Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  If Romanians were dithering as to which side to take, their king was not. The seventy-five-year-old Carol I may have devoted most of his life to Romania, but his roots were firmly German. For Carol I, aligning Romania with the Central Powers was a given. He could not think otherwise. But there were drawbacks to this alliance. Just as Romania was greedily eyeing Bessarabia, the Romanians of Transylvania lusted for a Greater Romania, which would have to be done at the expense of Austria-Hungary This presented King Carol with a dilemma because for three decades, the monarch had adhered to a secret treaty aligning Romania with the Triple Alliance (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy). A thorough Hohenzollern, King Carol did everything in his power to ensure that Romania would side with Germany and Austria-Hungary

  Crown Princess Marie, who was raised partly in Coburg, and spoke German, might easily have chosen to side with der Onkel’s view about the Central Powers. Her real inclinations, however, lay unequivocally with Great Britain. Not long after war was declared, she became a vocal proponent of the Allied (or Entente) cause consisting of Great Britain, France, and Russia. It was an unpopular stance, given the fact that King Carol and Queen Elisabeth were both Germans and Crown Prince Ferdinand was himself a proud member of the House of Hohenzollern, who saw no reason to deny that Germany was bound to be victorious in the end. A weaker mortal than Marie could have easily felt like a pariah amid blustering German sympathizers; but this granddaughter of Queen Victoria stood her ground.

  Thus, within the Romanian royal family, daily life was highly charged. In an instant, rival camps arose. On the one side was King Carol and Queen Elisabeth, both pro-German. To Missy, Uncle Carol’s stand was not surprising. But Aunt Elisabeth was something of a revelation. For years, the queen had rarely displayed much affinity for things German and even regularly championed most things English and French. Now Crown Princess Marie found her ever eccentric aunty rediscovering her Germanic heritage “with a vengeance.” Queen Elisabeth in her flowing robes told anyone within earshot dramatically that she was die Rheintochter, a daughter of the Rhine. For Missy, it was almost comical; for Aunty Elisabeth, “it was all the time Deutschland über Alles.”

  According to the queen, this dawning of a new Teutonic world order was inevitable. The Germans, insisted Elisabeth, “must become lords of the world for the good of humanity.” As if that were not enough, she insisted to Missy that “England had to fall because her women had become immoral!” That, Marie admitted, was “difficult…to swallow.”17 Over and over Missy listened to Elisabeth’s litany of outrageous claims. Romania’s crown princess found herself biting her tongue in order to prevent a quarrel between herself and the deluded queen.

  After war erupted, Romania was compelled to make its stand known to the world. On 3 August 1914, a Crown Council was called by King Carol at Peles Castle, which he himself had built and infused with so many Germanic influences. At the meeting, the king pronounced that he was ready to adhere to Romania’s secret alliance with the Central Powers; his ministers, though, were not. The king was devastated. Something died inside him the day his ministers sided against him.

  Queen Elisabeth interpreted the ministers’ action as a slap in the face and was appalled. She proceeded to harangue Missy and Nando constantly. This certainly grated on Marie’s nerves, but she felt particular pity for Carol I. The poor king, already reeling from Romania’s rejection of his desire to side with Germany, shriveled under the verbal assaults from his wife. Carmen Sylva challenged the king to pack his bags and leave an ungrateful country.

  Marie was also sincerely saddened by the new gulf reemerging between herself and King Carol. After two decades spent deciphering Carol I, the crown princess had finally come to understand him. And he, in turn, had come to appreciate Missy’s growing maturity and the fact that the popular princess was an asset to the royal family. Now, in the twilight of his life, the war threatened to wreck the peaceful co-existence both had come to appreciate.

  As for Crown Prince Ferdinand, though he remained characteristically mute on the subject, even to his wife, there was little doubt that like his uncle and aunt, he too was more naturally inclined to side with their pro-German views. Thus Missy found herself alone among the royal family in espousing the Entente cause.

  As for the flighty Queen Elisabeth, overcome by the death and violence engulfing Europe, she announced at lunch one day that maybe it would be best if the whole family were to hold hands and “in a mighty circle sail up to Heaven, away from the miseries of this darkened sphere.” King Carol, long accustomed to his wife’s unstable tirades, thought that even for her this was going too far. “Das ist Unsinn, Elisabeth,”18 he answered sharply (“That is nonsense”). As far as he was concerned, King Carol wanted to stay on earth and see the war’s outcome. But the king would not get his wish.

  Ill from kidney disease, the battered king was soon at death’s door. The final breaking point occurred when he heard of the outcome of the Battle of the Marne. A German victory on the Western Front had been dramatically halted by the French. The defeat surprised the king, this most die-hard of supporters of German omnipotence. Not long afterwards, on 9 October, King Carol I died in his sleep at Peles Castle, clasped in his wife’s arms.

  That night, Marie and Ferdinand were away from the castle. Nando was at their home, Cotroceni, near Bucharest, while Missy was spending the night at Mogosoaia, the sprawling home of her friend, the author Marthe Bibesco. Early on the morning of 10 October, Marie was awakened to take an urgent telephone call. Prince Barbo Stirbey was calling to tell his beloved Missy that King Carol had died. Nando automatically ascended the throne, making Missy Queen of Romania.

  When this new chapter in her life opened, Marie of Romania was not inhibited by any sense of foreboding. On the contrary, as she watched her husband swear an oath before Parliament on the morning of his accession, she was strengthened in her resolve when she heard the people shout out: “Regina Maria!” They were voices raised in hope in this hour of darkness for Romania. Their new queen represented their future. In her memoirs, Marie wrote of that moment: “I knew that I had won, that the stranger, the girl who had come from over the seas, was a stranger no more; I was theirs with every drop of my blood!”19

  The Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, equally devoted to her adopted country, redoubled her quest to bolster up Nicholas II, who was more than ever burdened with responsibilities as Russia began enduring setbacks in the battlefield. By April 1915, the tsarist armies were retreating on the Eastern Front. Soon, they were forced to evacuate Warsaw, and by August, Russia had ceded all of its Polish territories and incurred the staggering loss of 3 million men. Russia’s ill-prepared war machine was in large part to blame for the losses. When Russia went to war in 1914, as one historian has noted, there were “a million fewer rifles in her arsenals than the number of men who were mobilized, and the same arsenals proved to be almost 600 million rounds of rifle ammunition short. There was only about one machine gun for every six hundred infantry…[and] the entire Russian army had only 60 batteries of heavy artillery with which to face the Austrians and Germans, while the Germans alone had 381 to direct against the Russians.”20

  Rasputin was among those against war. He sent the tsar a warning: “Let Papa not plan war for with war will come the end of Russia and yourselves and you will lose to the last man.”21 Anna Viroubova delivered the message. So incensed was the tsar at Rasputin’s insolence that he tore up the telegram in front of her.

  Once Rasputin was back in the capital, his reputation with the tsarina was soon permanently sealed. For another one of those astonishing “miracles” took place, and the recipient this time of the staretz’s incredible power would be none other than the tsarina’s faithful friend, Anna. Early in 1915, Anna was severely injured in a train crash not far from Tsarskoe Selo. Trapped under hunks of bent metal, Anna’s legs were damaged, her spine seriously injured, her head nearly crushed by the impact, compelling doctors to leave her for dead. They obviously had not reckoned
with Rasputin the miracleworker. He flew to Anna’s side, finding the tsar and tsarina already there. The unkempt staretz then cried out: “Annushka! Look at me!” As she opened her eyes, Anna recognized Rasputin, her saviour, praying for her life, and answered: “Grigory Thank God. It’s you.” His deed done, Rasputin “staggered from the room and fell into a faint.”22 The miracle man had predicted that Anna would recover but become a cripple. Rasputin was proven correct; after her recovery, Anna relied on crutches and a wheelchair to get around.

  Witnessing another of Rasputin’s amazing “miracles” was the last straw for the tsarina. In no time, Alexandra became consumed with a need to seek Rasputin’s counsel on numerous matters. The “mad monk” had managed to convince Alexandra of his indispensability to her, her son, the tsar, and Russia.

  In truth, Rasputin dabbled in a form of emotional blackmail. Well aware of the hold he had over the tsarina because of his inexplicable ability to “cure” her precious son, Rasputin had found a foolproof way of keeping himself in Alexandra Feodorovna’s good favors. The staretz once said to a Russian diplomat: “Many tales are told of the Empress and me. I know this. It is infamous. Yesterday I went to see her. The poor little thing; she too is in need of being able to speak frankly with some one. She suffers much. I console her. I talk to her of God, and of us peasants and she becomes calm. Ah! It is but yesterday she went to sleep on my shoulder.”23 Always astute in his dealings with the tsarina, Rasputin played on her fears when he pronounced: “Remember that I need neither the Emperor nor yourself. If you abandon me to my enemies it will not worry me. I’m quite able to cope with them. The demons themselves are helpless against me.…But neither the Emperor nor you can do without me. If I am not there to protect you, your son will come to harm!”24

  Seeing that Rasputin was rarely wrong, Alexandra urged the tsar to trust their friend completely. So convinced was she that Rasputin was truly special that Alix even gave Nicky the staretz’s comb, urging him to comb his hair with it before making difficult decisions.

  Because of the fighting, Nicholas II had to visit his troops and Army Headquarters. This meant that more and more Alexandra found herself governing in her husband’s absence. The tsarina never hid her opinions from Nicholas about government—or anything else for that matter. With each passing month, whenever the couple was separated, she plied him with letters full of news, loving endearments, encouraging words, and, of course, opinions on the ever-changing ministry. For a mad game of Musical Chairs had set in, ministers in the upper echelons of government coming and going with astonishing rapidity. The staggering losses in men at the front, the instability in the government with Alexandra at the helm, and the fact that Rasputin still held sway, all added up to one thing: Russia’s descent into chaos had begun in earnest.

  The issue of Romania’s neutrality was uppermost in people’s minds at the accession of the new sovereigns. The nation’s politicians sensed that Romanians were tilting toward joining the Allied cause. This was based primarily on the people’s desire to unite with their fellow Romanians in Transylvania, creating a Greater Romania. The thought of crossing the snow-capped Carpathian Mountains and seizing that coveted land from the Hungarians was proving more and more tempting. No one understood this aspiration better than the country’s prime minister, Ion Bratianu, head of the country’s Liberal Party.

  Bratianu was a leading proponent of the concept of a Greater Romania. If war war declared against the Habsburg Empire, this cherished dream just might come true. With his mind made up, the prime minister set about convincing King Ferdinand that the sole alternative for Romania was to side with the Entente cause and to pit its weapons against Germany and Austria-Hungary It was a task easier said than done. Nando’s greatest nightmare had actually come to pass: at the very moment of his accession, the king was being pressured to bring his country into war against his own fatherland.

  Queen Sophie’s husband was faced with an equally daunting dilemma in Athens. The Triple Entente Powers were no less determined to see to it that Greece sided with them. And in total agreement with the powers was Eleutherios Venizelos, the prime minister.

  The ambitious and wily politician, long fired with the idea of forging a Greater Greece through territorial aggrandizement, now saw an opportunity for his country to rise to new heights. What Venizelos did not realize was that he would have to reckon with his king’s more realistic assessment of Greece’s position in the increasingly complex and volatile Balkans. A great schism was set to erupt in Greece.

  France now became the ringleader in an ugly campaign to get Greece to throw in its lot with the Entente Powers, ignoring the dangers around it. Russia, meanwhile, was struggling with its own set of problems, and in desperate need of help from its allies. So a plan was created whereby the Entente would come to the aid of the far-flung empire.

  The Allies proceeded to put into action a plan to fight in Asia Minor and so open up communications with Russia. At the same time, in attacking the Central Powers in Asia Minor, it was hoped to deal them a blow by opening up another front and forcing Turkey to do battle. King Constantine was respectful of Germany’s military might, but he also knew that if Greece threw in its lot with Germany, it would be destroyed by the Allied navies in the Mediterranean. Even Queen Marie of Romania, the most consistent and staunchest of pro-Entente supporters, understood the reality of German military strength and respected Germany’s war machine. During an audience with the queen in the middle of World War I, a Russian diplomat heard her opinion. “ ‘They are very strong,’ she said again and again, in speaking of the Central Powers.”25 Thus, King Constantine, the professional soldier, above all a realist, refused to fall for the dangerous dreams of territorial aggrandizement that kept Venizelos spellbound and affected his pursuit of Greek foreign policy.

  Constantine denied Greek help to an Allied venture he saw as doomed to fail. The king feared too that if he committed Greek troops to the campaign, it would tempt Bulgaria to attack Greece. But above all, Constantine was well aware that the Allies’ plans for an attack in the Dardanelles was too risky because of their refusal to contemplate committing to a massive attack by land as well as by sea. The king was right. Before the largely naval campaign was over, the Allies sent matériel and half a million soldiers to Gallipoli, of which nearly 150,000 would become casualties. This disaster became known as the infamous Dardanelles or Gallipoli Campaign and would serve as a blot on the military operations of the Entente Powers.

  Constantine not only incurred the anger of the Allies for his lack of support in the Gallipoli invasion; he also incurred the wrath of Venizelos. The furious prime minister resigned in March 1915. He was later reelected in June of that year but was dismissed four months afterwards by Constantine when Allied troops began pouring into Salonika.

  The acute internal struggle that Nando was waging, which pitted his natural inclination to side with his Teutonic brothers versus his duty toward Romania, had a devastating effect on the king. Queen Marie was attuned to her husband’s plight and her heart went out to him. Like King Carol before him, Ferdinand’s loyalty to the House of Hohenzollern was sincere and strong. Now he was being asked to forget his roots, his membership in a proud dynasty, and to strike out alone for Romania’s sake. If Ferdinand made the wrong call, the consequences for himself and the country were incalculable. Marie was well aware of the stakes involved and understood that her husband was now having to make the most agonizing decision of his life.

  Ferdinand, though long browbeaten by King Carol, was by no means a fool. On the contrary, he was a man of splendid intelligence, whose tragedy lay in the fact that he was hampered by his own timidity and an excessive sense of humility. An accomplished linguist, he was easily at home in German, English, Romanian, French, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew. This fluency in languages allowed the king to keep his ministers guessing when, during those all-important meetings on foreign policy, he wrote the points “in German, using the old Cyrillic alphabet, and spoke them in
French or Romanian.”2 Ferdinand’s interests ranged from archeology to literature and history. Botany was a particular passion, with the king surpassing any professor’s knowledge on the subject. But many people were unaware just how intelligent Ferdinand was. The antithesis of the blustering Kaiser Wilhelm, King Ferdinand never wanted to flaunt his far-reaching knowledge. Even after he ascended the throne, he continued to assume a humble, sometimes even bumbling facade. It was up to his wife, Missy, to see to it that Ferdinand played the king and was not consumed by his own timidity. Soon after their ascension to the throne, the queen gave Ferdinand a golden bowl with the inscription: “Tomorrow may be thine if thy hand be strong enough to grasp it.”27

  Many of Ferdinand and Marie’s subjects already sensed that much of their hope lay with their new queen. And Marie, instinctively attuned to the pulse of her countrymen, knew this. Romania’s leading politicians were ready to exploit the obvious advantage they had in the queen. Like a gift from the gods, Marie, it seemed, had been sent to help bolster her husband and secure the nation’s path to victory. The groundwork was laid for a campaign to get Ferdinand to place his country firmly in the Entente’s camp. And the person largely responsible for this onerous task was none other than the woman on whom the king leaned so heavily for support.