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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Sadly, Queen Sophie’s trepidations over Helen’s desire to marry Carol had been proven correct far too soon. Sophie was in the unenviable position of trying to help her daughter through an increasingly unhappy marriage with a man who was turning out to be one of Europe’s most notorious womanizers. Nor was the collapsing marriage any easier for Marie of Romania. She, after all, had nudged Carol and Helen toward each other.

  In the 1920s, Queen Marie was viewed as having cleverly engineered the marriages of her children so that her immediate descendants would occupy Balkan thrones. After all, her eldest son was married to a Princess of Greece, while Marie’s eldest daughter was married to the King of Greece. When, in 1922, Mignon married King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Marie of Romania was the undisputed matriarch of a reigning family that stretched into all major countries of the region barring Bulgaria, earning her the sobriquet “Mother-in-law of the Balkans.”

  Though the son of an insane father, and hampered by shyness, King Alexander was undoubtedly a fine catch from a dynastic and political point of view. The bespectacled king was also an astute leader, who helped forge a nation from disparate groups consisting of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The fact that he had asked for the hand of the down-to-earth, chubby daughter of Queen Marie was a stroke of good luck for the unassuming Mignon. Eager to be of help to husband, king, and people, a little nudge from her mother was all that Mignon needed to agree to Alexander’s proposal in spite of the fact that they were strangers to each other. Her mother was full of praise for her child, saying how “I tremble at her courage, but I cannot help approving, it is worthy of a daughter of mine, brought up to live for others.”8 Critics of the Romanian queen could not resist painting her as a manipulative and overambitious mother, who would willingly sacrifice her children’s happiness for the sake of dynastic aggrandizement. But in reality, Marie never forced any of her children to marry without their full consent.

  The birth of Marie’s Romanian grandson, Prince Michael, in 1921 and that of Prince Peter of Yugoslavia to Mignon two years later, certainly appeared to lend credence to belief in Queen Marie’s ambitions, for here were two grandsons destined to rule Romania and Yugoslavia one day. Only the continuing childlessness of George II of Greece and Elisabetta prevented Queen Marie from boasting of a third grandson destined for a throne. But behind the glittering facades, the fact was that two of the three royal couples were already in the throes of marital difficulties. George and Elisabetta found that, like Carol and Helen, their marriage was floundering. Elisabetta’s shyness was a great handicap to her and came over as arrogance, making it difficult for her to adjust to life within the Greek royal family. She seemed too aloof for most of the Greek royals; Elisabetta, in her turn, could not find much in the family to endear them to her. This included Queen Sophie, who appeared to keep her distance; nor did Elisabetta seem to give her husband much of a chance to appeal to her. For a short while it appeared hopeful that George and Elisabetta might find happiness in each other’s company. But as the situation in Greece deteriorated for the King and Queen of the Hellenes, Elisabetta, already prone to black moods, grew more depressed.

  Queen Marie had for years watched anxiously as she tried to encourage her eldest daughter to come out of her propensity for self-pity. When Elisabetta unexpectedly became Queen of Greece in 1922, Queen Marie saw signs that this difficult daughter was not up to the challenges before her. Elisabetta, then still recuperating from her attack of typhoid and pleurisy, used dark makeup to emphasize the shadowy circles under her eyes; her hair was cut short, then dyed red; her face was powdered in white, her eyebrows dyed black. All of which prompted Elisabetta’s concerned mother to conclude: “She seems to me in every way utterly unprepared for such an event [becoming Queen of Greece]. She has as yet neither interest nor love for the country. She has studiously refused to have a child, she knows no one, she cares for no one, she trusts no one.”9

  Sophie, on the other hand, continued to be blessed with children who were a comfort to her and who rarely gave her much grief. True, she had worried when Alexander married Aspasia Manos. But her son’s death helped reconcile Sophie to her granddaughter, Alexandra, on whom the queen lavished affection. Sophie was even instrumental in getting Aspasia recognition as a royal widow. According to Prince Christopher of Greece, when Aspasia broached the subject to him, he went to Queen Sophie, who replied, “She could have the title of Princess Alexander, but how in the world I am going to break it to the Court, I don’t know. They will never accept it, I am afraid.” Christopher said, “They will have to, if you make them.” A nervous Queen Sophie did as her brother-in-law suggested. “As she had guessed,” recalled the Greek prince, “it was not received with enthusiasm and for some days after there were black looks whenever the subject was mentioned.”10 In the end, though, just before King Constantine and Queen Sophie were exiled, Aspasia was recognized as Princess Alexander of Greece. In reporting the event to London, a member of the British Legation in Athens noted that it was at “the special request of ex-Queen Sophie, who is devoted to her Manos grand-child,” that a decree was published on 25 September 1922 “rendering valid the marriage of the late King Alexander with Miss Aspa-sia Manos.”11

  In 1923, even the Duke of York (the future King George VI of England) could not help noticing a distinct difference between the two royal cousins, Marie and Sophie, whose fates were as opposite as night and day. The duke wrote back his impressions of the two women to his father, King George V. For Queen Marie, the duke noted little change: “Cousin Missy as usual was in great form.” But when it came to the former Queen of the Hellenes, it was a different story: “Aunt Sophie was there too. She has aged a great deal, poor lady, after all she has been through.”12

  Less than eight weeks later, misfortune struck again when Sophie’s son, George II, fled Greece with Elisabetta. Just fifteen months after ascending the throne, the unhappy king and queen were thrown out by republican elements of the military. Like his father before him, George did not abdicate but left Greece in order to avoid possible civil war. In 1924, the Greek government abolished the monarchy and denied the royal family Greek citizenship.

  The couple fled to Romania, where they lived together for a time at the Cotroceni Palace. But an aimless life with a difficult wife in a country to which he felt little affinity prompted George to spend more and more time outside the country. With little to keep them together, the marriage soon crumbled.

  Another Englishman, Beverly Nichols, who saw Queens Sophie and Marie in the early 1920s was struck, like the Duke of York, by the differences he found between the two queens. Sophie, who was then reigning, seemed immersed in sorrow. “I shall never forget my first sight of her,” wrote Nichols, “for she had the saddest face of any woman I have ever seen. Standing there, dressed entirely in black, a bowl of lilies by her side, her face rose from the shadows like one who has known every suffering.” The queen bore herself beautifully, but “the very air which she breathed seemed heavy with sadness.” Yet when she greeted Nichols, Sophie disarmed him with her fluent English: “I’m so glad that you don’t try to kiss my hand. Some Englishmen seem to think that they must do it, and they always look so embarrassed.”13

  A startled Nichols found that the queen was “absolutely ravenous for information” on the country that was her second home. “And now,” Sophie started, “before I tell you about Greece, for Heaven’s sake tell me something about England. I haven’t been there since the war, and,” shrugging her shoulders, “I don’t suppose I shall ever be able to go there again.” Queen Sophie then bombarded her young visitor with all kinds of questions about the parties being held, the tulips in Hyde Park, the shade of green in Kensington Gardens. As he answered this flood of questions, Nichols noted that he gradually “realized…that here was a woman who was sick at heart for the country in which she had played as a child.”14 Sophie then steered the conversation to her current predicament, recounting some of the outrageous stories circulating about her:<
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  I was supposed, of course, to be in daily touch with my brother in Berlin, by wireless. I never quite gathered where the wireless was, but I believe they said it was in a tree in the garden. I was supposed to concoct elaborate plans for the destruction of the British Army. How, I don’t quite know, because my husband always tells me I know nothing whatever about war. I was also reputed to teach all my children nothing but German. I presume that is why I have had nobody to teach them but an English governess who has been here for ten years.…In fact—I’m quite impossible. I wonder you dare come to see me.15

  The queen explained that she loved both England and Germany, and hated the way the war had placed her in an intolerable position. She spoke revealingly of how she had coped: “What was there to do, except to shut my eyes, and to think only of Greece? If I was to follow the struggle—first from this side and then from that—I should have gone mad. And so, as I say, I devoted myself to Greece. I nursed. I did my best in the hospitals. I busied myself in the gardens. I did anything but think.” After showing Nichols a fourteen-inch shell from the French bombardment of the Royal Palace in December 1916, and recalling her terrified children huddled in the cellars, Sophie reminded him of her English heritage. “Don’t forget that although I may be the sister of the Kaiser, I’m also the daughter of the Princess Royal.”17

  In the six months Nichols stayed in Athens, he determined that “the Queen was utterly sincere and genuine, I do not doubt.” He saw her several times more, and she revealed the sparkling side to her character. “But the underlying note of tragedy would always recur.”18 Nichols also met Queen Marie, who struck him as being a different woman from Queen Sophie. Marie of Romania, Nichols concluded, was

  A very remarkable woman.…And largely because, of all the Queens in Europe, she is the only one who really dramatizes her position. She is, in the best sense of the word, a poseuse, by which I mean that she knows exactly how to present herself to the public imagination. Realizing, as she does, that in these days the Throne has to borrow a great deal of thunder of the stage if it is to keep its position, and that showmanship is half the craft of sovereignty, she acts accordingly. All her gestures are studied…sometimes daring, sometimes startlingly “unconventional.”…But they remain the gestures of a Queen.19

  Much as she enjoyed immersing herself in trying to solve the country’s problems, Marie was nevertheless exhausted by the experience, as she once admitted to Loie Fuller: “I am a born fighter, I am not afraid, but really I am absolutely consumed by others. They eat my life up!…But strange to say never perhaps have I looked so well & some say, still extraordinarily young!”20 Marie was forty-five years old when she wrote those words, far from her luminous beauty decades before. But there must have been more than a grain of truth, for observers like the young Mr. Nichols had certainly found plenty to admire both physically and mentally in Marie of Romania.

  Being doubly related through the marriages of four of their children did not lead to a closer relationship between Sophie and Marie. Nor did Sophie’s long stays in Romania to be with her daughter, Helen, bring about a closer understanding. Their contrasting personalities created a barrier that the two women found difficult to bridge. They remained outwardly polite but distant as well. In the 1920’s, Queen Sophie visited Queen Marie’s latest treasure, Bran Castle in Transylvania. Donated to her by the city of Brasov, the medieval fortress is perched on a steep hill. Bran, with its fairy-tale architecture and setting, greatly appealed to Marie. She set about decorating her new home with gusto, creating interiors with a blend of Eastern and Western styles, the overall effect heavily Byzantine. Queen Marie, delighted with her prowess, proudly showed Sophie her Transylvanian retreat. The more down-to-earth Sophie remarked, “Yes, it’s very nice, my dear, but at your age?” Unperturbed, Marie replied, laughing, “Yes, my dear, at my age. And I’m not finished yet!”21

  Marie’s decorating and gardening frenzy at Bran, along with her numerous charitable activities, were inspired in large part by a tremendous drive and energy. But they were also a means of keeping her distracted from the tragedies that plagued George and Elisabetta and Carol and Helen. The death of her dear friend, Joe Boyle, in April 1923 was another blow. The news was broken to Marie by Prince Stirbey Of Boyle, who had done so much for Romania and for her, a distraught queen confided in her diary: “you are still somewhere quite near—and you know it—you know that you cannot die in my heart.”22 At one time, Marie wanted Boyle to be buried at Bran, and her heart to be laid to rest near his tomb. But Boyle was buried in England (and later reburied in Canada). At the funeral his old friend, George Hill, placed four white lilies, Queen Marie’s favorite flowers, on the coffin. In thanks for his selfless service to Romania and the royal family, Queen Marie also sent an ancient Carpathian headstone for Boyle’s grave.

  As the 1920s progressed, Marie’s joy in life became burdened by personal sorrows that developed into one crisis after another. The marital problems of her two eldest children were certainly of great concern, but in no time, they were overshadowed by Crown Prince Carol’s outrageous behavior. Boyle had earlier warned Marie about Carol during the Zizi Lambrino affair. “Your son has come around this time. But he’ll stray again. He has a yellow streak that cannot be denied.”23 The Lupescu affair proved Boyle right. By 1925, all was over between Carol and Helen—the marriage was in tatters.

  Twenty-six

  “I WOULD NEVER LEAVE ENGLAND”

  THE OVERTHROW OF THE ONCE MIGHTY ROMANOV, HOHENZOLLERN, and Habsburg dynasties had shown that even though Queen Maud’s family and court lacked the long-standing power and prestige that had set these great dynasties apart like demigods, Maud could take comfort in the fact that she and King Haakon survived the instability that plagued so many countries after the Great War. Visiting the Norwegian royal family after the war, the Infanta Eulalia was struck by the modesty of the court, which she termed “simplicity itself.” Here was a kind of monarchical utopia, where “titles and class privileges have disappeared, and a system of absolute equality is in force.” Eulalia admired Maud’s modest approach to being queen, noting that “her existence is far less pretentious than that of many well-to-do women in other countries.” Eulalia even ran into Maud shopping. The queen told a surprised Eulalia, “I always do my own shopping. For one thing, it’s easier, and for another, it amuses me. In any case, I’ve no one to send.”1

  In her fifties, Queen Maud had lost little of her youthful appearance, and her figure remained trim. She may have suffered from chronic pain from her neuralgia and headaches, but unlike her cousin Tsarina Alexandra, who had aged quickly and was relegated to a wheelchair for stretches at a time, Maud did not let her fight with pain keep her from enjoying sports. Winter was for skiing, while spring and summer were reserved for tennis and riding at Appleton and Bygdoy where Maud still cut a dashing figure in her tailored riding habit.

  In 1924, Maud’s son, Crown Prince Olav, accompanied his mother to Apple-ton. From there, he enrolled at Oxford University. It was a natural choice, as Olav had turned out to be practically an English gentleman, who easily took to life in his mother’s native land.

  The crown prince’s stay in England brightened the last year of his maternal grandmother’s life. A frail and elderly Queen Alexandra died at Sandringham in November 1925. Maud, dressed in deepest mourning, attended the funeral of the woman who had always been “Motherdear.” Their mother’s death left a void in the lives of Maud and her siblings and served to bring them closer.

  Among the official mourners sent to pay their respects at Queen Alexandra’s funeral was Crown Prince Carol of Romania, whose affair with Lupescu flourished. After the funeral, Carol was to have escorted his sister, Ileana, back to Romania from her English boarding school. Instead, he fled to Paris, where Lupescu awaited him with open arms, and the couple then left for Italy.

  Concerns over where Spain was headed under General Primo de Rivera came to the fore when, in 1923, King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugeni
e paid an official state visit to Benito Mussolini’s Italy. As the couple was accompanied by Primo de Rivera, this gave rise to all sorts of speculation as to whether Spain under the general was set to emulate Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. In the end, Spain did not become a clone of Italy. Yet one historian has pointed out that “the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera constitutes a crossroads in the history of Spain in the twentieth century. Neither fascist nor democratic, Primo de Rivera’s regime was anchored in the powerful Liberal tradition of Spain, but in its aimless drift towards nowhere it also looked to Fascism for inspiration.”2

  The Italians entertained King Alfonso and Queen Ena lavishly. Upon their arrival at La Spezia, hundreds of Fascists formed a guard of honor. Once on Italian soil, Alfonso XIII turned the attention to General Primo de Rivera, announcing, “This is my Mussolini.”3 Years later the king admitted that he failed to grasp at the time the full impact of fascism. Nevertheless, his announcement left observers convinced that Spain was headed in the same direction as Italy.

  Victoria Eugenie was not in the league of Marie of Romania and Alexandra of Russia when it came to exercising power or influence over her husband. But then neither was Queen Ena a victim of the sort of propaganda launched against Queen Sophie of Greece. Though queen of a neutral country in World War I, Ena was known for her pro-Allied proclivities, and since Spain and Alfonso XIII were never in the cross-hairs of the Allied Powers, Ena never knew what it was like to be persecuted.

  Victoria Eugenie herself perpetuated the notion that she was completely un-involved in Spanish politics—“no; never, never,” she replied when asked about whether Alfonso consulted her in such matters.4 But despite their stormy marriage, Alfonso was not above discussing politics with his wife. Their daughter, the Infanta Beatriz, confirmed this years later: “Queen Ena never discussed politics with anyone except the King. But with him she did discuss the nation’s affairs and he often heeded her advice.”5 Ena did not hesitate to give her opinion of some individuals, citing her “feminine intuition.” “I would not trust this one or that one,” Ena would say to Alfonso. And she recounted how, “if he had not paid attention, with the passage of time the poor King used to tell me: ‘Deep down you were right.’ And I would reply: ‘I told you so!’ “6 Ena may not have directly dabbled in politics but was not without some influence in this sphere.