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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Amid these turmoils, Marie took solace in her homes, paying avid attention to decorating, gardening, and relaxing as much as she could. Castle Bran in Transylvania and Tenya-Yuvah (“the Nest”) on the Black Sea at Balcic were her two favorite hideaways. Also high on her list of interests was her writing. A natural with words, she found comfort in writing fiction (mostly for children) and non-fiction, mainly articles. But in the late 1920s, Marie began an ambitious project: her memoirs, highlighting the ups and downs of her turbulent and colorful life. It was to end up as a three-volume work entitled The Story of My Life that met with success and still makes for fascinating reading today.

  Queen Marie also took to traveling with her youngest daughter, Princess Ileana. During a visit to Beatrice in Spain, Ileana and Alfonsito, Queen Ena’s eldest son, took a serious liking to each other, but Marie was grateful when the romance did not proceed further.

  With King Ferdinand dead, Marie removed to the sidelines, and the feckless regency unpopular with the Romanians, more and more people within Romania looked to Carol as a solution to the country’s political instability, including the ineffective Iuliu Maniu. Having secured Prince Nicholas’s acquiescence to his return, Carol flew into Bucharest on 6 June 1930.

  The capital broke out in a rousing welcome as Carol made his way to Parliament. From there, the Act of Succession that King Ferdinand had reluctantly implemented and that Carol himself had engineered was revoked at Carol’s instigation. Carol usurped the throne from his son, Michael, becoming King Carol II. At her home, a dumbfounded Princess Helen was coming to grips with the sudden reversal of fortunes and gently trying to explain to her son that he was no longer king. A perplexed Michael gravely asked his mother, “How can Papa be King when I am the King?”2

  As a condition of Carol’s return, Maniu had expected him to take Helen back, if in name only. Princess Helen understandably hesitated to undo her divorce, but eventually agreed. But when Carol insisted that his ex-wife sign a letter stating she was against the reversal of the divorce, Helen refused, knowing that Carol would use that letter against her to show her in a bad light.

  When Queen Marie heard of Carol’s return, surprisingly enough, she was relieved. She had been anxious at the direction the country was heading as Maniu and the regents proved rudderless leaders. Perhaps with Carol at the helm, an overoptimistic Marie thought, things might finally improve. She viewed Carol’s comeback as the return of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, Carol was not intent on becoming a repentant son.

  When Queen Marie arrived in Romania from abroad, she sensed things would not go well. She became acutely aware of Helen’s difficulties and was filled with pity, especially when Carol refused his mother’s advice to take Helen back. Marie saw just how poisonous the atmosphere was when the son claimed to his mother: “She insisted on divorce.…And when it was pronounced, she telegraphed to her mother ‘at last liberated from this nightmare!’ So why should I chain myself to a woman who loathes me and whom I detest? It would be immoral!”3 The descent proceeded with a vengeance. Queen Marie had erred in thinking her son might finally be showing some sense; on the contrary, Carol was intent on unleashing a chain of events that would leave Marie and Helen gasping. Having easily succeeded in his coup, and intoxicated at holding power at last, Carol II went out of his way to make life for his mother and his ex-wife unbearable. Marie’s household was radically reduced and infiltrated by the king’s spies. Her monetary situation worsened as Carol ignored his father’s will and confiscated the monies due to her. Marie kept quiet, not wishing to antagonize her son. Whereas before she would likely have fought, she suddenly found herself outmaneuvered by her unfeeling son. As if these injustices were not enough, Carol also exiled his nemesis, Prince Stirbey from Romania.

  When it came to Helen, Carol seemed to take perverse pleasure in seeing to it that she suffered the most. His mother still commanded a degree of respect in Romania, but his ex-wife was a far easier target. Carol’s persecution of Helen greatly troubled Queen Sophie, who confessed, “My poor daughter is going through awful times. I am so worried about her.”4

  Carol stripped Helen of her cherished role as Honorary Colonel of the Ninth Hussars, had her house surrounded by police, placed her under surveillance, and soon reduced her visitors to members of the royal family. Helen was in effect under house arrest. Even young Michael became a pawn in his father’s quest to make Helen’s life a misery. Careful to ensure that he was not seen as unreasonable by removing Michael completely from his mother, Carol nevertheless kept the boy out of his mother’s care for most of the day, only sending him back in the evenings. It amounted to an intolerable situation, deeply saddening to Queen Marie. Not long after her son’s return, she told the long-suffering Sitta: “You and Carol should never have met. Your characters are poles apart. I am sorry for you. Most people who meet with disaster in their lives are given a second chance, but you have not been free to build up your life again.”5

  Any chance that Helen and Carol could lead a life together vanished completely when Magda Lupescu arrived in Romania. Firmly ensconced at Sinaia, Lupescu’s presence by Carol’s side was another flagrant violation of his promise to Maniu. Maniu resigned the premiership, unable to serve such an unscrupulous master.

  By December 1930, it became apparent that there would be no reconciliation between King Carol and Helen. What was more, according to the British Legation at Bucharest, “every effort is apparently being made to cast the blame for this on Her Royal Highness.” Though “there was always a hope that His Majesty and Princess Helen—who, although not exactly a popular figure, commands the esteem of all circles—would be reconciled and that a regulation coronation would be possible,” the fact that this had not happened meant that the atmosphere in Romania “has been made worse by the failure of the King to regularise his relations with his former wife.” The situation was such that people “are even ready to believe that the King wishes to install his mistress as Queen of Rouma-nia. Others talk, equally wildly of an approaching Peasant Revolution.”

  Carol’s unwarranted persecution of Princess Helen horrified his mother. Marie instinctively sided with Sitta, choosing not to ostracize her. And Princess Ileana also refused to do Carol’s bidding. Ileana was Carol’s favorite sibling and it seemed a personal affront to him that she did not support him (unlike the gullible and pliant Nicky and Elisabetta). Carol therefore determined to bring Ileana down, intent on breaking Queen Marie’s heart.

  Like Queen Marie, Queen Victoria Eugenie took delight in her close relationship with her daughters. Both of Queen Ena’s girls had grown to love outdoor life like their mother, and became her golf and tennis companions through the years. In appearance, Beatriz and Maria Cristina shared similarities with their older brothers, the Prince of the Asturias and Infante Jaime. Whereas Jaime and Beatriz, with their dark hair and dark eyes, resembled their father in coloring, Alfonsito and Maria Cristina inherited their mother’s fair hair. The infantas were bound to be fine catches for Europe’s most eligible bachelors. The question was whether Ena’s daughters were hemophilia carriers like their mother.

  The Infanta Beatriz, more gregarious than her studious sister, was close to her eldest brother, the sickly Spanish heir. While in England, she chose to learn about the latest farming methods in order to pass them on to Alfonsito. Like the Tsarevitch Alexei before him, the Prince of the Asturias suffered from bouts of painful hemophiliac attacks that kept him incapacitated for long periods. Unlike his Russian cousin, however, Alfonsito grew into manhood. In the 1920s, he was given a separate establishment of his own, La Quinta, on the grounds of a royal estate in the outskirts of Madrid, where the prince, surrounded by nursing staff, devoted himself to his primary interest, poultry farming. Alfonsito’s separate life from his family mirrored to some extent that of another sickly cousin, the young Prince John, son of King George V and Queen Mary, who was sent to live away from his family on the Sandringham estate, where he died as a teenager. So for Ena, there had b
een precedent in her family for this practice of sending off chronically ill children to live outside the family. Nevertheless, once Alfonsito was gone, it would appear that visits from his parents were few. According to Ena’s biographer, this might have been largely due to the king’s attitude. For “in this, as in many other respects, she was too basically frightened of her husband to take any sturdily independent line of her own.”7

  Ena’s other sons continued to thrive, though neither Jaime nor Gonzalo was cured of their physical ailments. Jaime, nevertheless, became adept at lipread-ing. As for Juan, Ena and Alfonso’s only healthy son, he grew into an obedient child and went on to make a career in the navy. Gonzalo, in Ena’s view, was the only one of her children who did not inherit anything from either herself or Alfonso—except, of course, for the fatal hemophilia gene.

  One of the most difficult episodes Queen Ena had to deal with was the appearance in the 1920s of a certain Carmen Ruiz Moragas. Of all his mistresses, Moragas, an actress, was Alfonso’s favorite. She bore him two children, Maria Teresa (b. 1925) and Leandro (b. 1929). Hurt as she was by this betrayal, Ena nevertheless kept her head high. Her highly attuned sense of self-control and training would not have permitted her to do otherwise. Besides, she was finally reaping the rewards of living in Spain for years. Fluent in the language and confident in her role as consort, Ena came to enjoy life as much as was possible. Her circle of friends, such as the Duke and Duchess of Lecera, made up a loyal band of comrades who could stand on their own against Ena’s enemies. Life became even less constricting with the removal of the queen’s most formidable and despised enemy, the dreaded Marquis of Viana.

  Ena saw Viana as an evil genius, urging the gullible Alfonso to pursue his dark side, especially when it came to women. From the beginning, Viana in turn saw Ena as an enemy, and acted to destroy her relationship with the king. He came close to succeeding, but Ena proved stronger in the end. Finally at her wit’s end after over two decades of Viana’s constant scheming, the queen confronted him in 1927. Summoned to an audience, Viana dutifully arrived at the palace to listen to a powerful indictment from Victoria Eugenie of his transgressions against her. He tried to charm his way out of the accusations, but was cut dead when Ena ended the interview by saying: “It is not in my power to punish you as you deserve. Only God can do that. Your punishment will have to wait for the next world.”8 Viana was so shocked that he literally dropped dead of a heart attack that same evening.

  Viana’s death may have been a personal loss to Alfonso but it was certainly nowhere near as painful to accept as the death of his mother. In February 1929, Queen Maria Cristina suffered a fatal heart attack in the Royal Palace. For nearly twenty-three years, Ena had hardly known a day without the presence of her formidable mother-in-law. Theirs had been a formally polite but never very close relationship. They had endured rocky patches, especially during World War I. But by the time of Maria Cristina’s death, Ena—already in her forties and comfortable in her role as Queen Consort of Spain—had come to appreciate the woman who had been so dominant in Alfonso XIII’s life. For Alfonso, the death of his mother was a profound loss. She had always counseled him politically; now Alfonso had one less trusted adviser. Only Ena saw Alfonso’s terrible depression when he lost his mother and the great effort it took to overcome it. Fortunately for Maria Cristina, she did not live to see the monarchy’s destruction, for less than a year after her death, Alfonso forced the resignation of the one-time saviour of Spain, General Primo de Rivera, signaling the final stages of the monarchy.

  The failure of the Military Directory and, later, the Civil Directory (as the generals’ governments were called) spelled trouble for Alfonso XIII. A wide array of Spaniards, from Catalan separatists to businessmen to intellectuals, were deeply disappointed by the outcome of the dictatorship. By the end of the decade, the falling peseta, along with a disgruntled military, meant that Primo de Rivera had to go. With the dictator out of the picture, however, the increasingly agitated Spaniards looked at King Alfonso as the cause of their problems. Moreover, in a strange twist of events, when Primo de Rivera died two months after his downfall, the king was conspicuously absent from the funeral in a move designed to disassociate the monarchy from the dictatorship. Ironically, people took to viewing the dictatorship with some nostalgia and Alfonso’s absence from the funeral as a sign of cowardice and betrayal.

  Not content with finding easy ways to harass Princess Ileana, as when Carol II curtailed her public duties and patronages, Queen Marie’s eldest son sought to get the popular princess out of Romania. Since formal banishment was not so easy, Carol cleverly placed Ileana in the path of Archduke Anton of Habsburg-Lothringen. On her visit to Germany, the couple met again, fell in love, and became engaged. Queen Marie liked Anton well enough and did not even mind the issue of his having to work for a living. What concerned Marie was that the couple might later find they had few interests in common: whereas Anton’s tended toward flying and engineering, Ileana’s were firmly grounded in the arts and history. Nevertheless, Marie gave her blessing, as did Carol, though with the stipulation that the couple could not live in Romania. This was a blow to Marie, who would have much preferred to have them in the country full time.

  To Carol’s satisfaction, Ileana married Archduke Anton at Sinaia in July 1931. Ten days earlier, Carol II had scored another victory when he finally succeeded in hounding Helen out of the country. As part of the agreement, Prince Michael was allowed to go to his mother twice a year, while Princess Helen was allowed into Romania once a year for her son’s birthday. Ileana’s wedding and Sitta’s departure helped to bring Queen Marie to the verge of a nervous breakdown. What she could not fathom at that point was that with Helen and Ileana gone, Carol II would be left with more opportunities to focus his campaign of intimidation toward his mother.

  Unlike King Carol, Crown Prince Olav—Queen Maud of Norway’s son— remained dutiful, the kind of child and heir Queen Marie had always hoped Carol could become. Much of the contrast can be traced to the young men’s childhoods. Whereas Carol was removed from his mother by the tyrannical King Carol I and Queen Elisabeth, and grew to resent Marie, Olav was nurtured in a loving environment by both parents. As an only child, Olav predictably became close to his parents. Unlike Carol, who could not abide Marie’s decisiveness and popularity, Olav was not only impressed by his mother’s strength of character but inspired by her. Olav gave Maud credit for inspiring him to follow in her footsteps and become a keen sportsman. Sailing and ski-jumping were his specialties; in time, he became a champion ski jumper, much to Maud’s delight. And when Olav fell in love, he did so with his cousin, Princess Martha of Sweden. From a dynastic point of view, it was an eminently suitable match, as Martha was a royal princess of a reigning house. The fact that Martha was Swedish made the marriage popular, as it seemed to heal the rift between Norway and Sweden that could still be felt over twenty years after the union’s separation.

  The wedding took place in March 1929 in Oslo (Christiania had become Oslo in 1925). Queen Maud was delighted, writing that. “The young couple are radiantly happy, Martha is really a very charming girl, so glad and considerate, pretty and graceful, and she absolute worships Olav—For Charles and me it was naturally a little sad to lose our Olav, he who has always lived with us during these 25 years, and who has been a totally wonderful son and never given us one day of grief. He deserves all the happiness he can get, and I really believe that Martha truly is the right one for him and that she will become a great asset to him.”9 Having married off her son to a highly suitable woman, Maud anticipated the arrival of grandchildren and a new generation of royals for Norway.

  By the late 1920s, the only reigning consort who came close to experiencing the same kind of intense anxieties over dynastic troubles as Marie of Romania was Victoria Eugenie of Spain. The departure of Primo de Rivera placed more pressure on Alfonso XIII to head off elements of dissent surrounding the monarchy. The intelligentsia and the military were especiall
y unhappy, and calls for a republic grew louder. Not surprisingly, Alfonso’s health gave way; in 1930 he suffered a heart attack during a polo game in Madrid. Increasingly out of touch with the pulse of Spain, Alfonso placed his faith in another general, Dámaso Berenguer. Berenguer, though, was ill suited to the multitude of challenges he faced. The Pact of San Sebastian, formed in August 1930 between Catalans, Socialists, and Republicans, galvanized the monarchy’s enemies. Berenguer refused to hold elections. Toward the end of 1930, rumors were rampant throughout Europe that a revolution was in the making in Spain, ready to dethrone Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenie.

  As 1930 gave way to 1931, the government continued to blunder, gaining enemies as it lurched from one unpopular move to another, dragging Alfonso’s reputation in its wake. The national government consisted of second-rate politicians who could not lift Spain out of its problems. In the meantime, José Sánchez Guerra, a former prime minister, approached Ena with a plan to save the monarchy. He proposed that she become regent for one of her sons, most likely the healthy Infante Juan, after King Alfonso relinquished his position. The outcome, had Ena accepted such a proposal, certainly makes for intriguing thought. Nevertheless, the queen declined, unable to bring herself to go against Alfonso XIII. As Ena’s biographer has put it, she was “as loyal to Alfonso—to the end—as he was disloyal to her.”10