Albania Mania

This headline simply grabbed me. "Queen Susan of the Albanians." It sounds like the title of a Marx Brothers film or maybe one of those Crosby and Hope road pictures. My faves. "The Road To Morocco" is the best. Catch the tunes. Johnny Burke was the personal lyricist to Bing Crosby. You know you are a star when you have a personal lyricist. I'm
counting on it. But I am afraid I will have to be it. I will have to serve until the end of my days. A court jester; an in-house smarster. In short. someone who might serve in the purview of Queen Susan of Albania.

Johnny Burke would have a lot of fun with, "Susan, Queen of the Albanians."

Perhaps we have to serve someone all the time. We had better pick right mistress.

Perhaps not. Maybe we should call the whole thing off.

How exotic or obscure is this? Albania must be the most arcane of European countries. You know that British intelligence would lose more agents there than anywhere else? I still wish I could have been there in" the Toledo roadhouse" that's what is mentioned below. Sinatra used to play roadhouses in New Jersey.My mother would tell me about this. That's when she dated my father. I don't think this roadhouse would have been all that similar. Sinatra also had a personal lyricist. That was Sammy Cahn, who was a lovely fellow.

We are off on the "The Road to Tirana."

A graziers daughter? It is so much fun to read between the lines. An inherent putdown. What the heck is a grazier? I am a city boy. A grazier is someone, I surmise, who grazes for his cattle feed. Of for fodder for a column. You don't see them around much anymore. I guess I am a grazier in an urban sense -- but we are off the topic. I am sure a
grazier's daughter is as wholesome and sweet as a farmer's daughter. Then again, how are you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen Albania?

Who could resist this obit? Back in Atlanta, Sherilyn Bottoms was berating me this afternoon. She said I did not include enough women in this column.

Now I include a woman who surpasses all women: Susan, the "Queen of Albania." It reminds me of the old Dorothy Parker joke, "And I am Marie of Romania." I did not know there were queens in Romania. What that the hell am I saying? We have plenty of them here in San Francisco, though perhaps they losty a little regality over the years.

In the old days, royalty was a living; a treasured artifact. Monarchy is specious, for sure --- but inexplicably attractive.

Above all, this piece is wonderfully written. What is a level-headed wife anyway. I never had one. I lis this is the second graph: "not unusual for middle-class girls to marry into the fading respectability of the of dispossessed monarchs."

Ever have a bad day?

I really hate being a dispossessed monarch.

Or queen for a day.

Consort to a gun-toting giant? I've seen enough of those in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. And some of them were queens, as well.

Sherilyn is right: they might be dangerous. There are so many elements to this story that are so bizarre, it makes
me wonder. Friends of the CIA, Richard Nixon? Well, I guess that doesn't surprise me at all. But this "level-headed queen," I have to tax my imagination what it was all about. The chaos, the crime, the lunacy --- the state of simply trying to stay alive.

The writer describes her as "Young Sue." She must have been. She was only 63 when she died the other day. And she taught art. What kind, I haven't a clue. We would like to dismiss people who align themselves with the wrong persons. But perhaps we should not castigate them automatically.

I don't know. Judging people is always a bad premise. This is such a weirdly ornate story, I don't know what to make of it. Did she align herself with racist and creepy people? Yes. Do I condemn her? I don't know.

Sue's life is one well-lived because she made hard, determined choices. We may decide how we would like to live our own. That will give me pause. I am sure you will catch the stab from the London Telegraph reporter: "buried in a grave next to her mother-in-lay and bridge parter."

I don't know which is worse: having a mother-in-law or bridge partner.

Meanwhile, let's keep up our practicing to curtsey ...

Level-headed Bruce Bellingham, in San Francisco

bellsf@mac.com


Queen Susan of the Albanians
(Filed: 22/07/2004)

Queen Susan of the Albanians, who has died in Tirana aged 63, was the level-headed Australian wife of King Leka I, claimant to the Albanian throne.

It is unusual, though not unknown, for middle-class girls to marry into the fading respectability of dispossessed monarchs. But when in 1975 the petite Susan Cullen-Ward married Leka, son of King Zog I, she became consort to a 6ft 9in tall, six-gun-toting giant who has never shaken off the aura of his country's bandit culture.

Leka was born at Tirana just before the Second World War and left with his family two days later when Mussolini invaded Albania. After his father's death in 1961, he was crowned in Paris, from which he was expelled because of the ill-effects he was having on French relations with Albania's Communist regime; he was once arrested on suspicion of
arms smuggling in Thailand. In the course of his restless travels, he met Susan Cullen-Ward at a dinner party in Sydney.

They discovered that they both had claims of royal lineage; she was descended from King Edward I and he was a ninth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II. When later she was on holiday in London, a courtier suggested that she visit the King in Madrid.

Leka's mother, Queen Geraldine, realised that the couple's friendship was turning into love, and proceeded to groom the Australian girl as her royal successor. This involved teaching her to speak Albanian and steeping her in the history and customs of the country.

Leka and Susan were married in a civil ceremony at Biarritz, then held a reception at a five-star Toledo roadhouse, which was attended by members of other exiled royal families, loyal Albanians and Spanish friends. An Anglican clergyman flew from Australia to give the couple a blessing. Queen Elizabeth II sent a telegram of congratulations. Queen Susan looked suitably regal in a 200-year-old gold embroidered Royal Albanian shawl and the guests cried "Long live the King".

A grazier's daughter, Susan Cullen-Ward was born at Waverly, a suburb of Sydney, on January 28 1941 (Australia Day). She was brought up on a New South Wales sheep station, where she remembered practising to curtsey to Her Majesty The Queen before a royal visit, but also being taken with the achievements of Colonel Harry Llewellyn and his
showjumper Foxhunter, which won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics.

Young Sue went to the Presbyterian Ladies' College at Orange, then Sydney Technical College, before teaching art at a private studio and contracting a brief marriage.

After returning with her husband to Spain, she told the press at the reception, "I don't feel like a queen. I feel a happy bride. Nothing has changed except I have the responsibility of helping His Majesty back on to the throne of his country."

The couple returned to Madrid, where they were befriended by King Juan Carlos and continued to enjoy the attentions of Albanians while awaiting what they knew must be the fall of Communism. But when it was discovered that Leka not only retained some Thai bodyguards but had what was described as an arms cache in their home, the Spanish government asked him to leave.

That Leka had some reason for his fears was proved when he arrived at Gabon to find his plane surrounded by local troops, who were said to have been hired to capture him by the Albanian government; he saw them off by appearing at the plane's door with a bazooka in his hand. The couple went on to Rhodesia. But after Mugabe took power they settled in a large compound at Johannesburg, where they were given diplomatic status by the apartheid regime.

There were always questions about how Leka lived. Such good friends as the Shah of Persia, President Richard Nixon (a distant cousin) and the CIA are thought to have helped.

The royal couple enjoyed a close personal relationship. They both had a keen liking for smoking. He affectionately called her "Roo", and showed some signs of allowing her to check some of his more outlandish instincts. For more than a decade she tried to lead as ordinary a life as her roles of housewife, mother and queen permitted.

Out shopping, she often called herself Mrs Smith or Mrs Jones because shop assistants were so bamboozled by her title that they would ask "Queen? That's a funny name, Mrs Susan." When her son, also called Leka, was born, her hospital room was declared part of Albania for an hour. The boy used another name at school, though she once heard him tell a friend: "You can't say that to me, because I'm a prince." Entering the room, she said: "Well, I am queen, so I outrank you. Bend over."

But as Communism looked increasingly shaky in Eastern Europe, she felt lonely with Leka so frequently away; and she was always delighted to receive visits from old Australian friends, replete with gossip. Her relationship with the dominion's government proved a problem when she wanted a passport.

The Australian authorities declined to recognise her as a queen, and eventually, after a friend had a word with the Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock, the document described her as "Susan Cullen-Ward, known as Queen Susan". There was also trouble when her son, aged four, had wanted to visit a dying grandfather whom he had never met. He was asked to sign an undertaking not to address any dissident groups.

By the time it was clear that Leka's dream of returning to his country was to be fulfilled, she showed signs of preferring the simple life, saying she had no desire to live in a castle and was sometimes tempted to laugh when grown men, in their confusion, had curtseyed to her.

But she duly went to Albania where a referendum was held on his offer to become king in 1997; it was lost. But he was invited to return by 74 members of parliament in 2002; and it is thought that the royalist party could join a government after next year's general election, thanks to proportional representation.

After her death in July of this year, Queen Sue lay in state at the royal palace outside Tirana. Hundreds paid their last respects before she was buried in a grave next to her mother-in-law and bridge partner Queen Geraldine.

Who wants to live in a castle anyway? Right.