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The tragic and heroic life of Princess Alice, mother-in-law of Queen Elisabeth ll

Queen Elizabeth ll and Prince Philip, third-degree cousins

By Maria Ostasevici Published 2 years ago 3 min read
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Who else has seen a nun smoking and playing in the basket? Even if it seems hard to believe, such an eccentric mother once existed in Greece, whom Prince Philip of England called her "mother." The fate of Queen Elizabeth's mother-in-law is both tragic and heroic, as we are talking about a deaf-born princess who survived the two world wars, fought a mental illness and established a monastic order in a Greece that had abolished the monarchy.

Granddaughter of the legendary Queen Victoria, mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was born in 1885 at Windsor Castle, the child was born deaf. Her origins and her kinship with Queen Victoria make her later wives, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, third-degree cousins. Her parents were Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine and Prince Louis of Battenberg.

Despite her hearing impairment, Alice learned to read on her lips and was able to do so in several foreign languages. Eventually, the princess became fluent in German, despite the difficulty with which she learned to speak. This shortcoming did not stop Alice from being charming and attracting the attention of her future husband, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, in 1902, at the coronation of King Edward VII. A year later, Alice and Andrew were getting married so that in a few years they would give birth to five children, four girls and a boy, the last being none other than Prince Philip.

The Greek royal family led a relatively serene existence in the country leading to the Aegean Sea, until 1917, when King Constantine I and the rest of his family were forced to leave Greece. Alice and her family settled for a short time in France, and little Philip was sent to live in England, where he eventually had his roots. Later came the blow that further unbalanced the duke's family: Princess Alice was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly hospitalized in a Swiss sanatorium in 1930. Alice was treated by the famous physician Sigmund Freud, who believed that her illness was caused by so much sexual frustration and she recommended an X-ray treatment of her ovaries to calm her libido. This treatment caused the princess an early menopause.

Alice did not agree with the diagnosis at all and cried for a long time for her mental health, but she had to stay in the sanatorium for two years. After this event, Princess Alice severed ties with her family and was absent from the weddings of all four of her daughters, resuming contact with her children in 1937, following a tragedy. Her daughter, Cecile, was dying in a plane crash with her husband and their children, and Alice was forced to attend the funeral. She and her husband, Prince Andrew, saw each other for the first time in six years on this sad occasion. But their marriage was, in any case, history. Then Alice became estranged from her family again and returned alone to Athens, where she lived in a two-room apartment. After her husband died in 1944, far from her, in France, Alice focused on her humanitarian work and buried herself in religion, establishing an Orthodox order of nuns.

For his financial maintenance, Alice sold many precious objects and jewelry belonging to the royal family. The former princess of Greece attended both her son Philip's 1947 wedding to Queen Elizabeth and her 1953 coronation in monastic attire. Later, there was the long-awaited reconciliation with his son, Prince Philip, whom Alice rarely saw after his departure for England. After the coup in Greece in 1967, Alice was invited by her son to live at Buckingham Palace, where she died in 1969, at the venerable age of 84.

In fact, the Netflix series "Crown" shows that Queen Elisabeth was the one who brought Princess Alice to England to live with them at the palace. True or not, we can't know for sure.

One thing is for sure, Alice has gone through countless hard times that are worth admiring.

Historical
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About the Creator

Maria Ostasevici

Communication and public relations student, Moldova

Instagram profile: maria.ostasevici;

mother of two awesome Dobermans.

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