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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Queen Marie had great hopes for her special grandson, who had been king once and was destined to become so again. When it came to another generation of monarchs, Marie had hopes, too, for England’s Edward VIII, who succeeded his father, King George V, when the latter died in 1936. The death of George V in January 1936 was a blow to his cousin and close friend, Queen Marie of Romania, and to his sister, Queen Maud of Norway. Only some six weeks before, George’s sister, Toria, had died. For both siblings, long accustomed to chatting to Toria on the telephone, the silence was numbing.

  Queen Maud attended George’s funeral, but Queen Marie did not. It was a great sacrifice on Marie’s part, but she felt she should let Carol represent Romania. In one sense, George V’s death marked the end of an era. This year saw the Italo-Abyssinian crisis—which caused much hand-wringing in Europe and marked the death knell of the League of Nations—reach its climax with Mussolini victorious in his disdain of the League and in his conquest of Ethiopia. Adolf Hitler’s Germany became more ominous as the country’s soldiers marched into the Rhineland in the spring in a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Spain, meanwhile, continued to descend into civil war. These events boded ill for the future, leaving little doubt that war was once again on the horizon. Queen Marie was certainly anxious, describing the situation just after Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland in no uncertain terms: “The world at present is very explosive. Perhaps this acute crisis will bring about a better atmosphere when nations will look the horrible danger more squarely in the face.”29

  Not long after George V’s death, Marie was dealt another blow when her favorite sister, Ducky, died, leaving a huge blank in her life. Like Sophie and Mossy, Marie and Ducky had enjoyed an enviable bond. “The grief of seeing my most beloved sister die,” wrote a disconsolate Marie, “is one of those griefs which seem to cut into the very roots of life.”30

  When, in December 1936, the once promising and glamorous King Edward VIII abdicated the throne because of his romance with the twice divorced Wal-lis Simpson, there was little sympathy from the older generation such as his aunt, Queen Maud of Norway, and his cousin, Queen Marie of Romania, whose own conceptions of duty were far stronger than those of the ex-king. Maud could not bring herself to mention Mrs. Simpson by name in a letter to Queen Mary soon after the abdication: “Where is She? Do wish something could happen and prevent them from marrying. How sad it all is, that he has ruined his life, fear later he will be sorry what he has done and given up.”31

  Queen Marie had even harsher words for the former Edward VIII, whom the family affectionately called David. “Personally, I am too royal not to look upon David as a deserter. There is too much poetry in my heart and soul to be touched by this love story. She is an uninteresting heroine.” Then, as if seeing the parallels between Carol and Lupescu and Edward and Mrs. Simpson, Marie lamented: “The whole world was open to him…it seemed so unnecessary to stand the whole British Empire on its head, to compromise the throne, and shake the foundations of monarchy.” Of England’s golden-haired king and great hope, Marie bemoaned: “I could weep over him.”32

  Among her own children, Marie could feel at ease only with her two youngest, Mignon, the widowed Queen of Yugoslavia, and Ileana, a Habsburg archduchess. It was ironic that the two children who had a grasp of duty and honor were the ones who had little to do with ruling Romania—Mignon out of circumstance as mother of King Peter and Ileana as a result of Carol II’s direct orders to stay away. Marie’s three eldest children, Carol, Elisabetta, and Nicky, on the other hand, were in Romania (Nicky returned in 1935) and continued to disappoint their mother. Nicky was an embittered man, still attached to his grasping wife. Elisabetta, who embarked on an affair with a Greek businessman, divorced the affable King George of Greece. Moreover, Elisabetta did not hesitate to ally herself with Carol in order to keep in her brother’s good books. It was an exercise in self-preservation and self-aggrandizement that left her mother shaking her head in disbelief.

  Queen Marie’s relations with her son, King Carol II, never improved. She wrote that “He denies his mother, alas and wishes her to be forgotten, hoping thus to become himself a brighter light by treading hers underfoot.”33 The whole distasteful way in which Carol II had treated his mother through the years was the more painful because Marie always hoped he would redeem himself and was prepared to pardon him. Princess Ileana herself admitted that where Marie was concerned, “Mama had the most forgiving heart in the world”34

  The great tragedy in Marie’s life was not only that Carol had treated her so badly but that the two were never completely reconciled. And the ever-perceptive queen knew exactly why: “there is a sort of unreasoned jealousy against my past, against what I have been to the country…I am a sort of living reproach. I cannot admire all he does; I know his métier, I alone in the country know it, and he knows that I know it and this, for some reason, infuriates him.”35 In 1936 she admitted for the first time: “I am obliged to make a mighty effort to preserve my optimism…I am continually hit in the back and subjected to ugly and unnecessary humiliations by those surrounding the master…I will not bow down to what I consider wrong and harmful.…It has become the reign of evil…I never thought it would come to this!”3

  As she faced her twilight years, Queen Marie, once so beautiful, did not resent aging or losing some of her characteristic vitality and brilliance. Instead, a mature Marie reflected: “It is not in vain that, on decline, so much is taken from us. It is so as to prepare us for the end. To sow the seed of longing for another life in our tired souls.”37

  In March 1937, she collapsed from internal bleeding. Carol II, in the meantime, callously threw his brother, Nicky, out of Romania along with Joana. Marie was greatly hurt by the bitter feuding between her two sons and feared that she had lost Nicky forever. Marie’s daughters, along with her sister, Beatrice, urged the king to get better help than the one Romanian doctor assigned. Carol, as it turned out, was not particularly eager to move quickly, but he acquiesced after much insistence.

  The specialists who examined Queen Marie announced that her liver was the culprit and that nearby blood vessels were affected, resulting in severe bleeding, though one of the doctors disagreed with this diagnosis. Dr. Aldo Castellani, a specialist in tropical medicine, who was physician to a number of senior European royals, met with King Carol, along with the other specialists at Sinaia. Castellani recalled Marie’s Romanian doctor insisting that “none of us will ever think the disease is cancer.” “Unfortunately,” wrote Castellani years later, “it was the correct diagnosis—the Queen was suffering from cancer of the pancreas.” Dr. Castellani did not budge from his conclusion, writing in his memoirs, “I never had any doubts that it was cancer. The official diagnosis given was cirrhosis of the liver.” Castellani recalled how “Queen Marie, who had a keen sense of humour,” when she heard the official diagnosis, “smiled and said: ‘Then there must be a non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, because I have never in my life tasted alcohol.’ “38

  A diet of cold foods, injections, and complete bed rest was ordered for the suffering queen. Marie, who had been healthy all her life, felt helpless. Nevertheless, she did not complain, nor was she bad-tempered throughout her debilitating illness. For weeks on end, she lay in her floridly decorated golden bedroom at Cotroceni, surrounded by her icons and the large crucifix, so weak she could hardly take up a pen. In February 1938, she was sent to a sanatorium in Merano, Italy, to recuperate. She stayed there for two months.

  In Merano, Queen Marie was visited by Nicky and Joana. Joana left the meeting impressed by her mother-in-law, who forgave Joana for her transgressions. Then came a visit from Helen. She had bought a lovely old villa outside of Florence, which her mother, Queen Sophie, had admired. Renamed the Villa Sparta, Helen made a life for herself there amidst the cypress-covered hills of Tuscany. Seven years had passed since Helen and Marie last met. Whereas Marie had forgiven Joana for her harsh treatment, it was now Marie’s turn to ask Helen to acc
ept her apologies for sometimes having not sided more with Helen in her painful battles with Carol. Marie was also touched by a visit from her old friend Waldorf Astor, who flew to her side.

  Marie’s final months were further bleakened by the deteriorating situation in Romania. More trouble broke out for Carol from the Iron Guard, and the king’s Fascist prime minister, Octavian Goga, who was persecuting the Jews. Carol also trampled on the constitution, banned political parties, threw out the parliamentary system of government, and made himself dictator.

  In March 1938, Hitler marched into Austria. Queen Marie, in Merano still, became anxious for Ileana and her family. Ileana had just returned home to her castle in Austria, and found Nazi storm troopers swarming. Marie told Ray Baker Harris that “the anschluss of Austria with Germany…meant the final annihilation of her adopted country.” When Ileana telephoned to tell Marie she was all right, she had to conduct the conversation with her mother in German, instead of the customary English. “Hitler’s deadly efficiency,” as Marie put it, infuriated her. “I, fervent lover of freedom, felt my blood boiling, but was obliged to keep my emotions to myself, knowing that at the other side of the wire she was doing the same.”39

  Marie’s last letter to Harris was posted from the Wiesser-Hirsch Sanatorium in Dresden, where she was transferred upon orders of a new German specialist, Dr. Störmer. Marie’s weakness is evident as she admits, “I am gradually crawling up hill again after a very bad two months of complete exhaustion…I have undergone strenuous treatments which left me no strength to hold a pen.” Ileana followed this up with a brief message: “I think she has suffered overmuch sorrow. She is of a patience and endurance which in anyone so active as her is truly wonderful to behold. Her thoughts are always for others. For instance, when an injection into her veins (they are almost inaccessible) does not succeed, she is sorry for the doctor and not for her pain!”40

  Dr. Störmer and another able colleague, Professor Wanerkroze, were deeply suspicious. Störmer told Princess Ileana: “But it’s not natural for a woman who has lived the kind of life the Queen has lived—no alcohol, fixed hours, daily riding, nutritious foods—to have cirrhosis.” He thought the queen’s dilated blood vessels stemmed “only from complications secondary to alcoholic poisoning of longstanding duration.” Warnerkroze added: “Even if the illness itself had a natural beginning, which we don’t know, she has been neglected and mistreated all along in a way that’s absolutely criminal.…She’s had this disease for years, and she’s been given the wrong treatment from the beginning. I can only say that the doctor who did that had to have done it purposely. He can’t have been that stupid.”41

  Toward the end of her life, Marie wrote to Prince Barbo Stirbey, still exiled in Switzerland. Barbo replied: “I am inconsolable at being so far, incapable of being any help whatsoever to you, living in the memory of the past with no hope for the future.…Remember my longing, my nostalgia, the prayers which I constantly offer up for your health and never doubt the boundlessness of my devotion. Ilymmily [I love you my Marie, I love you?]”42

  Just before she left on her last journey, to die in Romania, Marie wrote to Stirbey of “all my longing, my sadness, all the dear memories which flood back into my heart. The woods with the little yellow crocuses, the smell of the oaks when we rode through those same woods in early summer—and oh! so many, many things which are gone.…God bless you and keep you safe….”43

  King Carol denied Queen Marie a more comfortable journey by airplane, as her doctors recommended; instead, she had to make her way to Sinaia by train. The lurching and jostling induced more bleeding, and since it was summer, the heat became intense. As the train carrying their queen made its way to its destination, Romanians watched in disbelief, murmuring the unbelievable fact, “Regina is dying.”44

  Marie was taken to her home, the Pelishor, at Sinaia. Present by her bedside were Carol, Elisabetta, and Michael. Marie wanted to say good-bye to Zwiedi-neck, but Carol, true to form, refused his mother’s request. Even more cruel was Carol’s deliberate plan to bar his mother from saying good-bye to Nicky and Ileana. The insensitive son telephoned his siblings only when he knew they would arrive too late. Marie had held out as long as she could and kept her eyes fixed on the door, but to no avail.

  Aware that she was a step away from eternal life, a joy she was prepared to embrace fully, the queen asked for the Lord’s Prayer to be said in English. As no one knew it in English, Marie, the lifelong Protestant, was given the last rites of the Orthodox Church. Then, with thoughts for Romania still uppermost in her mind, Marie implored Carol, in a whisper, to be a strong and just monarch. At that, she lapsed into a coma and died peacefully in the late afternoon of 18 July 1938, aged sixty-two.

  Queen Marie’s youngest daughter and close confidante, Princess Ileana, wrote to Ray Baker Harris not long after her mother passed away: “she is not dead of that I am sure, she has only found a new freedom & can at last unfold her wings.”45

  As if to make up for all his wrongdoings, Carol gave his mother a fitting funeral. Marie wanted mauve—her favorite color, just as it had been for Tsarina Alexandra—to be her mourning color instead of black. Romanians responded by draping Bucharest in shades of mauve and purple, along with the Romanian tricolor. The queen’s body was placed on a gun carriage. As bells tolled mournfully, a quarter of a million people watched the slow-moving procession wind its way to the train station. King Carol allowed Ileana and Nicolas to attend their mother’s funeral, but denied permission to Prince Stirbey

  Queen Marie’s coffin was taken from the capital by train to Curtea de Arges. So many people lined the route to kneel and throw flowers that the train arrived four hours late. Marie’s body was buried beside her husband, King Ferdinand. Her heart, as she had instructed, was buried at the Stella Maris chapel she had built at Balcic.

  After Queen Marie’s death, a Romanian, Constantin Argetoianu, who was a “cynic…far from kind in his appreciation of the queen,” nevertheless acknowledged her worth and wrote a moving tribute of her that would have made the queen proud:

  Whatever Queen Marie’s errors before and after the war, the war remains her page, the page of which she may boast, the page that will seat her in history’s place of honor.…We find her in the trenches among the combatants, in forward positions; we find her in the hospitals and all the medical units among the wounded, among the sick; we find her present wherever people met to try to do some good. She knew no fear of bullets and bombs, just as she knew no fear or disgust at disease, or impatience with the often useless efforts provoked by her desire for something better. Queen Marie fulfilled her duty on all the multiple fronts of her activity, but above all in encouraging and raising the morale of those who lived around her and who had to decide, in the most tragic moments, the fate of the country and the people.46

  In a final good-bye to the subjects among whom she had lived for nearly half a century, Queen Marie had composed an emotional letter entitled “To My People,” touching on the long and often difficult journey she had embarked upon to be a part of Romania:

  I was only 17 years old, when I came to you; I was young and ignorant, but very proud of my country of origin, and today still, I am proud of being born English; but when I embraced a new nationality, I had to try hard at becoming a good Romanian.

  At the beginning it was not easy. I was a stranger, in a strange country, alone amongst strangers…that a foreign princess has to travel to become one with the new country where she was called.

  I became yours through joy and sorrow…I bless you, my dear Romania, land of my joys and of my sorrows, beautiful country which lived in my heart…. Beautiful country which I saw unified and that I shared the lot for thirty years, that I also dreamed the ancestral dream, that it gave me.…Be always…grand and full of integrity….

  And now, I bid you farewell forever…remember, my people, that I loved you and that I bless you with my last breath.

  Marie47

  Of that special group of
five women who were the reigning granddaughters of Queen Victoria, Queen Marie of Romania’s death in July 1938 left only Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain and Queen Maud of Norway.

  At sixty years of age, there were few indications that Maud was near the end of her life. She continued to remain active despite a lifetime of health problems, never losing her love for the outdoors, still as enthusiastic about sports as she had been as a girl. When Maud went skiing with Haakon in Nordmarka, she could cut a good form. Once, when she skied down a steep slope, a couple, who did not recognize the king, remarked, “look at that girl go.” “Yes,” answered Haakon, “when the girl is sixty it’s pretty well done.” “Is she really sixty? Do you know her?” “Yes,” replied the king, “I know her pretty well, she’s my wife!”48

  Maud’s obsession with England had not abated through the years. At Christmas 1932, the queen lamented to her sister-in-law, May, her homesickness for England and her longing to be at Appleton:

  The “flu” caught me badly and I got acute bronchitis which I have had only once before years ago, and I felt very bad and an awful cough and aches in all my limbs.…It was very sad about poor Sophie, and dreadful for the three children, without any home or money—Also poor Mossy wrote she was heartbroken, adored Sophie—What a lot of troubles and worries there are, and the new year has not begun well.49

  She continued to be blessed with an uncomplicated family life. Olav found marital contentment with Martha, and Queen Maud became a doting grandmother to the couple’s three children, including their only son, the future King Harald.

  Where possible, she still participated fully in the great family and dynastic dramas that absorbed the British royal family during the 1930s. She was present at the impressive celebrations for the Silver Jubilee of her brother, George V, in 1935. Standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Maud witnessed the mass of humanity cheering her brother. Also on the balcony that day and at St. Paul’s were two little princesses in pink— Elizabeth and Margaret—who were soon to become the center of the British Empire’s attention when their parents became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the end of 1936.