King Nicholas IV of Herzoslovakia

King Nicholas IV of Herzoslovakia’s marriage to Angèle Mory, a Parisian performer who became Queen Varaga, helped precipitate the monarchy’s collapse. Their deaths in a revolution left a republic in place and, years later, a disputed royal succession at the center of negotiations to restore the throne.

Marriage and Accession

Before becoming queen, Angèle Mory was a young actress in Paris. The Comrades of the Red Hand recruited her to draw the young King Nicholas IV into their plans, offering her a large sum to lure him to a place where they could act. Instead, she captivated the king, who fell deeply in love with her and gave her jewels. She then pursued a more ambitious prize: not the position of his mistress, but that of queen.

Nicholas married her at the cathedral in Ekarest, with two archbishops who were reluctant to perform the ceremony. She was presented in Herzoslovakia as Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, supposedly a Romanov descendant, and was crowned Queen Varaga. The account describes the court’s acceptance as secured through the king’s handling of his ministers, but that official accommodation did not resolve the public’s hostility to a foreign-born queen of modest origins.

Revolution and Death

The Comrades of the Red Hand regarded Varaga’s change of allegiance as a betrayal and made attempts on her life. Meanwhile, resentment toward the royal couple grew in a country described as aristocratic and reactionary, where the populace expected its king and queen to be of genuine aristocratic standing. Suppression and mounting discontent culminated in an uprising: the palace was stormed, both king and queen were killed, and a republic was proclaimed.

The deaths were not presented as an isolated palace crisis. They ended the royal government and began a republican period, although political violence continued under the new order. The revolution’s treatment of the royal couple also left a lasting political wound: their bodies were recovered after the uprising, and the later account describes popular fury directed particularly at the queen’s origins.

The Reign’s Wider Intrigue

Nicholas’s marriage and Varaga’s public identity formed part of a wider covert struggle involving the Comrades of the Red Hand and King Victor. After becoming queen, Varaga continued corresponding secretly with King Victor, using English and signing the letters in the name of Virginia Revel, an Englishwoman connected with the embassy. The correspondence later became evidence of Varaga’s continuing relationship with her confederate, though the precise extent of King Victor’s role in the original plan remained uncertain.

The royal couple’s visit to England brought the history of their reign into another, carefully concealed affair. They were guests of the late Marquis of Caterham, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Investigators concluded that a celebrated royal jewel had been replaced with an imitation, and suspected King Victor of devising the substitution. The matter was hushed up; officials believed the jewel had remained in England, hidden somewhere by the queen, but its location was unknown. Thus the couple’s royal status, Varaga’s suspected theft, and the political sensitivity of the scandal became entangled in a secret that persisted after their deaths.

Succession and Political Legacy

Years after the revolution, Herzoslovakia’s political future again turned on the monarchy. The country’s people wished to restore it and were prepared to offer the crown to Prince Michael, who had British Government support. The proposed arrangement involved a loan of roughly a million from Isaacstein and Company in exchange for concessions. Publication of Count Stylptitch’s memoirs threatened to disrupt this plan, making the history and secrets of Nicholas IV’s reign an immediate political liability.

When Prince Michael was murdered, the succession question sharpened. Prince Nicholas Obolovitch, identified as Michael’s first cousin, was considered the next heir. He was believed to have been in the United States raising money on his prospects, but the revelation that he had deliberately spread a report of his own death transformed the succession: he had survived and returned under the name Anthony Cade. Nicholas IV’s death therefore remained consequential beyond the fall of his own reign, shaping the contested restoration and the identity of the person positioned to inherit the crown.