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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  In order to boost the morale of his troops, Constantine himself went to the battlefields. Living under strenuous conditions did nothing to improve his already delicate health. Intent on helping the soldiers as much as she could, Queen Sophie also spent much of her time at the hospitals. By the summer of 1921, the Greeks had advanced against the Turks and were headed for Ankara. Ataturk, however, wisely chose to retreat, thereby placing incredible strain on the Greeks as their supply lines were weakened and stretched beyond limit. September 1921 saw the Greeks defeated at the Sakarya River. The defeated Greek Army retreated toward Smyrna, already groaning under the weight of thousands of Greek refugees, who feared the advancing Turks. From then on, thanks to Ataturk’s superior forces and the Allied failure to aid Greece, it was only a matter of time before Greece faced defeat. Constantine and Sophie had few supporters. Only their aunt, Queen Alexandra of England, raised a concerned voice throughout the Asia Minor campaign.

  Always partial to the Greek royal family and to the memory of her brother, King George I, Queen Alexandra was eager to see her nephew, King Constantine, succeed with this second lease on his political life. The queen pleaded emphatically with her son, George V: “Promise me to do all you can for Greece & poor excellent honest Tino who has been so infamously treated by the world & France. Don’t let England forget that we put my excellent brother on the Greek throne and the only cause of dear honest Tino’s present awkward position is simply and solely his having married poor dear Sophie the sister of that ass William.”27 But Queen Alexandra’s pleas led nowhere.

  Throughout the harrowing campaign in Asia Minor, few events pleased Queen Sophie more than a visit from Mossy in the summer of 1922. It was a busy time for Sophie as she also had to entertain Queen Marie of Romania, who, with King Ferdinand, had rushed to Athens to be by their daughter’s bedside. Elisa-betta, suffering first from typhoid, then pleurisy, was at death’s door, but eventually rallied and recuperated slowly.

  Sophie implored Mossy to stay as long as possible. It was understandable, for Mossy found her favorite sister utterly careworn. “Alas,” Mossy wrote in May 1922, “I do not think my sister well, the heat tries her terribly, & all she has been through tells on her naturally. She ought to have a thorough change, Friedrichshof…like in olden times, but there is no possibility of this & she cannot think of going away until peace has been signed & politics are more settled.”28

  Another visitor to Athens during the twilight of King Constantine and Queen Sophie’s reign was the gardening expert, Mrs. Philip Martineau, who was moved by the sadness she encountered in Queen Sophie. Far from “the belligerent German,” Martineau found a woman who was “gentle and quiet, full of thought and kindness for her guests, and the most feminine and charming lady, ever ready to efface herself and her own views.” Expecting “to see a German and masterful lady,” Mrs. Martineau admitted her surprise at finding in Queen Sophie “a fragile little lady in deepest mourning, her face itself a tragedy of unhappiness.” The queen’s first words to her guest, waiting in a room filled with heavy English furniture and piles of English magazines, were by way of an apology: “You will forgive my not being here sooner, but I spend all the mornings in the hospital, where we have many wounded soldiers.”29

  Mrs. Martineau was impressed by Queen Sophie’s program to plant the brown Athenian hills with trees in an effort to combat the heat, dust, and drought that often plagued the capital. Already there were rows of shady pepper trees, whose vibrant reddish-pink berries and green leaves broke the monotonous cream and beige hues of the Greek capital. Sophie had great plans to introduce the drought-resistant Maritime pine to the hills and sought Mrs. Martineau’s advice about the best trees to improve rainfall in the parched city. Sadly, by the mid-1920s, much of Sophie’s hard work in the reforestation of Athens and its vicinity would become a distant memory. As the Infanta Eulalia rightly noted: “The Greeks have forgotten that many of the improvements in Greece were instituted by the Queen, who planted trees in a land where no trees save olives and cypresses grew”30

  The deliberate destruction of the forests around Tatoi was a bitter blow to Queen Sophie. Mrs. Martineau saw this when, on a drive to Tatoi, she was moved to ask what prompted the French to burn miles and miles of trees around the estate, once “the finest ilex forest in the world.” “Why should they do this, ma’am?” said an incredulous Mrs. Martineau. “They said I had a private wire to my brother concealed there.” She spoke “as if numb with pain.”31 The scorched land around Tatoi was a brutal symbol of the burden Sophie carried for being Kaiser Wilhelm II’s sister.

  Amidst the word of Greece’s failing campaign in Asia Minor and the Allied Powers’ refusal to help, one piece of good news came Queen Sophie’s way. Crown Prince Carol and Princess Helen had been blessed with the arrival of a son and heir on 25 October 1921, whom they named Michael. The premature birth, at Sinaia, had been exceptionally difficult and nearly cost mother and baby their lives. Queen Marie was by Sitta’s side at the delivery, but Queen Sophie arrived a week after Michael’s birth. The fact that this first grandson was born on the first anniversary of the death of her son helped to assuage, somewhat, the memory of that terrible day. Sophie stayed for a while in Romania, helping to nurse her daughter; but as soon as Helen showed signs of recovery, she left to return to Greece. The strong attachment Sitta felt for her Greek family took on new meaning after Michael’s birth. Concerned about the never-ending crisis her parents were living through, and anxious to keep away from her new house in Bucharest, which was undergoing renovations, Sitta fled to Greece with Michael within weeks. She did not return to Romania until the following April. To the Greek royal family, long accustomed to relying on one another for support, Helen’s long absence from Carol did not strike them as unusual. But the idea of his pretty young wife fleeing the roost did not sit well with Carol, the hot-blooded husband. Much to her surprise, Helen was to find that her prolonged absence proved fatal to her marriage. Upon her return, Sitta found that Carol had sought consolation in the arms of yet another woman who had commanded his attention; a woman by the name of Elena Lupescu.

  In the spring of 1922, the Allies brokered a peace that an exhausted Greece could agree to. Ataturk, however, wanted an immediate evacuation of Greek troops from Asia Minor, which he knew was a political impossibility. In a bid to end the stalemate once and for all, the Greeks planned a final attack, but were told by the Allied Powers in Constantinople that it would not be supported. By this time, Ataturk tasted victory. In August, he attacked the Greek Army near Ankara. In two weeks, it was all over. A triumphant Ataturk rode into Smyrna. The Greek tragedy did not end there, however. In an orgy of violence lasting nearly a week, the Turks exacted their revenge on Greeks in Smyrna, plundering and burning the city. The killings were indiscriminate: men, women, and children alike were brutally murdered. Many thousands more died drowning as they fled marauding Turks, trying to escape in overloaded boats. Conservative estimates place the Greek death toll at 30,000 people; some have placed it as high as 300,000.

  The Greek rout in Asia Minor and the ensuing massacres shocked Greece and emboldened disgruntled troops and anti-monarchists to go after Constan-tine, who became a convenient scapegoat. In a swelling chorus of anger, Prince Christopher recalled how “people began to remember all the Venizelist propaganda against him, raked together the still smouldering ashes of the past. Queen Sophie was the ex-Kaiser’s sister, they reminded one another, though,” added Christopher, “what bearing that could have on the present situation no one exactly knew.”32

  With the army and navy in open revolt, Constantine and Sophie’s days as King and Queen of the Hellenes were numbered. On 26 September 1922, some fifteen thousand soldiers made their way toward Athens, demanding that Constantine abdicate. Though his troops were willing to fight the insurgents, the king forbade it, wishing to avoid a civil war. He abdicated, “happy that another opportunity has been given me to sacrifice myself once more for Greece.”33 The coup d’état, spe
arheaded by disgruntled soldiers, officers, and pro-Venizelists had succeeded. It was under these unpromising circumstances that Sophie’s thirty-two-year-old son, George, succeeded his father as King of the Hellenes, making Elisabetta Queen of the Hellenes.

  For Constantine and Sophie, it was capitulation again. For the second time in five years, the king was compelled to sacrifice himself for the sake of Greece, a victim of disasters wrought by others, disasters he himself had warned against.

  Days after the abdication, a subdued Sophie and Tino steeled themselves for what was likely to be their last good-bye to the country for which they had toiled and suffered. On the morning of their departure, Sophie, Constantine, and the former king’s brother, Nicholas, visited the tomb of King George I to pay their last respects. Later, the royal family’s friend, Ioannis Metaxas, spoke to the couple at Tatoi, just before they left. Telling Constantine that he would not return to his throne, “but will live happily as a private citizen,” Metaxas found an exhausted Tino resigned to his fate. As for Sophie, it was noted that “the queen is very dignified.” It had all been “a moving farewell.”34 That same evening, without any fanfare, the ex-king and queen left Greece, never to return. Accompanying the couple on their journey into exile was their youngest child, Katherine, and Constantine’s brother, Nicholas. They left for Italy from Oropus—the same place where, only five years before, the couple experienced a very different farewell. Back then, crowds had tried to prevent their king and queen from abandoning Greece. This time, only a handful of people saw them off. The Athens of September 1922 was also a far cry from the Athens of 1917. Now, “complete calm reigned” in the capital, an observer reported, and people seemed almost relieved that all was over.35 Absent were feelings of regret or sadness at the couple’s departure. City life hardly skipped a beat; Athenian restaurants, theaters, and cafés were open, with very little sign that a revolution had taken place.

  Sophie and Constantine left on board a bug-infested Greek steamer, the SS Patris, disembarking with some relief at Palermo in Sicily a week later. In spite of the uncertainty of what lay in store for them, Sophie and her family conducted themselves on board the Patris with restraint. A Royal Naval officer who accompanied them reported that “I was much impressed with the bearing of Their Majesties during the time on board. Though obviously very tired and overstrained they showed great dignity and self-control and made light of the inconveniences with which they had to put up.”36 Dignity and self-control—hallmarks of a British upbringing under the tutelage of Queen Victoria—were to be among the guiding principles to which Sophie adhered in her years of exile.

  Twenty-five

  “TOO SAD”

  NEVER AGAIN HEALTHY AFTER HIS BRUSH WITH DEATH IN 1915, King Constantine following his abdication in 1922 was a broken man, suffering physically from nephritis and arteriosclerosis. He and Queen Sophie, refugees once again, settled in the Sicilian city of Palermo, at the Villa Hygeia. From here, they kept abreast of news on Greece, which was appalling. “Events in Greece are too outrageous and horrible for words,” was how Mossy put it. In November, Sophie and Constantine heard the shocking news that five former royalist ministers were labeled as traitors and summarily shot after a mock trial. Mossy noted “the way those unfortunate victims were murdered are [sic] ghastly my sister writes. She feels quite ill from the shock and horror.…I knew all those poor martyrs,” recalled Mossy, “& saw a good deal of them. They were loyal & devoted to their King & therefore had to disappear.”1 These latest terrible events were more than enough to send Constantine’s spirits plummeting.

  Princess Helen, in a lengthy letter to her husband, Carol of Romania, in December 1922, poured out her concerns about Queen Sophie:

  My darling,

  Mama’s state simply breaks my heart. I could not possibly leave her just now, I really honestly do not find her well enough, her nerves are in a pitiable state and a mere nothing would cause an absolute breakdown.…This suspense is so ghastly, we have meals in Mama’s salon, not feeling at all inclined to sit in a room crowded with strangers who stare so…it’s too too cruel.…You can imagine the state we are in and I simply could not leave mama just now, I am so terrified of her getting ill.2

  Sophie’s brother-in-law, Prince Andrew, who had fought in Asia Minor, was accused by the new government of military incompetence.

  A flurry of last-minute interventions by representatives of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of England, and the Pope helped to spare Prince Andrew’s life. He went into exile.

  Outwardly, the former king tried to put on a brave face on his second exile, but those who knew him well could see that Constantine was but a shell of his old self. In January 1923, Sophie and Constantine were set to move to Florence, but on the morning of 11 January Constantine collapsed on his bed and fell unconscious, a victim of cerebral hemorrhage. He died that day, surrounded by Queen Sophie and most of their children, clutching in his hand a pouch containing Greek soil. Constantine was just fifty-four years old; Sophie, his widow, fifty-two. She sent off a telegram to her son, King George II, in Greece, stating simply: “Father died suddenly heart failure. All my thoughts with you— Mother.”3 Family members were convinced that Constantine had died of a broken heart.

  The king’s body was ceremoniously taken by gun carriage to a steamer headed for Naples, where a funeral service took place in the city’s Greek church. Queen Sophie tried to secure permission to bury her husband in Greece, but the Greek government refused. Sophie eventually had the body taken to the Russian Church of Florence, where it rested in the crypt.

  One of the king’s friends, the Infanta Eulalia, who admired his honesty and loyalty, recorded that “the late King Constantine was marked for extinction. Some sovereigns are predestined for destruction; he was one of the doomed.” As for Queen Sophie, her lot was just as painful. “Poor misjudged Queen Sophie,” recorded Eulalia, “is one of the best of women; her patience in adversity was wonderful, and her stoical philosophy enabled her to regard her life entirely as a state of omnia vanitas, in which nothing was lasting.”4

  In the space of just fifteen months, Queen Sophie of the Hellenes had experienced exile, the death of a favorite son, the return to reign again in Greece, the abdication, a second exile, and widowhood. Marie of Romania noted Sophie’s anguish when Princess Helen returned from Italy with her mother in tow, not long after King Constantine’s death. “Yesterday our poor Sitta returned at last, still horribly sad. The death of her father was a terrible and sudden shock, and her poor mother is a sad, penniless, homeless, country-less exile. Too sad.”5

  Queens Marie and Sophie were a study in contrasts. Temperamentally, Marie, the theatrical and expansive one, always overshadowed the more subdued Sophie. The fates of these two women were also a stark contrast. In the public sphere, Marie emerged from the ashes of the Great War with her reputation greatly enhanced. Sophie, on the other hand, tasted the bitter poison of treachery and exile, and was forever haunted by ugly propaganda painting her as the traitor who tried to deliver Greece into Germany’s grasping hands.

  In the autumn of 1922, the contrast was even more noticeable. For as Sophie sailed off into exile, ejected from Greece after her husband had been compelled to abdicate, Marie was preparing to be crowned Queen of a Greater Romania alongside her Ferdinand. While Marie was crowned and fêted, Sophie, the refugee, had to bide her time in exile, consumed with anxiety for her sick husband and for her son, George II, at the mercy of intriguing politicians.

  Queen Marie and King Ferdinand’s coronation took place on 15 October 1922 at Alba Julia, ancient capital of the Roman province of Dacia. Marie had decreed that, far from being simple and current in taste, the ceremony was to be lifted from the pages of the past in a riotous combination of Byzantine and medieval Romanian elements. “I want nothing modern that another Queen might have,” she announced emphatically. “Let mine be all medieval.”

  The highlight of the ceremony was the crowning of the two sovereigns. Ferd
inand placed the crown of Carol I, forged from the captured Turkish guns at the Battle of Plevna, on his own head, then crowned Marie as she knelt before him. Marie’s crown, made of pure Transylvanian gold and dotted with precious stones, was specially made. It weighed four pounds. Her gown was spectacular, a confection in gold tissue, topped by a cloak of scarlet velvet with an ermine collar. The effect of this theatrical queen evoked comparisons with Byzantine empresses of the past. But far from a mere exercise in triumphalism, the coronation had real meaning for the two sovereigns. Princess Ileana summed it up: “To my parents it emphasized their position as the first servants of the state.”7

  Among the guests who witnessed this spectacle was Crown Princess Helen. The glaring contrast between Marie of Romania’s triumph at her coronation and Queen Sophie’s pain in exile must have been difficult for Helen to bear. At the first opportunity, she set out for Sicily to be by her parents’ side. Sitta’s absence from Romania did nothing to improve the deteriorating relationship with her husband.

  The breakdown of Carol and Helen’s marriage caused intense misery not only to the couple themselves but to the mothers. The marriage did not live up to Queen Marie’s expectations but, instead, ended up fulfilling Queen Sophie’s worst fears. After Helen’s family fled Greece, her companions in Romania were usually female relatives. Prince Carol found a ready excuse in blaming Sitta for their marital woes by drawing attention to these Greek relations who were forever visiting the beleaguered Helen. Carol resented sharing his wife’s company with her sister or mother. He attacked what he termed his “crowded” marriage as something insurmountable, and sought diversion elsewhere. Princess Helen may have been preoccupied with her parents’ relentless tragedy and had trouble shedding her Greek relations, even while living in Romania; but the fact was that Carol himself was largely to blame for the rapid collapse of the marriage. He simply could not find enough in the refined and elegant Sitta to keep him from straying. Instead, Carol became intoxicated with the exotic, flame-haired, green-eyed Elena Lupescu.