Alexandru Davila

The son of Carol Davila, a distinguished military physician of French origin, and Ana Racoviţă (a descendant of the Racoviţă and Golescu boyars), he studied in his native Goleşti and at V. A. Urechia's college in Bucharest, earning his bachelor's degree in Paris.

Later in the same year, upon his father's death, he returned to his country to serve as police inspector and then as head of the administration in a province of Northern Dobruja.

In 1902, he completed his major work, a drama entitled Vlaicu Vodă (based on the life of a 14th-century Wallachian Prince), one of the first important pieces of its kind in Romanian literature.

In 1915, a mysterious attempt to have him killed resulted in paralysis — Davila was bedridden for the rest of his life, as a sanatorium patient.

An intimate friend of the royal family under Carol I, he left behind his Din torsul zilelor, a memoir of life at the turn of the century (alongside his portrait of Carol, the book is remembered for those of figures such as Take Ionescu, Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol, and Vasile Morţun).