side. And in nineteen forty one, King Boris did
(45:14):
pick a side.
Speaker 13 (45:16):
We know that Boris was a political survivor.
Speaker 10 (45:19):
And then he died.
Speaker 13 (45:20):
But he was, and he had survived for a very
long time. Now, what do you do if you're a survivor,
You work out which way the wind's blowing and you
travel with it.
Speaker 8 (45:29):
So let's go back to that top secret bunker once again,
the one where Boris is about to walk into the
most important meeting of his life. It's now August nineteen
forty three. In the stifling bunker, Boris has been trying
to get his head straight, but he's played all his
(45:50):
cards and he knows it.
Speaker 13 (45:52):
This man is eminently reasonable relative to what's going on
around him, and he's also got a very good political brain.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
For Bulgaria, they need to survive. That's the game.
Speaker 8 (46:04):
But the game's up. Boris is out of time. It's
time to meet.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Adolph Hitler.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
Yes, Boris, the so called Mender of Broken Dishes, is
an ally of the most evil man in history. He
has been for eighteen months. And this military hideaway, it's
the Wolf's Layer, the secret Nazi headquarters in what is
now Poland, And just like Germany, King Boris the Third
(46:41):
of Bulgaria has declared war on Britain and America.
Speaker 17 (46:48):
Now.
Speaker 8 (46:49):
So far, in the time they've been allies with Germany,
Bulgaria's involvement has been pretty passive. While thousands of men
across Europe are losing their lives on the battlefields, not
a single Bulgarian soldier has been involved in active combat,
and as yet, not a single Bulgarian Jew has been deported.
(47:11):
But now Hitler wants that to change. He wants to
up the ante. He's demanding. Boris's troops must help the
Germans on the front line, and he's determined to send
each one of Bulgaria's fifty thousand Jews to the gas chambers.
This is not what King Boris signed up for, and
(47:34):
this is why he's here. He's about to disobey Hitler's
orders to tell him he won't do as Hitler commands.
You don't need to know much about history to know
what happens to people who anger Hitler. Less than two
weeks after leaving the Wolf's Layer, King Boris will be dead.
Speaker 13 (47:57):
Given the hand he was served, Boris did bloody well
how to squeeze almost half a century out of this planet.
Speaker 8 (48:03):
So was it Hitler who personally ordered his murder? He
had a motive, He had the opportunity, but I gave
my word that I would tell this story objectively, and
that means telling you all the facts I know, even
those which don't quite fit the narrative. And there's something
here that doesn't quite square with me. Because things weren't
(48:26):
shaping up well for Hitler by the summer of nineteen
forty three, with heavy losses on the Eastern Front and
Italy on the verge of surrender, Hitler needed all the
friends he could get. Would he really kill one of
his only allies? Or did his need for revenge overcome
his reason? Eighty years on from Boris's death, I'm determined
(48:48):
to get to the truth.
Speaker 9 (48:50):
Who would want to cover up after so many years?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Coming up this season in the Butterfly.
Speaker 9 (49:02):
King, everybody started suspecting everybody else.
Speaker 11 (49:06):
Russian special services Starting's special services killed King Boris.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I mean it would make sense to be the Germans, right,
because it would be safer for the Germans if he
was out of the picture.
Speaker 15 (49:21):
Could have paint the book Carriats an inside job.
Speaker 11 (49:25):
It was a typical Balkan death.
Speaker 8 (49:29):
What do you mean by a typical Boken death?
Speaker 11 (49:33):
I mean in the bottle there were more political murders
than in the rest of Europe for this period.
Speaker 10 (49:39):
This does not have the whole box of British show
American intelligence, but these sort of things have happened in
the past.
Speaker 8 (49:49):
It's a long list of suspects. There's just one other
tricky problem I need to share with you. For Simeon
and Maria, Louisa King Boris was just dear sweet Papa,
but others well they saw him very differently.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
I really don't care how he died for me. He
is a creaming.
Speaker 8 (50:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Original music is.
Speaker 8 (50:50):
By Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell and Toby Matamoon.
Sound design and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The managing producer is Amka Schultino Nola.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
(51:12):
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 Danielle Kramer, with consulting producer
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Hitler and the King by John Paul Spencer.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye Europe.
Speaker 8 (02:20):
August nineteen forty three, location classified across the globe. The
Second World War, the deadliest war in history, is raging.
This summer is a crucial turning point in the Southwest Pacific.
The US has just overcome the Japanese on the Eastern Front.
(02:41):
The Soviets have inflicted huge losses on Nazi Germany. Mussolini
has fallen, and Italy is about to defect to the Allies.
The balance of power is wavery Could we possibly cut
the typewriter effects?
Speaker 9 (02:57):
Please?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thanks.
Speaker 8 (02:59):
I think it's just a bit of a cliche, so
as I was saying, this location's classified, it's a military complex.
But what I can tell you is there's a plane
coming into land on a narrow air strip, a military
plane in the middle of dense woodland. It's baking hot,
(03:23):
the grass is scorched. There's a pungent smell of pine.
And this place is top secret. Almost no one knows
it exists. The bunker walls are seven meters thick. They're
surrounded by ten kilometers of mines. I'm Becky Milligan and
I reported and broke stories for the BBC for almost
(03:44):
thirty years. You can trust me to report the facts,
the truth. It's what I do. But I warn you
to be on your guard because where I'm about to
take you the truth is extremely hard to find.
Speaker 10 (03:59):
War is a terrible thing. You never know who your
enemy or your friend is. You just don't know who
is who.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
Millions have already died in this war, and millions more
lives are now at stake. Trust is fraying between the
conflict's key players as countries u turn and switch sides.
The passenger in the plane has just landed in the
midst of it. He knows this place, He's been here before.
(04:28):
He's sweating, but not just because of the heat. He's nervous,
really nervous. Tomorrow morning he has the most crucial meeting
of his life for him.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Pretty much everything's riding on it.
Speaker 11 (04:44):
Could you imagine what kind of pressure during the war
and you are alone.
Speaker 12 (04:49):
On the top of the power pyramid?
Speaker 11 (04:52):
What kind of pressure?
Speaker 8 (04:53):
Jev the man is, his Majesty King Boris the third
of Bulgaria. Look on the map and you'll see Bulgaria's
a small country in southeastern Europe, in the Balkans, squashed
between Romania to the north and Greece and Turkey to
the south, and at this moment in the conflict, Bulgaria
finds itself in a very tight spot. This meeting is
(05:16):
crucial to the direction of the wall. The reception seems
cordial enough, but only a fool would take a man
at his word. Here this is the last place on
earth the king wants to be. That night, he sleeps
in a concrete bunker. It's airless, stifling. The king tosses
(05:41):
and turns. Next morning the meeting takes place. It lasts
eight hours, eight long and very difficult hours, and it
all takes place behind closed doors with no wis witnesses.
(06:01):
There are just two men in that room, the Bulgarian
King and actually, no, let's not go into that room
quite yet, because that meeting was ugly. The king returns
home to Bulgaria, but after a day or so he
(06:23):
starts to feel a bit unwell. He's usually fit and sporty,
but soon he's so sick he has to take to
his bed. He goes seriously downhill, until after six days of.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Agony lask sushal as a continent.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
The forty nine year old monarch is dead. The news
reports tell us he died suddenly of a heart attack.
That was the official line, and it's been the official
line ever since.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Does she bear salient?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But hang on a minute.
Speaker 8 (07:12):
This is where my journalistic instincts kick in. Suddenly, since
when does a sudden death span six days? And here's
another thing that strikes me as odd. King Boris's skin
was covered with spots. Now, I'm no doctor, but that
does not sound like a heart attack to me. And
(07:34):
I'm not the only one. Plenty of people think the
official cause of death was a complete lie.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
The blotches do sound like a hypersensitive reaction to me
to something they do.
Speaker 12 (07:45):
Maybe a poison poison.
Speaker 9 (07:47):
The king was poisoned.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
I think it's a poisoning.
Speaker 12 (07:51):
Poison, a cocktail of doxins. I'm convinced that something was
put into his soup.
Speaker 11 (07:58):
Dis blameless king has fallen, a victim to the most
vulgar murder.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
In the middle of a global war, and with Bulgaria's
future hanging in the balance. The king is dead? Who
killed him? And why? From Blanchard House and exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Media.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
This is the Butterfly King.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I'm Becky Milligan.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Chapter one, The Mender of Broken Dishes. Let me tell
you a little bit about me. I'm Becky Milligan, and
I covered stories all over the world for the BBC
Walls in Afghanistan, arm scandals in Sierra Leone, and I've
uncovered a whole raft of abuse and misconduct in the
(09:35):
British Parliament. But I've never investigated a story quite like
this one before because regicide, the killing of a king,
that's a big brief to take on. But once my
curiosity is peaked, I just can't walk away because for years,
people across Bulgaria, people in the know, have been saying
(09:58):
that someone signed Boris the Third of Bulgaria, the last
crowned king of Bulgaria, and I'm determined to find out
who that was. I start all my investigations by interviewing
every witness I can find. And although this story has
(10:18):
its roots in the nineteen forties, I've tracked down two
people who lived through it. They're in their eighties now,
but they're rather important leads in more ways than one
because they're actually members of the royal family. They're King
Boris's children, his son and his daughter, and they've invited
(10:39):
me and my producer EJ to visit them at their home.
It's just outside Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. Good morning, Are you
okay to take us to Rana Palace?
Speaker 13 (10:53):
Do you know here?
Speaker 12 (10:54):
It is on the map?
Speaker 8 (10:56):
Brana Palace. Imagine jumping into a can in London telling
the driver to take you to Buckingham Palace, only to
have him turn around and ask you for the address. Well,
that's exactly what happens in Bulgaria. King Simeon his home.
To be fair, the whole royal thing here is a
(11:19):
bit confusing these days. Bulgaria's a republic. It no longer
has a monarchy. That was all scrapped under the communists
who arrived at.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The end of the war.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
Except Bulgaria does still have a sort of king, and
that sort of king is Simeon. Simeon was forced into
exile after the war, but he never actually abdicated, so
technically he is still king, if only in name. But actually,
(11:51):
let's save some of the more complex constitutional details for later,
because if it's confusing for a Bulgarian, just do you see.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Where it is?
Speaker 8 (12:07):
So this is.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It's like a big park.
Speaker 8 (12:11):
I'm clearly getting nowhere here, so I call for back
up from the receptionist at our hotel.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay, so he'll drag us.
Speaker 8 (12:24):
Yes, brilliant, thank you so much, Thank you for your health.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Right half an hour later and I.
Speaker 8 (12:32):
Can't quite see the palace at the moment, but I
think this is the park. It looks quite barren. Let's
just say this is not the Palace of Versailles. It's
a bit like a scrap metal yard. In fact, it
looks a bit like a dumpinger in a way. I
hope this is the right place at the moment, it
doesn't feel like it true despite appearances, it is the
(12:57):
right place. Varana Palace was where King Boris lived too.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It was his country pad.
Speaker 8 (13:04):
Yeah, the next one.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So I think we go up here?
Speaker 8 (13:08):
This is more like it's relief. Didn't fancy getting out
where that dog.
Speaker 12 (13:14):
Was looking at us like that.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
Still very desolately dilapidated though, Is that it really is?
I think this is where we are, yes, I think so.
I think I think we've we're being dumped in its heyday.
(13:37):
Rana must have been a dyllic. It's surrounded by mixed
woodlands and long tree lined avenues. Some of the trees
were planted by Boris himself and by Ferdinand, Boris's father.
They weren't just weekend gardeners. They were both serious botanists.
Speaker 9 (13:56):
Shut the gate quickly.
Speaker 8 (14:03):
So there are signposts here, it says in English, as
well as Bulgarian palace. So are we gonna set off
up here? Rana was really Boris's go to place. He
was a country by at heart, and he loved the
(14:24):
great outdoors, to be in nature, peace and quiet, and.
Speaker 13 (14:29):
He liked mounting butterflies.
Speaker 8 (14:32):
Yes, she said mounting butterflies. She's Tessa Dunlop, a historian
and an expert on both Royal and Eastern European history.
You might find her a little blunt. She certainly likes
to tell it how it is.
Speaker 13 (14:46):
They caught them, and he mounted them, and he spent
hours working out which kind of butterfly they was.
Speaker 12 (14:50):
I mean he was a geek.
Speaker 8 (14:52):
Well, he certainly knew his insects. Back to front Entomology
was his great passion, and his knowledge was set to none.
He was well respected in the natural history world. Boris
was at his happiest pottering around his grounds with his
old floppy hat and butterfly nets. He was a gentle soul,
(15:12):
the kind of king who wouldn't hurt to fly. Well, actually,
he probably would hurt to fly if it was a
rare one and he wanted it for his scrapbook. But
you can see where I'm coming from. He was inoffensive.
All that pomp and splendor, it just wasn't him.
Speaker 13 (15:27):
He found himself really pretty unexceptional. He got terribly anxious
about sort of standing up in parliament, especially early on.
He said, little do they know that I have to
go to the loo five times before I confront them.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
I think what she's trying to say is that King
Boris was not at all what you might expect in
a king.
Speaker 13 (15:46):
You know, he was not a man who was imbued
with huge amounts of confidence, And I expect part of
that was his physical appearance and his size. It helps
if you're a big man.
Speaker 8 (15:57):
Why does history always demand handsome Here I'm starting to
feel rather sorry for Boris.
Speaker 13 (16:03):
He was small to look at, eminently unremarkable. You wouldn't
notice him in a room, diminutive, aggressive building, early on,
watery gray eyes, the long, protruding Habsburg knows I mean
The only Afrodizsiac attached to Boris was the fact he
was a monarch, and that does some things for some women,
(16:24):
doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Well, I wouldn't know, Tessa. Anyway. Back to Varana Palace.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
These lookers, though they might be the sort of more
modern quarters where Simeon lives.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Actually, do you.
Speaker 14 (16:37):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
Oh, there's another guard dog. Let's go and find a
doorbell somewhere. Goodness knows where you find a doorbell on
a palace. Maybe it's up here. I suppose when most
of us think of a palace, we'd think of something
we see in the crown or downtown abbey, towering turrets,
(16:59):
Gothic windows, colonnades. Well, Rana's a little more down at heel.
The architecture's charming, a sort of hotch potch of styles,
but it could do with a lick of paint. Simeon's
doing it up bit by bit, but he has to
do that from his own pocket. As he's only a
sort of king, he can't really ask the Bulgarian taxpayers
(17:20):
to foot the bill. So while parts of it are lovely,
the rest is let's say, shabby chic. He early I know, yes,
that's the King's aid Yarville meeting us, and he's precisely
(17:40):
how you'd imagine a king's aid, sharp suited, charming and
perfectly poised, even when the palace guard dog gets a
little frisky.
Speaker 10 (17:51):
I have a dog, so yes, but she's too lovely, lovely.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Good dog she is words sometimes lo.
Speaker 8 (18:03):
Chica is too lovely. She's not your typical guard dog.
Meeting a monarch is a nerve wracking experience. Luckily, Java
tells us we don't have to curtsey to Simeon, but
there are certain royal protocols which we need to stick to,
such as not touching the ornaments and royal bric a
(18:24):
brac in the drawing room. But there are so many
fascinating bits and pieces it's really hard not to including
a rather fine filigree box which was a birthday gift
to Simeon from a fellow king or something, and which
I very nearly break.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yes, I love that sort of thing. That's really very good.
Speaker 12 (18:50):
Please don't break the palace.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
That's lovely. I'm sure he's insured. A king's insured. His majesty.
Speaker 8 (19:00):
Drawing room is light and airy and is everything you'd
imagine in a stately home. The herringbone wooden floor is
scattered with plush Persian rugs, The walls are plastered with
icons and oil portraits, and the elegant chairs on which
we're invited to sit are painted gold and bricaded in
(19:20):
dusky pink silks. And just like in most people's houses,
the mantlepiece is crowded with photos.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
This is someone I recognize.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
Of course. Two years ago, the Pope visit Bulgaria and
he wants a private visit to the royal family.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
Simeon's family is not exactly ordinary. He's descended from the
Saxe Coburg Gotha dynasty. That basically means he's connected to
pretty much every royal clan in Europe, including the Windsors.
King Charles is a kind of distant cousin. In fact,
back in the days before the war, King Boris even
(19:57):
used to take his holidays with the British Royals shooting
in Scotland.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
There's a huge.
Speaker 8 (20:04):
Portrait of Boris hanging on the drawing room wall, and
looking at it you get a strange sense of deja vu.
Speaker 13 (20:12):
Yeah, they do all look like each other. I mean,
you can see quite a strong trace of our current
British royal family. I think in Boris and that strong.
Some would say aristocratic, others inbred profile that he has.
I won't name names, but take a look at him
and then well, yes, peru's the current royal landscape. Think
Prince William a little bit. I mean, poor Prince William.
(20:32):
It's not his fault. As Harry said, he does have
aggressive premitial building.
Speaker 8 (20:36):
Well it's true. There's definitely more William than Harry in Boris.
Speaker 13 (20:41):
Anyway, movingly on, yes, I think.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
We probably should because it's time to meet the King.
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Speaker 8 (23:40):
Want to see me, thank you so much for making
the time. I'm Becky, missus Emma Jane, and we're delighted
that we're able to talk to you and really appreciate it.
Speaker 9 (23:52):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 8 (23:54):
King Simeon wears a dark suit and tie. He's got
a thin white mustache that's anchored by a chin strap
beard and okay, yes, he's completely bald. He's one of
those people who seem taller than they really are. He
might be eighty six, but he still knows how to
carry himself. He's very charming. He's also very much an
(24:14):
old school sort of king.
Speaker 9 (24:16):
I'm not the type of person who communicates easily, and
I like to keep my feelings to myself.
Speaker 8 (24:23):
So if you're expecting him to get all confessional and
prince Harry on you, you might be disappointed. But having
said that, once you get to know him, he's quite
the tease. It's important to laugh where we can, because
I'm afraid this story is a dark one. For a
(24:49):
child to lose a parent is always desperately sad, and
Simon was just six years old when his father died
so mysteriously, a mystery which still haunts him.
Speaker 9 (25:01):
To this day. Still, we cannot really either blame anybody
or point our fingers at anybody, and yet we have this.
I would say ghastly suspicion that something was wrong.
Speaker 8 (25:13):
Now, remember that military plane which Boris had taken to
his secret meeting. Simeon got taken to see it after
it landed back in Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
We went to the airport to greet my father when
he came back from this meeting. We were fascinated. My
mother drove us to the airport to see this huge
plane that had landed there.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
Little did Simeon know that his father had just flown
home to meet his death. It all seemed like harmless
fun to a little boy.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Porking.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Boris had a very difficult relationship with his father. Ferdinand
was fiery and Boris was frightened of him. Boris had
lost his mother as a very young boy, and that
meant he lost her gentle protection too. He felt he
never quite measured up to his father's exacting expectations. Ferdinand
was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Boris was
(26:18):
determined not to make the same mistakes with his own children,
so he was a hands on dad. Whenever he got
a day off, he'd head to the hills with the family.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
Oh on the hike. It was always fun because he
would teach us all sorts of things and botaneer or
on nature or on wildlife and so forth. So to
ask this was a great treat. I will say.
Speaker 8 (26:43):
Now I'm not just here to speak to Simeon, because
behind every great king is a bossy big sister.
Speaker 12 (26:52):
So you don't know, how do I get in touch
with you? In half an hour stint becoming.
Speaker 8 (26:59):
Her royal high Maria Louisa is four years senior to Simeon.
She's a plain speaking kind of princess.
Speaker 12 (27:06):
That was a lot of bs.
Speaker 8 (27:08):
Excuse me if Simeon's wary about speaking his mind, Maria
Louisa gives it to you straight, no matter who you are.
Just before the war, King Boris invited British King Edward
the Eighth to the palace. He's the king who abdicated
so he could marry American divorcey Wallace Simpson. Boris proudly
(27:30):
presented his little daughter to Edward, but Maria Louisa refused
to perform.
Speaker 12 (27:36):
I was I think four or what? And I got
bored and I said, now I have to go and play.
And King Edward ants.
Speaker 8 (27:46):
In her black trousers and trainers. Her raw Highness is
more casual than her brother, but still stylish. She broke
her leg last year, so she's walking with a stick.
It's a glittery burgundy red one, and it matches her
polar neck sweater. Occasionally she flashes her cane a look
of contempt. You can see she hates being dependent. She's
(28:09):
as sharp as attack, basically the kind of ninety year
old we all hope to be. Maria Louisa was exceptionally
close to her father, King Boris. In the next room,
there's a tear jerkingly beautiful black and white photo of
them together. She's wearing a string of pearls and she's
(28:29):
drawing or coloring something while Boris looks on dotingly. In
the photo, she's about eight, maybe nine years old. She's
concentrating hard, but her free arm is sloped around her
father's neck, just keeping him with her.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
She was ten when he died.
Speaker 12 (28:46):
He was always there for us, and it was always
a feet when he came and told us stories. And
he would take us sometimes for a little walk in
the forest and tell us stories about gnomes that live
the mushrooms and came out at night, and you know,
wonderful children's stories that we cherished enormously.
Speaker 8 (29:08):
When Maria, Louisa and Simeon talk about King Boris, they
both often look away or stare at the floor for
a second or two while they composed.
Speaker 12 (29:17):
Themselves, as it's very difficult to sort of empty one soul.
A very loving father were time for his children, definitely
for us. He was just loving papa.
Speaker 8 (29:31):
And there wasn't even a proper goodbye. He disappeared so suddenly.
Speaker 12 (29:36):
And the Monday morning he came into a room where
Siona and I were playing, and he just said, I'm
going to Sofia for work, you know, kissed us and
said I'll see you tonight, and we never saw him again.
Speaker 8 (29:48):
They were such a close knit family, but someone out
there clearly didn't care for King Boris at all. Once
on his death thread, the King didn't just slip peacefully away,
as we know, his so called cardiac arrest spanned six
long days and nights. He fought to stay alive that summer.
(30:12):
He really battled against his failing heart.
Speaker 14 (30:16):
Crushing chest pain as if there's a metal band around
your chest, feelings of sweatiness and nausea, the feeling of
impending doom.
Speaker 8 (30:29):
That's Dr Stewart Hamilton. More from him later, but he's
bang on the money with the prediction of doom. Simeon
seen the medical reports from his father's doctors.
Speaker 9 (30:41):
He was feeling sick. Then his liver eventually didn't function,
and there was also in pneumonia, and he lasted for
so long from Monday to Saturday, he lost his conscience.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
The king wasn't short of doctors in that sickroom. The
palace was crawling with them. But it was nineteen forty three.
What did they have to offer Paul Boris except a
bit of oxygen and sedation. Well, here's one thing they
didn't offer him, the comfort of his wife. The queen
was on holiday in the mountains with the royal children.
(31:21):
She wasn't even told her husband was ill until it
was pretty much over. Now that seems deeply odd, and not.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Just to me.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
My mother was.
Speaker 12 (31:31):
I should was convinced he was done in by somebody.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
And here's another thing that makes me suspicious. Once the
king was bedbound, no one was allowed to leave the palace.
They were literally locked in for the first few days.
Even Boris's government was kept in the dark. Whatever happened
in that sickroom stayed in that sickroom.
Speaker 9 (31:55):
Finally, the doctors who came in all that kept everything
very i'd say confidential or secret, and that was also
one of the reasons that people thought there us foul play.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
In the final stage of his illness, King Boris developed
a high fever. When the doctors couldn't control his temperature,
he began convulsing, and on the twenty eighth.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Of August it was all over.
Speaker 8 (32:45):
The King's casket was carried to its final resting place
by train drivers. His enthusiasm for engines and locomotives was legendary.
The railway workers even made him an honorary member of
their guild. He was a skilled engineer. He once joked
that if everything's went badly for him and he lost
his throne, he just head off to America and gets
(33:06):
a job as a mechanic.
Speaker 9 (33:08):
He remember once took us along a railroad because he
was very fond of trains.
Speaker 8 (33:14):
He was desperate to pass on his passion to his children,
so he took little Simeon into a tunnel. A train
appeared suddenly and roared past them in the dark.
Speaker 9 (33:30):
The conductor reported the next station there were some lunatics
who had been walking in the track just when the
train came by and so forth, and of course it
was great fun after it when they realized that it
was my father who had induced us to take this walk.
Speaker 8 (33:52):
Maria Louisa remembers other times when her father's enthusiasm almost
got the better of him.
Speaker 12 (33:58):
We would go off by riding, and not too far
from here was a railroad crossing, and we would stop
because the barriers were down. The trains were coming, and
since my father loved driving trains, we were standing with
the horses there and the train would pass, and if
the machine is recognized my father, of course it would
(34:20):
blow the whistle, and that was catastrophic for the horses
and for US.
Speaker 13 (34:30):
Historian Tessa Dunlop, you know the hours he spent pulling
the levers of locomotives, so much so that the engine
drivers of the Orient Express were told watch out for Boris.
Speaker 12 (34:43):
Because he literally will steal.
Speaker 13 (34:44):
Into your engine and drive off with it. That was
the level of his obsession.
Speaker 8 (34:49):
Boris was a royal who had the common touch. He
fitted in everywhere. Think of the late Queen Elizabeth the Second,
the second longest raining monarch in history, yet somehow well
most Brits thought of her as their own granny. Think
of Princess Diana, who instinctively knew how to charm a crowd.
Unlike his father, Ferdinand, Boris was popular, and whatever you
(35:13):
think about train balls, being a committed railway enthusiast is
hardly a motive for murder. And this is where some
red flags are popping up for me, because I feel
like I'm getting a somewhat filtered version of the truth here.
So far, we've only really heard from Boris's children, and
I mean, is anyone objective about their own parents? Affectionate
(35:41):
stories about Boris are threaded through Bulgarian folklore. There are
countless tales of the King picking up hitchhikers in his
car incognito. He'd drive them around for miles, chatting away.
Simeon told me about one time when Boris pulled his
bet you can't guess who I am prank a hapless
young soldier.
Speaker 9 (36:02):
My father thought of those hilarios, which.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It really was, would he roar with laughter?
Speaker 9 (36:06):
Well, yes, and I suppose a soldier almost fainted. Not
because she says it's the king. It's the king.
Speaker 8 (36:15):
And some of the legends sound like they're straight out
of a fairy tale, like when King Boris was caught
in a rainstorm when he was out butterfly hunting in
the mountains. Apparently he'd often pitch up at a villager's
door in the hope of a hot bowl of broth
and some shelter. Once home, he'd always thank the villager
(36:36):
for their hospitality by sending on parcels and gifts.
Speaker 13 (36:40):
Do we believe that? Do we actually believe that? I
don't think so well, Tessa.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
From what I've read, at least some of these accounts
really are true. There's evidence to back them all up.
But like Tessa, the skeptical journalist in me is starting
to smell a rat because my research shows me that
we're getting very sanitized version of history here. This is
not Disney. It's a real life story rooted in war,
(37:07):
and war was always a dirty business. And if I
dig around a bit in Boris's past, it's not hard
to unearth a less polished reality.
Speaker 13 (37:18):
Without wishing to denigrate Bulgaria in any way.
Speaker 8 (37:21):
I get the feeling she's about to denigrate Bulgaria in
some way.
Speaker 13 (37:25):
It was a nation of peasant's told you, I mean,
we love our peasants now It's quite diregard to be
a peasant, isn't it, But back then less so. It's
kind of weirdly lonely for Boris. He was known as
the lonely King actually, because who'd you hang out with
if your new country doesn't have any proper posh landowners.
There was not much between Boris and the peasants. So
when we say, oh, Boris really got on with the peasants,
(37:46):
I'm like, yeah, who else did he have to play with?
Speaker 8 (37:48):
Really, Boris's bloodline was undeniably blue, but it wasn't so
undeniably Bulgarian. Let me explain with a whistle stop tour
of the country's history. Established in the seventh century, Bulgaria
is one of the oldest countries in Europe, but at
the end of the fourteenth century it fell into the
(38:09):
hands of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, and that's
where it stayed until eighteen seventy eight, until Russia went
to war with Turkey and liberated Bulgaria.
Speaker 5 (38:20):
Again.
Speaker 8 (38:21):
Delighted with their newfound independence, the Bulgarians set about reinstating
the monarchy. The problem was, it had been so long
since they'd had a king, they couldn't trace back the bloodline.
They hadn't got a clue who their real royals were.
The solution simple, import a new royal family.
Speaker 13 (38:45):
Where's the obvious place to import a royal from Germany?
It's got an abundance of slightly pointless. The little dukes
and princes of the man are born without quite an
after do so ideally, you want someone who's been gifted
to you with international approval.
Speaker 8 (39:05):
Their first attempt at importing a royal was German Prince
Alexander Battenberg, but he proved so unpopular that they were
soon back to the drawing board. The next bit sounds surreal,
but I promise you it's true. The Bulgarians went shopping
for a king. Three royal headhunters trailed around all the
(39:29):
royal courts of Europe, but to no avail. They just
couldn't find a suitable or willing candidate. Downcast, they decided
to cheer themselves up with a trip to the opera
in Vienna, and sitting right under.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Their noses in the royal box.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
Was the perfect man for the job. They intercepted him
at intermission. Sh it's intermission anyway. He was a suave
German prince by the name of Ferdinand, and he had
away with the ladies and with the men. Actually he
lived for pleasure.
Speaker 13 (40:07):
Yes, he did swing both ways. I think all bisexual.
And of course, if you're a king you can really
do what the hell you like. He is a grand
signior to the point of decadence. He loved fine clothes,
he loved fine wine.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
He liked jewels.
Speaker 13 (40:19):
He wore many jewels on his fingers. He was not
the most quote comfortable of husbands. No, I shouldn't think
he was if he was boning the local No, I mean,
I can't say that.
Speaker 8 (40:28):
On the radio, of course, he was known as Foxy Ferdinand,
and not in a good way. His cousin, the British
Queen Victoria, hated him. She described him as eccentric, effeminate
and totally unfit. Other relatives wrote him off as weird
and ridiculous. But he got the job anyway. There weren't
really any other applicants. Bulgaria's love affair with Foxy didn't
(40:55):
last long. He got a reputation for being sly, un trustworthy,
and crucially, during the First World War he joined the
wrong side, the losing side. His alliance with Germany cost
the lives of one hundred thousand Bulgarian soldiers, and in
the peace treaty that ended the war, Bulgaria was severely punished.
(41:18):
The country lost huge swathes of territory, including the strategically
important Thrace, a region bordering Greece and the Aegeanc and Macedonia,
which was given to Yugoslavia. Do remember the names Thrace
and Macedonia, as they're going to be quite important. A
little further on in our story, Ferdinand had cost his
(41:41):
country dearly. He was forced to abdicate and was exiled,
and his throne, still warm, was handed to his son,
twenty four year old Boris. Was Boris's murder a simple
case of payback for the sins of the father. Ferdinand
might have made some bad choices, but they weren't Boris's choices.
(42:02):
In fact, the two could not have been more different.
While Ferdinand loved a good row, king, Boris hated conflict
of any kind, especially war. He jokingly nicknamed himself the
mender of broken dishes. That's perhaps a tiny bit lost
in translation, but you get the sense. Boris was a diplomat,
(42:24):
the kind of king who picked up the pieces and
glued them back together. Not the kind of king who
threw tantrums and smashed things, and he never aspired to be.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
On the throne.
Speaker 8 (42:37):
But unfortunately that's precisely where he found himself as the
world went to war again in nineteen thirty nine, and
it was in the darkest part of the middle of
that war that Boris died, a brutal and baffling death.
Why murder a peace lover? It was wartime, Maria Louisa.
Speaker 12 (43:02):
There were many, many people who would have been happy
to get rid of.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Him, As I suspected.
Speaker 8 (43:07):
The king had several known enemies, but as far as
the identity of his assassin goes, the clues a few
and far between. Boris's son Simeon, has tried to crack
this case himself in the past, but his sleuthing has
proved fruitless.
Speaker 9 (43:23):
It's amazing. I mean, so many years, so many archives, investigations,
questions or what have you, and there still hasn't been
any proof. And I must say, I mean, as a
sun it's disturbing.
Speaker 8 (43:41):
And there's no nice way to put this. Time's running
out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to
the question that haunts them.
Speaker 12 (43:52):
Never forget it still, you know, you go to a
funeral and it all comes back.
Speaker 9 (43:58):
Not that one looks for the avenger or anything like it,
but simply to know.
Speaker 8 (44:05):
And I want to know too. So I'm going to
pick up this case where Simeon left off. Time to
recap and to fill you in on one of Boris's
dirty little secrets. Remember its wartime, and in war, difficult
choices have.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
To be made.
Speaker 8 (44:26):
We know Boris hated bloodshed, so at the start of
the war, Bulgaria opted for neutrality. But Bulgaria has an
unfortunate geographical position. Rumania, on its northern border, had joined
sides with Hitler. That meant very quickly, there were German
troops breathing right down Bulgaria's neck. Meanwhile, on Bulgaria's southern border,
(44:52):
the Italian Army invaded Greece. They needed back up, and
Hitler was itching to help. Little Bulgaria was sandwiched between
hostile players. She found herself backed into a corner. And
when you're backed into a corner, you have to pick
a side. And in nineteen forty one, King Boris did
(45:14):
pick a side.
Speaker 13 (45:16):
We know that Boris was a political survivor.
Speaker 10 (45:19):
And then he died.
Speaker 13 (45:20):
But he was, and he had survived for a very
long time. Now, what do you do if you're a survivor,
You work out which way the wind's blowing and you
travel with it.
Speaker 8 (45:29):
So let's go back to that top secret bunker once again,
the one where Boris is about to walk into the
most important meeting of his life. It's now August nineteen
forty three. In the stifling bunker, Boris has been trying
to get his head straight, but he's played all his
(45:50):
cards and he knows it.
Speaker 13 (45:52):
This man is eminently reasonable relative to what's going on
around him, and he's also got a very good political brain.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
For Bulgaria, they need to survive. That's the game.
Speaker 8 (46:04):
But the game's up. Boris is out of time. It's
time to meet.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Adolph Hitler.
Speaker 8 (46:19):
Yes, Boris, the so called Mender of Broken Dishes, is
an ally of the most evil man in history. He
has been for eighteen months. And this military hideaway, it's
the Wolf's Layer, the secret Nazi headquarters in what is
now Poland, And just like Germany, King Boris the Third
(46:41):
of Bulgaria has declared war on Britain and America.
Speaker 17 (46:48):
Now.
Speaker 8 (46:49):
So far, in the time they've been allies with Germany,
Bulgaria's involvement has been pretty passive. While thousands of men
across Europe are losing their lives on the battlefields, not
a single Bulgarian soldier has been involved in active combat,
and as yet, not a single Bulgarian Jew has been deported.
(47:11):
But now Hitler wants that to change. He wants to
up the ante. He's demanding. Boris's troops must help the
Germans on the front line, and he's determined to send
each one of Bulgaria's fifty thousand Jews to the gas chambers.
This is not what King Boris signed up for, and
(47:34):
this is why he's here. He's about to disobey Hitler's
orders to tell him he won't do as Hitler commands.
You don't need to know much about history to know
what happens to people who anger Hitler. Less than two
weeks after leaving the Wolf's Layer, King Boris will be dead.
Speaker 13 (47:57):
Given the hand he was served, Boris did bloody well
how to squeeze almost half a century out of this planet.
Speaker 8 (48:03):
So was it Hitler who personally ordered his murder? He
had a motive, He had the opportunity, but I gave
my word that I would tell this story objectively, and
that means telling you all the facts I know, even
those which don't quite fit the narrative. And there's something
here that doesn't quite square with me. Because things weren't
(48:26):
shaping up well for Hitler by the summer of nineteen
forty three, with heavy losses on the Eastern Front and
Italy on the verge of surrender, Hitler needed all the
friends he could get. Would he really kill one of
his only allies? Or did his need for revenge overcome
his reason? Eighty years on from Boris's death, I'm determined
(48:48):
to get to the truth.
Speaker 9 (48:50):
Who would want to cover up after so many years?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Coming up this season in the Butterfly.
Speaker 9 (49:02):
King, everybody started suspecting everybody else.
Speaker 11 (49:06):
Russian special services Starting's special services killed King Boris.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I mean it would make sense to be the Germans, right,
because it would be safer for the Germans if he
was out of the picture.
Speaker 15 (49:21):
Could have paint the book Carriats an inside job.
Speaker 11 (49:25):
It was a typical Balkan death.
Speaker 8 (49:29):
What do you mean by a typical Boken death?
Speaker 11 (49:33):
I mean in the bottle there were more political murders
than in the rest of Europe for this period.
Speaker 10 (49:39):
This does not have the whole box of British show
American intelligence, but these sort of things have happened in
the past.
Speaker 8 (49:49):
It's a long list of suspects. There's just one other
tricky problem I need to share with you. For Simeon
and Maria, Louisa King Boris was just dear sweet Papa,
but others well they saw him very differently.
Speaker 5 (50:07):
I really don't care how he died for me. He
is a creaming.
Speaker 8 (50:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Original music is.
Speaker 8 (50:50):
By Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell and Toby Matamoon.
Sound design and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The managing producer is Amka Schultino Nola.
The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye. The
(51:12):
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 Danielle Kramer, with consulting producer
Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by the book
(51:34):
Hitler and the King by John Paul Spencer.
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