Romanian Royal Gallery, Scott #s 24 red, 63 bluish green, and 192 dark
brown and black
Prince Alexandru and King Carol I
If Big Blue were a proxy for a royal portrait gallery,
Romania’s stamps would fill more space than any other nation except Great
Britain, and that only because of many British colonies’ stamps with royal
thumbnail portraits. In quick succession, images of Prince Alexandru through
King Michael appear again and again on BB’s Romania pages.
Queens make philatelic appearances, although less
frequently and usually for a charitable cause.
This dignified gallery hides a raucous history filled
with forced abdications and sordid indiscretions.
Some great and brave
royal predecessors pop up, too, such as Stephen and Mircea. Both of these are
closely associated with the most famous Romania royal personage – Vlad III,
a.k.a. Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, Dracula. In Slavic areas, Vlad is currently
a common nickname for Vladimir.
Romanian Royal Gallery, Scott #s B22 Prussian green, B85 black violet,
and B89 violet brown
Kings Stephen
the Great, Mircea the Great, and Michael the Brave
Dracula had to wait until 1959 for his likeness to
appear on stamps, a full decade after communists forced King Michael’s
abdication and exile. The communists, not surprisingly, immediately stopped
using royal images for stamps.
The mythology surrounding Vlad – bat morphing and blood sucking – changed the communist's minds. Vampire tourism became an economic boon that even communists could not resist. For the 500th anniversary of the founding of Bucharest, Romania began issuing Dracula stamps, souvenir sheets and postcards. Sales to collectors spurted like blood from a neck bite.
More blood thirsty stamps followed Romania’s lead. A
topical philatelic specialization was born.
Dracula’s popularity on postage, however, originates
from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (first published in 1897) rather than from
Vlad III himself, although the real Vlad was plenty bloody. Although Stoker’s
Dracula and Vlad III have little in common, popular culture conflates them indiscriminately.
British, USA, Canadian, Sierra Leonese and since
Stoker was Irish, of course, Irish stamps add to the growing Dracula corpus.
One blood sucking
problem faced by stamp collectors is what to do about forgeries; Romania has
many of them. In my early collecting years, I ignored them. Recently I have put
them on separate pages, a kind of jail, at the end of the supplement pages.
I’ve started such a lockup for Romania.
Census: in BB spaces 53, tip in 36, on supplement pages 265.
Comments appreciated!
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