Following the tradition of naming streets after Bulgarian rulers, Tsar Boris III Boulevard in Sofia was named after the last active monarch of the country - Boris III.

Born on January 30, 1894, Prince Boris was the first-born son of Ferdinand I, tsar of Bulgaria and Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Parma. Despite the Roman Catholic religion of his parents, Boris was brought up in the tradition of the Orthodox faith for political and dynastic reasons.

Boris, Prince of Turnovo, was crowned in the fall of 1918 after his father was forced to abdicate and take the blame for the two national catastrophes - the Second Balkan War and the First World War. The 21-year-old prince took over the crown in a time of political, economic and spiritual crisis all over Bulgaria. Assuming power immediately after the war, Boris III had to defend the monarchy against two republican political parties - Alexander Stamboliiski's Agrarian Union and the Communist Party.

At the beginning of his rule, Boris III was a monarch who did not actually govern the state. Quiet, modest and polite, the young tsar seemingly was satisfied with this situation. He was very cautious and never entered into open conflicts. A reticent leader, he acted by means of political machinations and diplomacy and never developed the showiness that had been so typical of his father. The downfall of the Agrarian Union's government as a result of the June 9 coup and the defeat of the communists in the uprising in September 1923 strengthened Boris's power. Boris III preferred to stay in the background but did his best to gradually become tsar of the people.

His desire to consolidate the dynasty made him lead a modest way of life, in line with the people's expectations. He would often shake hands with people from the crowd, travel unguarded, take his hat off to elderly people or even drive a locomotive. He did all this without a monarch's natural concern about his place in history.

In the wild turbulent political life in Bulgaria, Boris followed the example of his father, binding the generals with the throne and striving to achieve a unity of dynasty and army. It was the army that helped him through the hardships of 1923 and after the coup of May 19, 1934 when he gradually started to develop a personal regime. He was often accused of political intractability, lack of imperativeness and excessive slyness. But even his most violent opponents could not deny his intelligence, political skill and ruler's intuition, all of which helped him overcome the unexpected events of his time.

In the early 1930s, Boris III slowly disposed of his passive role in the ruling of the country and imposed an authoritarian style. He was generally considered a talented ruler who, unlike his father, won the sympathy of both rich and poor. At the same time during his authoritarian regime, many people were killed in the political persecutions of the anti-fascist movement from the summer of 1941 to the early fall of 1944.

The foreign policy of Tsar Boris III was characterized by cautiousness and a patient wait-and-see attitude. He followed the course adopted by Bulgarian diplomacy - for reasonable and peaceful reconsideration of the 1919 Treaty of Neuille, according to which Bulgaria lost territories including Thrace and access to the Aegean Sea. He succeeded in regaining Southern Dobroudja from Romania in the autumn of 1940, and that gained him an even better reputation among Bulgarians.

Everything good and bad that happened to Bulgaria in the years before and during the Second World War was due to Boris's rule since he made all the national decisions at the time. At the start of the war, Bulgaria declared neutrality. Early in 1941, however, Nazi troops were at the Danube shore in Romania heading towards Greece so Bulgaria formed a military and political alliance with Nazi Germany. The alliance helped Bulgaria regain some of its territories from Yugoslavia and Greece - Vardar Macedonia and Aegean Thrace.

Even though Bulgaria was a part of the Nazi alliance and declared war on Great Britain and the United States, it refused to declare war on Russia. Another accomplishment of Boris's rule during the war was the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews. Bulgaria did, however, have a Law for Protection of the Nation, passed in 1940, which copied the German anti-Semitic legislation. And in 1942, about 11,500 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were deported to the camps in Poland. But most of the Bulgarian Jews were hidden and saved thanks to the efforts of Bulgarian society and with substantial assistance from the palace.

In 1943, shortly after a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berlin, at which he refused to declare war on Russia and send Bulgarian troops to the East Front, Boris III died under mysterious circumstances. Whether his death was caused by heart attack or assassination is still uncertain. His son, six-year-old Simeon II, succeeded the throne under regency. In September 1946, after a national referendum, Bulgaria was declared a republic. The same year the royal family was sent into exile to Spain.