Return of the Czar

When King Simeon II returned to Bulgaria this spring after nearly 55 years in exile, he spent his first night at Vrana, a family estate in a densely wooded park on the outskirts of the capital, Sofia. The rustic palace is a relic of another era, its elegant wood-paneled walls lined with Saxe-Coburg cousins and portraits of Simeon's father and grandfather, who ruled Bulgaria for the first half of the 1900s. For Simeon, who last saw the house as a boy of nine, coming home was a revelation. "I didn't sleep the whole night," he said...