The Lipizzaner is the Rolls-Royce of all horse breeds. You can recognise one by its pristine white coat and canny aristocratic glare. Such a beast, with all the trimmings – livery, pedigree paperwork and punctilious ceremonial training – can be worth about £70,000.

No other animal could ever be as fit to be owned by a King, and so it should be no surprise that in 2024, King Charles III received a pair of Lipizzaners as a coronation gift from Hungary. The horses were handed over to the Royal Mews by Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, the then-minister of defence and a former ambassador to London.

The pair, aged six and eight, and named Nelson and Iveco, made the perfect present for Charles. Aside from being a horse lover, the King is a history buff, having studied the subject at Cambridge as a young man. He would have known, then, that the Lipizzaner was the breed used by central-European royal families all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the time of the Habsburgs, a dynasty to which he is distantly related.

But this summer the two prize steeds – bred to pull carriages – were dragged into a most inelegant diplomatic spat. In July, Buckingham Palace received what has been described as a “strongly worded” letter from Hungary’s agricultural ministry, which supposedly demanded that the horses be given back to the farm they came from.

Both the Palace and the Hungarian government have since played down the fiasco as being the result of an administrative error. The horses will stay in Britain “as originally intended”, a spokesperson for the Embassy of Hungary told The Telegraph.

But news of the letter has caused a ruckus in Hungary, where there has been rolling media coverage of the dispute. The opposition Christian Democratic People’s Party has now insisted that the original letter should be released in full, to determine “whose responsibility it is that Hungary has been made a mockery”. It has also called the escapade the “Hungarian-British Horse War”.

Hungary ‘does not wish to bring the horses home’

The agriculture ministry, for its part, has admitted that a letter was sent to the King in July.

But the demand sent to Charles “was worded inaccurately”, the ministry said in a statement on Friday morning. It added that it had immediately “corrected the error and made it clear to the British side that we do not wish to bring the horses home”, so that “these two outstanding horses [can] continue to serve as worthy ambassadors for Hungarian Lipizzaner breeding and Hungarian-British relations”.

However, the ministry also revealed on Friday that the horses “were transferred to the Royal Mews in 2024 under a loan agreement”. As such, they technically “remain the property of the Hungarian State”, although it continues to view the animals “as a gift”.

It seems that this strange episode began two years ago, at Szilvásvárad, the Hungarian state stud farm located two hours from Budapest in the country’s mountainous north. It’s here that all of the country’s Lipizzaner horses are bred and trained. Szilvásvárad is also a carriage-driving, showjumping and dressage venue, and the farm has a number of official riders, who take the steeds out to official competitions.

In early 2024, the farm was visited by two officials from Buckingham Palace: Toby Browne, then the Crown Equerry and former senior horseman in the Household Cavalry, and the King’s head coachman Matthew Powers. The pair had been invited to the farm by Hungarian officials to select two horses to join the Royal Mews in London. They chose Neapolitano XXVII-44, known by the stable name Nelson, and Incitato XVIII-3, otherwise called Iveco.

There was only one problem: a rider at Szilvásvárad had become rather attached to Iveco. “Before one of the horses was taken away, I competed with it in an event,” says the carriage driver Marcell Dani. The Hungarian media has reported that the horse was put up as a gift for the King after a spat in the stables. The rumour is that someone connected to the stables suggested Iveco as a good pick to the King’s officials, to settle a personal grudge.

Dani declined to comment on that speculation. He insists he is happy enough that Iveco was shipped off to London, even though it means that he now competes with his own steed, rather than a Lipizzaner from Szilvásvárad. “A decision was made, which I naturally accepted, and as far as I’m concerned, that was the end of the matter,” he says.

The 2024 horse exchange

The horses were exchanged in the courtyard of the Royal Mews at Windsor “on the morning of the summer solstice”, the stud farm’s website is careful to note. Drafted in to capture the moment was Adam Csomor, a Hungarian boudoir photographer living in London who specialises in photographing women with alopecia.

Szalay-Bobrovniczky was snapped in a blue tie and tails, looking very self-satisfied as he handed over the reins to a senior member of the Household Cavalry. “Hungarian horses at the service of the British Royal family!” read the caption that the then-minister shared on Facebook, along with the official images.

The plan at the time, according to the agriculture ministry, was to eventually give the King “a Lipizzan four-horse carriage, a decorative carriage and decorative implements”. This did not materialise.

Since then, it seems that Nelson and Iveco have lived a rather sedentary life at Windsor. Rarely have they been trotted out for the ceremonial duties that the Hungarians perhaps hoped they’d play a starring role in. But by all accounts they are happy and well cared for. The letter sent by the agriculture ministry and received by the palace is understood not to have alleged that the horses were treated poorly or kept in improper living conditions.

Why ask for them back now?

So why ask for their return to Szilvásvárad now? The broader picture is that “it’s all to do with Hungary’s recent change of government,” says Martyn Rady, professor emeritus of central European history at University College London.

The horses were given to Charles under Hungary’s last government, which was run by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. Orbán ran Hungary for 16 years, and was widely criticised by other European leaders – and his own citizens – for democratic backsliding and his close ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He was also accused of trying to unduly win influence with other foreign powers with gifts.

“The Orbán government gave away huge amounts of state assets to friends of the government, people it wanted to influence in business, and to important foreigners, as they saw them,” Prof Rady says.

Orbán was ousted by Peter Magyar of the Tisza Party in May this year. On Wednesday night, the former prime minister posted a clip from the noughties Hungarian film Glass Tiger on Facebook. The main character says the line: “Is everyone here an idiot?” Orbán captioned the clip: “Did the government take back the horses gifted to King Charles III?” along with an exasperated facepalm emoji.

Since he took office, Magyar “has been cancelling a number of standing orders, as it were”, says Rady. It seems to him that “some junior in the office for the national recovery of assets had discovered these two horses, and as a result, some silly letter was sent”, he explains. “The Hungarian government would have realised immediately that it had overstretched, that something had gotten out of hand, and so the whole issue was quashed almost immediately.”

The Hungarian political commentator András Hont agrees. The whole affair is a result of “amateurism”, he believes. The agriculture ministry “probably gave a clerk a list of previous gifts from the ministry, and then the clerk sent out a circular letter to the addresses provided”.

Though they may rarely be in the spotlight here in Britain, Nelson and Iveco will have been sorely missed in Hungary, where they were sporting champions in the making.

Next year will see Hungary host the 2027 World Pair Driving Championships, an important equestrian event that sees riders test their carriage-driving skills. The tournament will take place in Budapest for the first time next September. Like all Lipizzaners – and there are only a few thousand of them in Europe – Iveco and Nelson are the product of hundreds of years of elite breeding for sporting occasions. Were they shipped back to Szilvásvárad, and therefore able to perform for Hungary, then the country’s chances of winning in these games would surely be bolstered.

What next?

Whether this kerfuffle was prompted by an attempt to claw back prize assets given away under Orbán, or a perceived snub from Buckingham Palace in its refusal to parade the horses down the Mall, or even just a desire to put Hungary on the best possible footing ahead of the all-important carriage driving contest next September, it seems that Charles will keep his steeds in the end.

“We are working to ensure that the gift is truly a gift,” said the agriculture ministry on Friday morning, “and that the two Hungarian Lipizzan horses can become the property of the British king permanently and with a settled legal background”.

“The Embassy of Hungary considers the matter settled and has no further comment at this time,” the embassy spokesperson said. Buckingham Palace itself had nothing to add.

“I’m sure both the Palace and the embassy will come to laugh about it with time,” says Prof Rady. “In fact, they probably already are.”