By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

At first glance, Alexander Karadjordjevic seems an unlikely player in the geopolitical struggle over Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia. But his impact is being felt as the crisis there continues.

Karadjordjevic is also known as Crown Prince Alexander, claimant to the Yugoslav throne. At his Web site and in recent public appearances, the Crown Prince has been making pleas to end the violence in his homeland.

Alexander is championing the cause of a nation he hardly knows. His father, King Peter II, was chased out of Yugoslavia by the Nazis in 1941. Alexander was born in Claridge's Hotel in London four years later -- in a room declared Yugoslav territory for the day, to make sure he would have the right to the throne.

Tens of thousands of people turned out in recent years for his visits to Serbia -- and during anti-government demonstrations in Belgrade in 1996 and 1997, there were sporadic chants from the crowd calling for the Crown Prince's return.

Alexander hopes a constitutional monarchy can be reinstituted in Yugoslavia -- creating a political atmosphere that, as it has in Spain, would pave the way for a democracy.

Alexander shares something in common which much of Europe's surviving royalty -- a bloodline to the British throne. He is the great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria -- who, at the turn of the century, had relatives in many European courts.

In 1900, only three European nations -- France, Switzerland and the diminutive state of San Marino on the Italian peninsula -- were republics. The rest of the continent was governed by monarchies.

But by the 1920s, world war had brought an end to the monarchies of Russia, Germany and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

The end of World War II and the ensuing Cold War brought about a second blow to the European royals, especially those in Eastern Europe. Construction of the Iron Curtain kept any claimants to the region's thrones from asserting their rights to succession. Communist officials also erased mention of the monarchies from many national histories.

But in the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War, many would-be kings and queens have emerged in Europe, especially in the Balkans -- looking for an opportunity to establish themselves and their dynastic lines.

Leka Zogu, the son of Albania's last king, was only three days old when his family fled the country ahead of an Axis invasion. He is now an arms dealer by profession -- but calls himself King Zog, and has been campaigning for a return to the old ways.

Romania's King Michael, who ruled briefly during World War II, was forced from his throne by the communists in 1947. Although well in his 70s, and after decades of exile in Switzerland, Michael has since served as a roving ambassador for Romania's post-communist government.

King Simeon II of Bulgaria, who ruled for three childhood years before the communist takeover of his country, is also calling for a referendum in his nation on bringing back the monarchy.

There are also more tenuous claims being circulated, such as Henri d'Orleans, the Count de Paris -- the pretender to the French throne. Harold Brooks-Baker of Burke's Peerage, an institution that compiles information on royal families, sees the current trend as a response to the uncertainty gripping Europe as it enters the 21st century.

"There is a feeling of nostalgia," he says, "because the days [of royal rule] seem better at a distance." But Brooks-Baker believes the chances that the new century will coincide with a new royal era for Europe are slim.

"The possibility of Crown Prince Alexander being returned to Yugoslavia [as king] is reasonable," he said, "but the idea of the Count [de Paris] getting the throne is not possible."

For his part, Crown Prince Alexander sees his return to Yugoslavia as not only part of a natural cycle -- but as a way of bringing peace, stability and democracy to his country.

"At the start of this century, the great powers regarded the Balkans as partly a geographic region and partly a disease for which quarantine was the only cure," he recently told Newsweek. "My homeland may enter the new millennium in an even sorrier condition."