The man who would be king

We seem to have lost the Holy Roman Emperor. This is going to upset the courts of Europe, since he is an extremely important person who has gone missing. He rules all of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Belgium, and probably most of Holland as well. He has been missing since the Emperor Francis II renounced the title in 1806.

Since that time, anarchy, and confusion have proliferated across the imperial territories; but now, if we can trust an advertisement in one of yesterday's papers, all these troubles are over. A gentleman with an extraordinarily long name has proclaimed himself emperor and King of Germany.

It would not quite be true to say that he has grown a Christian name for every decade since Francis II resigned, but it is very close. There are 19, starting with Karl Fredericke and ending with Augustus von Wettinberg - or possibly Wettingberg: a tiring proofreader has let both spellings through. Perhaps the names are to be shared out among his several duchies, principalities and margravates. Though the new emperor does not show much interest in his Balkan domains, he does lay claim to all of Germany outside Prussia, broken into its ancient constituent states.

There is, however, one small problem with his proclamation. A cynic would say it is that the empire no longer exists, but that's a very old joke. Even Voltaire observed that it was "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire", and that was in the 1750s.

The greater drawback is that there is no sign that the emperor exists. He claims to live in London, yet there is no Wettinberg in the London phone book. There are no Wettinbergs in any reference books either. The only thing arguing that he might be real is the fact that there is not a single Wettinberg known anywhere on the internet, and it's difficult to believe that anything entirely fictitious could exist without being found in some way on the net.

I only hope that when "His Imperial Majesty de jure Emperor Charles VIII of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, King of Germany, Supreme Defender of the Faith etc", as he styles himself (love that etc), inserted this advertisement he paid in cash.