Everything you should know about King Charles III’s Hungarian relative
Count Tibor Kálnoky is not only the relative of the new British king but also a distant ancestor of Bram Stoker’s famous Dracula, Vlad Țepeș. The Hungarian count regularly welcomed the late Prince of Wales in Zalánpatak (Valea Zălanului), in Transylvania, Romania. Charles always said he loved to experience how nature and village people could live in a harmony. Here is what you should know about count Kálnoky.
“Well, I’m related to Dracula. Luckily, only very, very, very distantly“, Count Tibor Kálnoky told The Telegraph when he was interviewed about the regular visits of Charles III to the Transylvanian village of Zalánpatak.
The Kálnoky family received its title from the Habsburg emperor and Hungarian king Leopold I (1657-1705) in 1697. However, Tibor Kálnoky was not born in their renaissance castle in Miklósvár because the family had to flee after the communist takeover in Romania (1945). He was born as the third child of Silesian German Marianne Kernbach and Count Farkas Kálnoky. He was only six months old when they emigrated to the USA and one year old when they moved back to Europe.
He grew up in Germany, went to kindergarten in the Netherlands and started school in South France. At 11, they moved to Paris, where he started a “bird hospital” when he was only 16. He graduated as a veterinarian in Hannover and München, muvelodes.net wrote.
In 1987, when he was only 21 years old, they paid a visit to Sepsikőröspatak with his father, from where his father had to flee at the age of 8 more than half a century earlier. They saw that the building they once called home was devastated.
Interestingly, Tibor Kálnoky did not speak Hungarian then, so he started to learn the language enthusiastically. He wanted to understand his family heritage, so he skimmed through old diplomas.
First, he moved to Budapest and worked for a French pharmaceutical company. He met his wife, Anna Boga, in the Hungarian capital. They organised their wedding in 1995 in the ruinous castle of Miklósvár, his family’s ancestral home. Three children were born from their happy union: Mátyás (1994), Vince (1996) and Miklós (2000).
They later moved to Bucharest, where he worked for a German pharmaceutical company and regularly visited Miklósvár, Zalánpatak and Kőröspatak, where he wanted to start a new life.
In 2014, he won an application from the Norwegian Fund, so he could start rebuilding the castle. “I would work for the count until my hands and legs fray”, one of the locals working on the project said. Kálnoky built a museum (The Museum of Transylvanian Life) and opened a store selling local products. Soon, Zalánpatak and Miklósvár became well-known worldwide: The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN Travel and Duna World all reported about his place. And he invited Charles III to the village, where the British monarch bought a small peasant house lately.
He organized equestrian tours, started rural tourism and even a school program with the help of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Here is a video of his castle in Miklósvár:
Source: muvelodes.net