Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark, Queen Mother of Romania, by Bassano, 22 November, 1934

Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark* (2 May 1896, Athens – 28 November 1982, Lausanne), third child and eldest daughter of the future Constantine I, King of the Hellenes, and of his wife, Princess Sophie of Prussia.  Later Queen Mother of Romania.

In these portraits, Helen has borrowed a tiara that belonged to her mother, Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes.

Helen grew up in a close and happy family, but in the midst of World War I, with outside pressure on neutral Greece, and political plotting from within, King Constantine was forced to abdicate and he and his family went into exile in Switzerland. In their father's place, her brother Alexander was made the puppet king of Greece. After his sudden death in 1920, the Greek people recalled King Constantine to the throne and he and his family returned to Greece.  (Constantine would be forced, once again, to abdicate, only two years later.)

In the meantime, in December 1919, Helen had met a second cousin, Crown Prince Carol of Romania. Carol was just completing a world tour after his forced divorce from his first wife, a commoner. Helen and Carol spent more time together during the engagement celebrations, in Romania, of her older brother George to Carol's sister Elisabeth. And in November of 1920, Carol returned to Zurich where the two became engaged, though Helen's mother opposed the match.

The next month, the Greek royal family returned to Greece, and on 10 March 1921 the couple was married in Athens. After their honeymoon, they went to live in Bucharest. Their first and only child, Michael, was born on 25 October 1921. (Born only seven and a half months after the wedding, and at a full nine pounds, there were rumors that Michael was conceived before his parent's marriage.) At first happy, the marriage soon began to deteriorate, and in 1925 Carol began an affair with Elena Lupescu, a relationship that would last the rest of his life. That same year, he renounced his rights to the throne and left Romania. On 20 July 1927 his father, Ferdinand I, died and five-year-old Michael succeeded as king under a regency of which Helen had no part. A few months later, from exile, Carol asked for a divorce. She refused at first, but after much government pressure, the marriage was dissolved in June of 1928.

Two years later, with a coup d'état, Carol returned to Romania and, with the government in disarray, he was proclaimed king. Helen and her son, Michael, continued to live in her own home in Bucharest. The government and public opinion were strongly desirous of an annulment of the couple's divorce. Carol opposed this - Elena Lupescu had secretly returned to Romania, and they were living together - and because Helen refused to oppose the annulment of the divorce, Carol began a campaign of intimidation and persecution against her; guards were placed around her home, and her friends were harassed. Unable to endure this treatment, she left Romania, visiting London and then going to stay with her mother, the once-again-exiled Queen of the Hellenes, in Florence. With an ongoing argument with Carol about how often and where she could see her son, she returned to Bucharest in 1932, but Carol started a press campaign against her, accusing her of, among other things, emotional instability. Eventually the government granted her - official - permission to reside in Romania six months of the year and to take Michael abroad for one month each year, but unofficially she was expected to remain in exile. She returned to Florence, and for the next ten years, was only able so see Michael for about two months a year.

Carol continued his irrational behavior and his mismanagement of his country, but in 1940 was finally outmaneuvered by his pro-German Prime Minister Antonescu who, by this time, had dictatorial powers. Carol once again went into exile, and eighteen year old Michael was made king, though completely under the domination of Antonescu.  His mother returned to Romania and spent the war years helping with the care of the wounded.  Also, for her involvement in the rescue of Romanian Jews from the Nazi's, Israel later awarded her with the status of Righteous Among the Nations.

In 1944 King Michael was able to wrest control of his country from the pro-German faction, an action that helped bring the Axis powers to a swifter defeat.  At the war's conclusion, Michael was lauded as a hero but, with the rapid Soviet takeover of Romania, he was only able to hold on until 1947, when he was forced - at gunpoint - to abdicate.  (In 1997 his citizenship was restored, and he now lives part of every year in Romania.)

Helen returned to Florence, and the rest of her life was spent there and in Lausanne, where she died at the age of eighty-six.

Princess Helen with her son, Michael, circa 1927.

***

*  The princes and princesses of Greece carry the appellation "of Greece and Denmark", because the first king of the present dynasty was born a prince of Denmark.  The kings and queens have also styled themselves "of the Hellenes", rather than "of Greece"; of the people, rather than of the country.

Sophie, Queen of the Hellenes - and way too much Greek history

This and the following two photographs were taken in 1887, the year she turned seventeen.

Sophie (June 14, 1870, Potsdam – January 13, 1932, Frankfurt), born Sophie Dorothea Ulrike Alice, Princess of Prussia, Queen of the Hellenes as the consort of King Constantine I. The seventh child and third daughter of the future Emperor Friedrich III of Germany and his wife, Viktoria, the former Princess Royal of the United Kingdom. She was thus a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and a younger sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II.

She and her siblings were fairly divided into two groups, with the elder children coming under the close supervision of their paternal grandparents. Sophie and her two nearest sisters, Viktoria and Margarete, were all very close to their grandmother, Queen Victoria, and spent much time in England; Sophie's sympathies would always be more with England than Germany.

Sophie's developing relationship with Crown Prince Constantine of Greece was overshadowed by the long, agonizing illness of her father, who died of throat cancer in 1888. She and "Tino" were married late the following year, and together they had six children, the last born in 1913. They had a happy family life, but the the instability of Greek and international politics before, during, and after World War I, caused them much personal heartache.

Family connections were also a frequent cause for tension.  In 1890, her brother Wilhelm and his wife were outraged when Sophie announced her intention to convert to her husband's Orthodox faith; ignoring the fact that Sophie was obligated as mother of future heirs to the Greek throne to be of her country's religion, her sister-in-law told Sophie that she would be barred from Germany and that she would go to hell if she converted.

These two photographs are from 1900.

In March of 1913, in the midst of the Balkan Wars, King George was assassinated, and Constantine and Sophie became king and queen.  The new queen was practical and energetic - like her mother, the Empress Frederick - and she devoted herself to social welfare organizations, being particularly interested in education, hospitals, and medical training facilities.  With her husband, she was an avid gardener; her special interest was arboriculture, and she was passionate about efforts being made toward the reforestation of Greece.  The successful outcome of the war had greatly bolstered the royal family's popularity with the Greek people, who had high hopes for the new reign.  But then World War I began.

With both sides putting extreme pressure on Greece to take up their cause, and with an antagonistic, strongly anti-monarchist, and pro-Allied prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, Constantine struggled to maintain neutrality, thinking it best for the Greek people. The leaders and, in particular, the press of the Allied countries were openly aggressive in their efforts to get Constantine to their side. Failing that, they set about destroying the régime. Among other things, they spread propaganda that, since Sophie's brother was the Kaiser, the couple was in league with Germany; though Constantine remained convinced that neutrality was the best course, his sympathies were most likely with Germany, but Sophie was decidedly pro-English.

In July 1916, arsonists set fire to the forest surrounding the royal family's country estate at Tatoi, while they were resident. The fire burned for forty-eight hours, destroying the main residence and much of the forest.  And though the king and his family managed to escape - Sophie running for a mile and a half, carrying her youngest child, three year old Katherine - there were many injuries and sixteen people were killed.

Queen Sophie with her youngest child, Princess Katherine, circa 1913.

With the combined machinations of Venizelos and the Anglo-French powers - whose warships bombarded Athens at the end of 1916 - Greece descended into near civil war, and in June of 1917, the king was forced to abdicate and the family left Greece for exile in Switzerland.  The government needed a successor to the king, but considered the eldest son, George, unsuitable, because of his military training in Germany before the war.  Alexander, the couple's twenty-three year old second son, was chosen to be king in his father's place.  Not allowed contact with his family, Alexander endured a reign more as prisoner than king; Venizelos wielded the real power and, only a year after the end of World War I, led Greece into war again.  In the midst of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, Alexander suddenly died of septicemia, the result of a bite from a monkey; his mother had been refused permission to go to him during his illness.  With the continuing war and the death of the young king, the government was in turmoil and Venizelos - temporarily - fell from power.  After a plebiscite - the results overwhelmingly in his favor - Constantine was then recalled to the throne in December of 1920.  Yet, less than two years later, after the devastating loss of the war with Turkey which had been begun in his absence, Constantine, ill and exhausted, was again forced to abdicate.  He died in Palermo four months later.

His first-born son, George, was now made King of the Hellenes.  But only fifteen months later he, too, while declining to abdicate, was forced to leave Greece.  King George would later return to Greece, and his youngest brother, Paul, and Paul's son, Constantine II, would also weather Greece's complicated and turbulent relationship with its royal family.

But Queen Sophie, who never really recovered from the loss of her son and her husband, didn't live to know that.  Of a forgiving nature - she even tried to repair her relationship with her brother, the former Kaiser - she seemed to hold no grudge against the actions of France and England during the war, and was in frequent contact with her extended family.  Having settled in Florence since her widowhood, she became ill in 1931, and went to Frankfurt for an operation.  But terminal cancer was discovered, and she died at the beginning of the new year.

With her granddaughter, Princess Alexandra.  Only child of Sophie's son, Alexander,
Princess Alexandra was born five months after his death, in 1921.