Variously known as fortune tellers, musicians and beggars, the Gypsies in Europe are both romanticised and persecuted.
There are about eight million living in Europe, while Romania is home to the continent's biggest population - an estimated two million - and it is there that the Gypsy royalty live.
The Gypsy festival in the village of Costesti is a carnival of feasting and merriment. It is a time to indulge in some medieval-style decadence where the good life means a big belly and lots of bling.
The women wear long, colourful skirts, scarves over their hair, gold hoops in their ears and gold teeth in their mouths. The men flash their round midriffs, drink whisky straight from the bottle, admire their gold watches and rings and gnaw meat off the bone.
Every year, the massive party spreads across a village field in south-west Romania.
Each family seems to own a BMW or a Mercedes Benz. Their tables are bursting with food - roast meat piled on roast meat - and the music just does not stop.
It is a scene of fun and extravagance that belies the reality for most Gypsies.
Arguably Europe's most despised minority, they are more likely to live with disadvantage and discrimination. Even the term 'Gypsy' is a centuries-old misunderstanding, based on the notion that these travellers were from Egypt, hence the misnomer 'Gypsy'.
In fact, their ancestors came from northern India and the name they call themselves in their own language, 'Roma', is slowly taking hold.
Even though the Roma have been in Europe for centuries, they are still regarded as outsiders. In Romania, the Gypsy presence is strong - from the ghettos of the capital Bucharest, to the countryside villages.
And it is here in Romania that you will meet the gypsy elite, like Florin Cioaba. He is a politician, a businessman, a preacher - and wait there's more - because he is also His Royal Highness, the King of the Roma.
The King's palace, in the town of Sibiu, is a three-storey mansion with a throne room adorned with portraits of his late father. He was the first King Cioaba - a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp and a union official.
He crowned himself king in the early 1990s after the Communists were thrown out, and his son inherited the title.
King Cioaba usually wears a suit and tie, the trappings of a modern monarch, as he likes to call himself. On special occasions, he pulls out the good stuff - a gold crown, sceptre and medallion.
"As a king, I fight to defend their rights, because the Roma have to have a symbol to believe in - a man that they know is on their side and fights for them," King Cioaba said.
Vying for the throneBut the King of the Roma is not the only monarch in the neighbourhood.
Just around the corner, barely half a kilometre down the road, there is another ruler to meet, a man who claims to be the real leader of the Gypsies.
He is the self-declared Emperor of all Roma Everywhere - Iulian Radulescu.
A big man in his 70s, the Emperor walks slowly down the steps of his palace. He wears a gold robe and proudly boasts it was made in Turkey to looks just like one worn by the Pope.
Emperor Radulescu is King Cioaba's cousin and his biggest rival.
"Everybody you ask will say I am the greatest leader, that is what everybody will say," Emperor Radulescu said.
The Emperor says he has the noble blood to prove it - his father was a prominent Gypsy chieftain, too. He explains that in the late 90s, he was voted in by thousands of Gypsies unhappy with the rule of the King. So now he calls himself the Emperor.
Their long-running feud has descended to the level of personal slurs, with the Emperor accusing the King of "crowing like a rooster".
He says he thinks the King might be "sick in the head" and has told him to go check himself in to a mental hospital.
But King Cioaba stands firm in his position.
"Anybody can call himself the king of soccer or the king of beer, but I am descended from a family who led this nation and everybody knows that the real King is Cioaba," he said.
'Self-serving businessmen'Both the King and the Emperor have a loyal following, but their conflict lies at the upper echelon of a society that lives on the fringes.
The Roma are at or near the bottom of just about every social indicator there is - employment, housing, education and general living standards.
At the village of Bratei, the Roma are traditional craftsmen, making copper pots and trays by hand. They once sold their wares from village to village.
But they have given up the travelling life to set up shop at home. Now they eke out a living day by day and dismiss the King and the Emperor as self-serving businessmen.
"He is King Cioaba and a king just for his type," one man said.
"He does things just for them. He says up front that he is on our side and he does something for us, but we get absolutely nothing."
The King and the Emperor at least agree on one thing - they both brush aside the complaints.
But they also both believe in the innate decency of their people.
The fortune told for the Roma has often been bleak, but these outsiders have also proved themselves to be survivors, enduring inequity and injustice to remain free in spirit, at least.
Labels: Gypsy, Roma, Roma King, Romania
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