Wednesday 24 November 2004
The Queen from Cumnock, New South Wales
It might surprise some people to learn
that Crown Princess Mary of Denmark is not the first Australian to marry into a royal
family. In fact, she is by my calculations,
the eleventh. Certainly Mary is the first to
marry an Heir Apparent of a reigning House but, by marriage, other Australians have joined
the Habsburg, Romanov, Liechtenstein and even the Windsor families.
Perhaps understandably, in the lead up to the Danish royal wedding
the media portrayed Mary Donaldson as the first Australian to become a consort. If
we’re talking about reigning Houses, the media is quite right but technically, the
first Australian born queen was a pretty young woman from the central western, New South
Wales village of Cumnock. Her name was Susan
Cullen-Ward and she became Queen of Albania when she married the pretender to the Albanian
throne, King Leka I.
Cumnock is a tiny place 300km from Sydney and a good four hours
drive. The Cullen-Ward’s were graziers, a posh way in the Australian vernacular,
of saying farmers. It implies one comes from a
substantial land holding that has been in the family for generations and conjures up
images of sprawling homesteads stuffed full of antiques, boarding schools, a rather
British way of life and possibly a double barrelled surname. It might sound stuffy, but
stuffy is something Susan Cullen-Ward does not appear to have been.
Susan was educated at Presbyterian Ladies College in the picturesque
New South Walestown of Orange and later became a private art teacher. She married very briefly and subsequently met King Leka at
a dinner party in Sydney. It appears to have
been a love match. It must have also have been
quite a sight to see the hugely tall King, whose height varies on paper from six feet
seven to six feet nine, standing beside the petite blonde Aussie girl.
Their courtship continued in Europe and whilst I can only speculate
on what attracted her to Leka, it seems to me that at least some of the allure she felt,
must have come from the air mystery of who Leka was and how he lived. A young woman from an ‘aristocratic’
family didn’t really need to marry an exiled pretender to the throne of a tiny and
impoverished country and live in far less than royal circumstances in several continents,
constantly surrounded by armed guards. She could easily have enjoyed a comfortable (if
comparatively mundane) existence in Australia, Europe or the United States .
Instead, the romance blossomed and Leka’s mother, the Hungarian
born Countess, Queen Geraldine, tutored Susan in protocol and Albanian history, culture
and language. The couple was married in Biarritz in
1975 and Susan Cullen-Ward became HM Queen Susan of Albania .
Susan was now Queen of Albania but she would not see the country for
some fifteen years, as Albania at that time was the world’s most closed State,
engulfed for almost half a century by hard-line, xenophobic communism.
Never one of the world’s most flourishing nations, Albania was
ruled by the Ottoman’s for 500 years until the Balkan Wars in 1913. The unenviable task of governing a newly formed
country, with no real history of independence, fell to a German Prince, Wilhelm of Weid. His stay in the newly formed Principality of
Albania was an embarrassingly short one. He
stayed not even a year before he fled, although he never abdicated.
Much of Albania ’s unrest at the time stemmed from a society
based heavily on tribal ways with no history of centralised government. After World War One, Leka’s father, Ahmed Zogu
became a leading politician in the country. A
tribal chieftain himself, he mounted a coup in 1924 and became dictator. Despite his hard handed, rather egotistical entry
onto Albania ’s highest stage, Ahmed Zogu realised that Albania could not progress
without a strong centralised government nor the adoption of more European styled culture.
In 1928 he proclaimed himself King of Albania, taking the name Zog, a
diminutive of his family’s surname. It
was rather an unusual move and one that raised eyebrows across Europe but one that was not
challenged by the Great Powers of the time, who seemed satisfied by his assurance that
Albanians understood Kings far more than Presidents. And
while there was no doubt that the move included a generous handful of self promotion, he
appears to have been genuine in his ambition to drag the country our of feudalism and into
the twentieth century.
The reality was that there was no real difference between the
dictator of the republic and the King of Albania, except that the country now had its own
royal family. In a move reminiscent of
Napoleon, King Zog decreed that henceforth his siblings would carry the title His or Her
Highnesses and his descendants, Royal Highness.
Like the modern day nouveau
riche, Zog’s family appears to have enjoyed the reputation of being seen as nouveau royale. There
is a story told concerning his sisters, sharing a lift with Archduke Otto of Austria ,
heir to the then recently extinguished Austrian Empire.
On entering the lift Otto politely greeted the Albanian princesses and was met with
stony silence. When the lift descended to its
destination, another passenger inquired of the princess why they had not spoken to
Archduke Otto. “He has fallen.” They replied, haughtily! If true, it is a very good example of why none of
us should get above ourselves, for in just over ten years, the said princesses and their
kingly brother had ‘fallen’ themselves.
Albania, at that time, was largely dependent on her neighbour Italy
for loans and financial support. The country
was often on the brink of bankruptcy, as King Zog was reluctant to tax the tiny
nation’s rich feudal lords in case he inspired an uprising. As a result of this heavy reliance on Italy , which
Mussolini undoubtedly nurtured in order to secure an entry into the Balkans, Zog’s
country became quickly caught in Italy’s fascist, iron grip.
The King spent several years trying to break free of Mussolini’s
harness but in April 1939, Albania became a protectorate of Italy. Zog, Queen Geraldine and their three days old son,
Crown Prince Leka, were forced to leave the country. King
Zog abdicated the throne on 2nd January 1949 and died in exile in France in
1961. He and Queen Geraldine’s only
child, Crown Prince Leka was proclaimed King Leka I at the Hotel Bristol in Paris .
King Leka’s adult life has been shrouded in mystery. He was educated in Egypt and attended Sandhurst in
Britain. He appears to have had a lifelong
fascination with weapons and has reportedly carried a gun since childhood. There have been a number of accusations of arms
dealing against him, which he and Queen Susan always rejected, however he was jailed
briefly in Thailand on such a charge.
Just as controversial is how the royal family has survived
financially since their exile. Many fleeing
monarchs are accused of running away with the country’s gold stores, as was King Zog, and some are guilty.
However, in the case of the Albanian royal family there are rumours of other
sources of financial means, ranging from the CIA to the late Shah of Iran. Perhaps given Albania ’s prior communist
regime, the former may not be completely fanciful. It
would also go some way to explain the significant number of guards that surrounded the
family at their numerous houses in exile.
What Queen Susan thought of her very moveable life, she never
disclosed publicly. She did, however, share
her husband’s dream of returning to the Zogu throne.
Those who did know her personally comment on her pragmatic ways and great sense of
humour, both of which must have seen her through a number of dark periods.
When the family were forced to leave Spain after munitions were
found in their house, they moved to what was then called Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. On the way, their chartered plane stopped in
Botswana to refuel. Their aircraft was
immediately surrounded by troops, allegedly on orders from the Albanian regime to capture
the family. Leka and his men literally shot
their way out of the airport and managed to continue the flight to Zimbabwe. They lived in Zimbabwe until White rule was
overthrown and then moved to a small farm outside Johannesburg in South Africa . This move was not so much due to the thought of
Black rule but more that Albania had trained the new government’s troops.
One bright light for any Queen, exiled or reigning, is the birth of
an heir. In 1982, Susan gave birth to a boy who was named Leka after his father. Crown Prince Leka has inherited his father’s
height and will follow his father’s footsteps by studying at Sandhurst.
The family ‘returned’ briefly to Albania a couple of years
after the communist regime was overthrown in 1990 but were kicked out by Albania’s
democratically elected President. They
returned yet again in 1997 when the government sanctioned a referendum to be held on the
monarchy. For Leka and Susan, it was
undoubtedly a time of hope and the chance to fulfil the dream they had shared since their
marriage and an opportunity to secure a future for their son.
The referendum failed, with only 30% of the population favouring the
reestablishment of the monarchy. Leka accused
the government of rigging the referendum and the family’s dream was not realised. They remained in Albania and rented a villa in the
capital, Tirana and while Leka has not hidden his aspirations of once again taking the
throne, he has said publicly that he will not interfere in the country’s politics but
simply wants to represent all Albanians.
What the future holds for Albania or the Zogu family is hard to say. The country faces many challenges, not the least of
which is terrible poverty. In Leka’s
favour, the country’s monarchists espouse the order and relative prosperity of his
father’s short reign but whether this remains enough to stir the country’s mood
over the following years remains to be seen.
Tragically for the King, he will have to fight the battle without his
vivacious Queen and most ardent supporter by his side.
Australia’s first Queen succumbed to lung cancer in July this year. In what was, sadly, the most regal moment of her
time as Queen of Albania, she lay in state at the old royal palace in Tirana. Hundreds of Albanians came to pay their respects,
filing past the coffin of the diminutive, level headed woman from the little village of
Cumnock, New South Wales whom they had come to know only briefly.
- Gioffredo
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