‘Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?’

This is the story of a king who would be crowned, not as the Tsar of Bulgaria, but as Prime Minister of a floundering ex-Communist State.

Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born 16 June 1937. During his reign as Simeon II,Tsar of Bulgaria , from 1943 to 1946 he was a minor, and royal authority was exercised over the kingdom on his behalf by a regency. In 1946 the monarchy was abolished – as a consequence of a referendum – and Simeon was forced into exile.

He returned to his home country in 1996 and formed a political party called The The National Movement for Stability and Progress and became prime minister of the Republic of Bulgaria from July 2001 until August 2005. In the next elections, as the leader of NDSV, he took part in a coalition government with the ex-communist party BSP, but in 2008, after NDSV failed to win any seats in the Parliament, he left politics.

He became tsar on 28 August 1943 on the death of his father, who had just returned to Bulgaria from a meeting with Adolf Hitler. Since Tsar Simeon was only six years old, when he ascended the throne, his uncle, Prince Kyril, Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, and Lt.