The Life of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. Part I.

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Corfu, Duke of Edinburgh, Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Greece, King George I of Greece, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, Prince Philip, Princess Alice of Battenberg

Born on June 10, 1921 to HRH Prince Andreas of Greece and Denmark and HSH Princess Alice of Battenburg. Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was a member of the House of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and a great-great grandson of Britain’s Queen Victoria and great grandson of Denmark’s King Christian IX of Denmark.

Philip’s father was Prince Andreas of Greece and Denmark the fourth son of George I of Greece and his wife Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia, a member of the Romanov dynasty, she was the daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich of Russia and his wife, Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg.

Philip’s mother was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Ludwig III, Grand Duke of Hesse. Her three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.

Despite his Danish and German ancestry the Duke of Edinburgh was very British and lived the overwhelming majority of his life in the United Kingdon. In 1939 he joined the British Navy and on his 90th birthday Her Majesty the Queen awarded her husband with the rank of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.

Philip was first educated at The Elms, an American school in Paris run by Donald MacJannet, who described Philip as a “know it all smarty person, but always remarkably polite”. In 1928, he was sent to the United Kingdom to attend Cheam School, living with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, at Kensington Palace and his uncle, George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, at Lynden Manor in Bray, Berkshire.

In the next three years, his four sisters married German princes and moved to Germany, his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in an asylum, and his father took up residence in Monte Carlo. Philip had little contact with his mother for the remainder of his childhood.

In 1933, he was sent to Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, which had the “advantage of saving school fees” because it was owned by the family of his brother-in-law, Berthold, Margrave of Baden. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Salem’s Jewish founder, Kurt Hahn, fled persecution and founded Gordonstoun School in Scotland, to which Philip moved after two terms at Salem.

In 1937, his sister Cecilie, her husband Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse, her two young sons, Ludwig and Alexander, her newborn infant, and her mother-in-law, Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, were killed in an air crash at Ostend; Philip, then 16 years old, attended the funeral in Darmstadt. Both Cecilie and her husband were members of the Nazi Party. The following year, his uncle and guardian Lord Milford Haven died of bone marrow cancer.

Are the descendants of the Duke of Edinburgh also Prince/Princess of Greece and Denmark? Part I.

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Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, House of Glucksburg, House of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, King George I of the Hellenes, king George II of the Hellenes, King George VI of the United Kingdom, Prince of Greece and Denmark, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Sophia of the Rhine (Electress Sophia)

George I, King of the Hellenes, (December 24, 1845 – March 18, 1913) was born as Christian Wilhelm Ferdinand Adolf George, the second son and third child of King Christian IX of Denmark and Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel. Until his accession in Greece, he was known as Prince Wilhelm. At age only 17, he was elected King of the Hellenes on March 30, 1863 by the Greek National Assembly under the regnal name of George I.

King George I of the Hellenes

King George I of the Hellenes married Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia (September 3, 1851 – June 18, 1926), the daughter of Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaievich and his wife, Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg, at the chapel of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg on October 27, 1867 when she was barely 16 and he was he was 21. Over the next twenty years, they had eight children.

Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia

All male line descendants of King George are entitled to the be a Prince of Greece and Denmark. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, was born the only son and fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, was a prince of both Greece and Denmark by virtue of his patrilineal descent from George I of Greece and Christian IX of Denmark.

The Duke of Edinburgh is also member of the House of Glücksburg, itself a branch of the House of Oldenburg. The House of Glücksburg (also spelled Glücksborg), shortened from House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, is a Dano-German branch of the House of Oldenburg, members of which have reigned at various times in Denmark, Norway, Greece and several northern German states.

The question I raise is, are the Duke of Edinburgh’s children and other descendants also princes/princesses of Greece and Denmark?

At birth the Duke of Edinburgh was in the line of succession to both thrones of Greece and Denmark; the 1953 Succession Act removed his family branch’s succession rights in Denmark.

In 1947 Philip was granted permission by George VI to marry Princess Elizabeth. Before the official announcement of their engagement in July of that year, Philip renounced his Greek and Danish royal titles, became a naturalised British subject, and adopted his maternal grandparents’ surname Mountbatten.

Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark

However, it wasn’t necessary for Philip to under go the naturalization process due to the fact that he was born a British national as a descendant of the Electress Sophia of Hanover and the subsequent Sophia Naturalization Act of 1705 which granted British nationality in perpetuity to Sophia’s descendants. The act was superseded in 1949 by the passage of the British Nationality Act.

Although born a Prince of Greece and Denmark his upbringing was thoroughly British. On September 22, 1922, Philip’s uncle, King Constantine I of the Hellenes was forced to abdicate and the new military government arrested Prince Andrew, his father, along with others. In December, a revolutionary court banished Prince Andrew from Greece for life. The British naval vessel HMS Calypso evacuated Prince Andrew’s family, with Philip carried to safety in a cot made from a fruit box.

Because Philip left Greece as a baby, he does not speak Greek, and has stated that he thinks of himself as Danish. In 1928, he was sent to the United Kingdom to attend Cheam School, living with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, at Kensington Palace and his uncle, George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, at Lynden Manor in Bray, Berkshire. Philip has always lived in the United Kingdom ever since.

Prince Philip initially started the process of renouncing his Greek and Danish titles in 1941, after he had joined the British Royal Navy. The renunciation of his Greek and Danish titles was done in a private via a letter to King George II, then in exile, in December of that year. The king accepted the renunciation with some reluctance, but only accepted his request due to Philip’s desire to serve in the British Royal Navy. After George II returned there was never any official action taken by the Greek government to remove Philip’s Greek and Danish, but the decision was accepted by the Greek king therefore that action in itself has been considered official by many historians and governmental figures.

However, there are some historians that believed since there isn’t any direct evidence that official documentation was submitted by King George II of the Hellenes to the government to remove Philip’s titles, therefore it is believed that Philip just simply stopped using his titles. Therefore theoretically, do Philip and his descendants still have their Dynastic titles such as Prince/Princesses of Greece and Denmark as well as other dynastic titles, Duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, Dithmarschen, Lauenburg, and Oldenburg? Are they still there, and just in a state of disuse?

Is that true? That is what we’ll examine in part II.

On this day in history: December 4, 1878, birth of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Part I.

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Christian IX of Denmark, Dagmar of Denmark, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Emperors of Russia, Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine

Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich was born in the Anitchkov Palace, St. Petersburg, the youngest son and fifth child of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna, and his wife, Maria Feodorovna (known before her marriage as Princess Dagmar of Denmark). His maternal grandparents were King Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Cassel.

His paternal grandmother Empress Maria Alexandrovna (known before her marriage as Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine) a daughter of Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Princess Wilhelmine of Baden, died before his second birthday.

His paternal grandfather, Emperor Alexander II of Russia, was assassinated on March 1, 1881 and, as a result, Michael’s parents became Emperor and Empress of All the Russias before his third birthday. After the assassination, the new Emperor Alexander III moved his family, including Michael, to the greater safety of Gatchina Palace, which was 29 miles southwest of Saint Petersburg and surrounded by a moat.

Michael was raised in the company of his younger sister, Olga, who nicknamed him “Floppy” because he “flopped” into chairs; his elder siblings and parents called him “Misha”. Conditions in the nursery were modest, even spartan. The children slept on hard camp beds, rose at dawn, washed in cold water and ate a simple porridge for breakfast.

On November 1, 1894, Alexander III died at the untimely age of 49. Michael was almost 16 when his father fell fatally ill; the annual trip to Denmark was cancelled. Michael’s eldest brother, Nicholas, became Emperor and Michael’s childhood was effectively over.

In November 1898, he attained legal adulthood and, just eight months later, became heir presumptive to Nicholas as the middle brother, George, was killed in a motorcycle accident. George’s death and the subsequent change in the line of succession highlighted that Nicholas lacked a son. As the succession was limited to males, his three daughters were ineligible.

When Nicholas’s wife, Alexandra, became pregnant in 1900 she hoped that the child would be male. She manoeuvred to get herself declared regent for her unborn child in the event of Nicholas’s death, but the government disagreed and determined that Michael would succeed regardless of the unborn child’s gender. She was delivered of a fourth daughter the following year.

Michael was perceived as unremarkable, quiet and good-natured. He performed the usual public duties expected of an heir to the throne. In 1901, he represented Russia at the funeral of Queen Victoria and was given the Order of the Bath. The following year he was made a Knight of the Garter in King Edward VII’s coronation honours.

Michael was heir presumptive until August 12, 1904, when the birth of Tsarevich Alexei to Nicholas and Alexandra provided an heir apparent. Michael again became second-in-line to the throne, but was named as co-regent for the boy, along with Alexandra, in the event of Nicholas’s death.

Part II tomorrow.

November 1, 1894: Death of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and the accession of Nicholas II.

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Alexander III of Russia, Dagmar of Denmark, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Livadia, Olga of Greece, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine, Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich

Alexander III (March 10, 1845 – November 1, 1894) was the Emperor of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finlandfrom March 13, 1881 until his death on 1 November 1894. He was highly reactionary and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II. Under the influence of Konstantin P. Pobedonostsev (1827–1907) he opposed any reform that limited his autocratic rule. During Alexander’s reign Russia fought no major wars, and he was therefore styled “The Peacemaker”.

Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich was born on March 10, 1845 at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the second son and third child of Emperor Alexander II and his first wife Princess Marie of Hesse and By Rhine, a daughter of Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Princess Wilhelmine of Baden.

Alexander III, Emperor of Russia

Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich’s older brother was Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich engaged to Princess Dagmar of Denmark. She was the second daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich died on April 24, 1865, at the Villa Bermont in Nice, France from cerebro-spinal meningitis.

In the 1860s Alexander fell madly in love with his mother’s lady-in-waiting, Princess Maria Elimovna Meshcherskaya. Dismayed to learn that Prince Wittgenstein had proposed to her in early 1866, he told his parents that he was prepared to give up his rights of succession in order to marry his beloved “Dusenka”. On 19 May 1866, Alexander II informed his son that Russia had come to an agreement with the parents of Princess Dagmar of Denmark, his fourth cousin.

Dagmar of Denmark

On his deathbed Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich was said to have expressed the wish that his fiancée, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, should marry his successor. This wish was swiftly realized when on November 9, 1866 in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Alexander wed Dagmar, who converted to Orthodox Christianity and took the name Maria Feodorovna. The union proved a happy one to the end; unlike his father’s, there was no adultery in his marriage.

Alexander II, Emperor of Russia

On March 13, 1881 Alexander’s father, Alexander II, was assassinated by members of the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya. As a result, he ascended to the Russian imperial throne in Nennal. He and Maria Feodorovna were officially crowned and anointed at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 27 May 1883. Alexander’s ascension to the throne was followed by an outbreak of anti-Jewish riots.

Dagmar of Denmark

Alexander and Dagmar (Marie) had six children, five of whom survived into adulthood: Nicholas (b. 1868), George (b. 1871), Xenia (b. 1875), Michael (b. 1878) and Olga (b. 1882). Of his five surviving children, he was closest to his youngest two.

In 1894, Alexander III became ill with terminal kidney disease (nephritis). Maria Fyodorovna’s sister-in-law, Queen Olga of Greece, offered her villa of Mon Repos, on the island of Corfu, in the hope that it might improve the Tsar’s condition. By the time that they reached Crimea, they stayed at the Maly Palace in Livadia, as Alexander was too weak to travel any further. Recognizing that the Tsar’s days were numbered, various imperial relatives began to descend on Livadia. Even the famed clergyman John of Kronstadt paid a visit and administered Communion to the Tsar.

Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine

On October 21, 1894, Alexander received Nicholas’s fiancée, Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine who had come from her native Darmstadt to receive the Tsar’s blessing. Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine was the sixth child and fourth daughter among the seven children of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and his first wife, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort.

Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia

Despite being exceedingly weak, Alexander insisted on receiving Alix in full dress uniform, an event that left him exhausted. Soon after, his health began to deteriorate more rapidly. He died in the arms of his wife, and in the presence of his physician, Ernst Viktor von Leyden, at Maly Palace in Livadia on the afternoon of 1 November 1, 1894 at the age of forty-nine, and was succeeded by his eldest son Tsesarevich Nicholas, who took the throne as Nicholas II. After leaving Livadia on November 6 and traveling to St. Petersburg by way of Moscow, his remains were interred on November 18 at the Peter and Paul Fortress.

On this date in History. July 17, 1918. Murder of the Czar and his family.

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Assassination, Czarevich Alexei of Russia, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, Princess Alix of Hesse by Rhine, Russia, Russian Revolution

Today is the 100th Anniversary of the Murder of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his entire family. My apologies for being a day late.

Late on the night of July 16, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five childre, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia and Alexei and four servants, personal physician Eugene Botkin, his wife’s maid Anna Demidova, and the family’s chef, Ivan Kharitonov, and footman, Alexei Trupp, were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, the family and servants were arranged in two rows for a photograph they were told was being taken to quell rumors that they had escaped. Suddenly, a dozen armed men burst into the room and gunned down the imperial family in a hail of gunfire. Those who were still breathing when the smoked cleared were stabbed to death.

Pretty Princesses Part II

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Countess Spencer, Duchess of Beaufort, Duchess of Edinburgh, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Karen Spencer, Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Princess Haya bint Al Hussein of Jordan, Princess Mary of Teck, Princess of Prussia, Princess of the United Kingdom, Princess Olga of Hanover, Princess Victoria Patricia of Connaught, Queen of Greece, Queen Victoria, The Lady Victoria Constance Mary Cambridge

Last week I did a list of ten pretty princesses and this week I would like to continue with 10 more…oops, I did 11. :). In some instances, as with last weeks list, some of these royals may not have been known for their beauty but there is a picture or painting where I do find them beautiful. 8 of these ladies are European Royals, one is a Middle Eastern Royal and the other is a British Countess.

Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Princess of Prussia 

Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Queen of Greece

Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, Duchess of Edinburgh, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

her daughter….Princess Marie of Edinburgh, Queen of Romania

Princess Marie of Edinburgh’s grandmother…Queen Victoria.

Princess Madeleine of Sweden

Princess Olga of Hanover, Princess of the United Kingdom

Last week I featured her sister Margaret,…...Princess Victoria-Patricia of Connaught

Princess Haya bint Al Hussein of Jordan

she deserves two pictures! 😛

Princess Mary of Teck, The Lady Victoria Constance Mary Cambridge, Duchess of Beaufort

Karen Spencer, Countess Spencer