(...) Prince Nicolas has a Brittany [1]-born mother

“When we lost our State to build Yugoslavia, that had a sense. Now Yugoslavia no longer exists, that does not have any more sense not to be a State, comments H.R.H. Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh, Crown Prince of Montenegro. This referendum puts a term to nearly one century of political debates taken as hostage by the question of independence. Finally Montenegrins will be able to leave the bottle in which one had locked up them, to free themselves from this mental prison which was already physical under the embargo, and to go into other things.”

(...) “The proud Montenegrins need to mark their difference”, said Stevo Vucinic, lawyer and director of the independent television. The name Petrovitch Njegosh is the symbol of our people which, up to the assembly of Podgorica, never yielded to the invader. The return to monarchy would be a factor of peace for Balkans. Prince Nicolas should start with a political party, then restore a parliamentary monarchy. He has all the qualities to be good monarch, but it would be necessary that he wears ties.

Prince Nicolas, son of Mihajlo Petrovitch Njegosh, last King of Montenegro dead poverty-stricken exiled in France, and of a Breton and Socialist mother who educated him in the idea that these old European monarchies were incarnating the summit of decline, discovers his country one day of summer 1967. At that time, student in architecture, he hitchhikes, carries Pataugas French shoes, a backpack and doubtful shorts. When standing in queue in front of the Royal Palace of Cetinje, he remarks that students have a right to reduction. He holds his ID card to the wicket woman who turns it over and over in her hands, changes color, calls the curator, the director, the guards. All turn the ID card over and over in their hands, change color and bows as only one man before Nicolas who is astonished by such an amount of civility. “Your Royal Highness, you are not going to pay to enter your home!” Nicolas realises then that to be called Petrovitch Njegosh in Balkans, it is as for French to descend from Pasteur, Victor Hugo and Napoleon. His name, venerated by all the Southern Slaves, does not belong to him. It belongs to Balkans.

(...) Prince Nicolas remembers: “During the last rally of his electoral campaign, Milo Djukanovic promised that one of the first actions of the new State would be the rehabilitation of the Dynasty and the restitution of its properties. But electoral promises only engage those who listen to them. Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and Albania have returned back a part of their properties to royal families, and, on that principle, I’m not certain to wish to come back to Montenegro as a tramp or to live there in a palace which takes water. Nevertheless, I do not want to let my two children in an ambiguous situation.”

A royalist past, tinted of Communism

(...) “Even if a King working for a Communist regime could appear shocking to some, it was logical for my father who was very attached to the Yugoslav idea. My mother was passionate by this experiment. She was called ’The Red Princess’ and officials granted her ’Comrade Princess’.” (Prince Nicolas)

(...) “Nicolas, he says (Cetinje Archbishop and Montenegrin Metropolitan Mihajlo), could play an important role for Montenegro for which he dreams to make a true ecological State. He is the heir to a very old principality of Princes-Bishops then to a monarchy under King Nicolas. He is a noble-hearted man who does not run after power, but has an acute sense of his duty.”

“To serbise all”

(...) “Montenegrin autocephalous Church recognised in 1993 carries the heart of the Montenegrins, and the country cannot survive without it, he says (Cetinje Archbishop and Montenegrin Metropolitan Mihajlo). It has really the capacity to offer a long-lasting peace in Balkans. All Churches are national and bear the name of their country. The question of the reunification was never solved as it was in Rome, and if there were union of the Churches, that would solve the religious problems of Balkans. Eighty-eight years of Serb occupation changed the image of Montenegro, but did not break our spirit, our most invaluable good. Twenty-one per cent of the Montenegrins are Muslims, and the only integrism which the country ever experienced is the one propagated by Serb Church.”

“We live from hope”

(...) “Besides our newly-restored freedom, they say, and the foreign investors who come here to build, often in spite of good sense, the tourist conglomerates, we do not have much hope yet, but we live, we breathe hope. And our hope is the return of the Crown Prince to Montenegro.” But, even in Paris, Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh has the greatest difficulties in making both ends meet...