Wednesday 3 July 2013

2013 - A year of abdications

2013 seems to be a year of abdications, first it was a pope, Benedict XVI, who resign the papacy on February 28, two months later it was a queen, Beatrix of the Netherlands, on April 30, and two months after that an emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, on June 25, and finally today on July 3, a king, Albert II of Belgium, informed that he will abdicate on July 21, and we are only halfway through the year.

In 1848, the king of France, the king of Bavaria and the emperor of Austria had to abdicate after revolutions in their countries, and in 1918, after the end of the first World War several European monarchs lost their crowns, the emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and the emperor-king Karl I & IV of Austria-Hungary the best known of them, as the Russian tsar Nikolai II had abdicated in 1917. All those abdications were results of conflicts, and those monarchs were forced to leave their thrones, while the abdications this year happens because the monarchs wish to step down.

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