The reorientation of Romania's foreign policy towards Nazi Germany, however, would not prevent his regime from collapsing and he would be forced to abdicate by General Ion Antonescu, the newly appointed and Nazi-backed prime minister, to be succeeded by his son Michael.

Carol rapidly became a favorite of gossip columnists around the world owing to the frequent photographs that appeared in the newspapers showing him at various parties with him holding a drink in one hand and a woman in the other.

[17] Returning to the country on 7 June, 1930, in a coup d'état engineered by National Peasant Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol was recognized by the Parliament as king of Romania the following day.

For the next decade, he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently (January 1938) through a ministry of his own choosing.

Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult against the growing influence of the Iron Guard, for instance, by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Țării in 1935.

[20]Carol had sworn in his coronation an oath to uphold the constitution of 1923, a promise he had no intention of keeping, and right from the start of his reign, the king meddled in politics to increase his own power.

[21] Carol ruled via an informal body known as the camarilla, comprising courtiers together with senior diplomats, army officers, politicians, and industrialists, who were all in some way dependent upon royal favor to advance their careers.

[22] Madame Lupescu was deeply unpopular with the Romanian people, and Maniu had demanded that Carol return to his wife, Princess Helen of Greece, as part of the price for being given the throne.

Further adding to Lupescu's immense unpopularity, she was a businesswoman who used her connections to the Crown to engage in dubious transactions that usually involved large sums of public money – going into her pocket.

Carol, like the rest of the Romanian elite, was worried by the prospect of an alliance of the revisionist states that rejected the legitimacy of the international order created by the Allies in 1918–20, indicating that Germany would support Hungary's claims to Transylvania.

Like the diplomats of the Quai d'Orsay, Carol was exasperated by the bitter Polish-Czechoslovak dispute, arguing that it was absurd for anti-revisionist Eastern European states to be feuding with one another in the face of the rise of German and Soviet powers.

Göring, the newly appointed chief of the Four Year Plan organization designed to have Germany ready to wage a total war by 1940, was especially interested in Romania's oil and talked much to Brătianu about a new era of German-Romanian economic relations.

[51] In a campaign speech for the general elections due that December, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, "Captain" of the Archangel Michael Legion, called for an end to the alliance with France and stated: "I am for a Romanian foreign policy with Rome and Berlin.

[57] Coming to realize belatedly that he was being used by Carol, Goga had a meeting with Codreanu on 8 February 1938, at the house of Ion Gigurtu to arrange for a deal under which the Iron Guard would withdraw its candidates from the election in order to ensure that the radical anti-Semitic right would have a majority.

[64] In March 1938, Armand Călinescu, the Interior Minister who had emerged as one of Carol's closet allies and who was to serve as the "strong man" of the new regime, demanded the Iron Guard be finally destroyed.

[70] At the same time, in October–November 1938, Carol was playing a double game and appealed to Britain for help, offering to place Romania within the British economic sphere of influence, and visited London between 15 and 20 November to hold unsuccessful talks on that subject.

[72] During the talks for the new German-Romanian economic agreement, which was signed on 10 December 1938, Weinberg wrote that "Carol made the needed concessions, but he demonstrated his concern for his country's independence by driving a very hard bargain.".

[86] As part of their new policy of seeking to "contain" Germany starting in March 1939, the British sought the construction of the "peace front," which was to comprise at a minimum Britain, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Romania, Greece and Yugoslavia.

On 5 May 1939, the French Marshal Maxime Weygand visited Bucharest to meet with Carol and his prime minister, Armand Călinescu to discuss Romania's possible participation in the "peace front.".

[91] On 11 May 1939, an Anglo-Romanian agreement was signed under which Britain committed itself to grant Romania a credit of £5 million pound sterling and promised to buy 200,000 tons of Romanian wheat at above-market prices.

[94] In a letter to Carol, Paul stated that he wanted the Bulgarians "off my back" as he was afraid of the Italians building up their forces in their new colony of Albania and asked his friend to make this concession for him.

[97] In early July, Fabritius, during a visit to Munich, gave a speech in which he stated that the Romanian Volk Deutsch were loyal to Germany, not Romania, and spoke of his wish to see a "Greater German Reich," which would be secured by armed peasant settlements along the Carpathians, Ural, and Caucasus mountains.

[113] In the meantime, Carol imprisoned General Ion Antonescu after the latter had criticized the king, charging that it was the corruption of the royal government that was responsible for the military backwardness of Romania and hence the loss of Bessarabia.

[116] On 2 September 1940, Valer Pop, a courtier and an important member of the camarilla first advised Carol to appoint General Ion Antonescu as prime minister as the solution to the crisis.

As the increasingly large crowds started to assemble outside of the royal palace demanding the king's abdication, Carol considered Pop's advice, but was reluctant to have Antonescu as prime minister.

[118] Additionally, the very ambitious General Antonescu who long coveted the premiership now suddenly started to downplay his long-standing antipathy to Carol, and he suggested that he was prepared to forgive past slights and disputes.

In addition, there is more than a subtle distinction between Carol's request in the last weeks of his rule for the dispatch of a German military mission to train the ill–prepared Romanian Army and Antonescu's decision almost immediately after assuming power to fight on Germany's side until the very end.

[124]Forced under Soviet and subsequently Hungarian, Bulgarian, and German pressure to surrender parts of his kingdom to foreign rule, he was finally outmaneuvered by the pro-German administration of Marshal Ion Antonescu, and abdicated in favour of Michael in September 1940.

[127] Tilea's committee had an office in Istanbul which regularly sent couriers to a safe house in Bucharest, where messages were exchanged with one of Carol's former prime ministers Constantin Argetoianu who in turn acted as an emissary for those opposed to Antonescu.

[136] "Ex-King Carol Weds Lupescu" was front-page news next to an article announcing a downed flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico He makes an appearance in the 2019 film Marie, Queen of Romania [ro] as an antagonist along with his mistress.