Friday 31 December 2004
Philip's Family Matters - Part I
In the past few columns the Jester has asked readers to let me know
what you would like to read about the Royal families of the world. Several of you have
submitted some intriguing subjects, and over the next few columns I will attempt to cover
them as best research allows. First though I have to admit to a slight historical oops in
last month’s column. Probably nobody else noticed, but just for the record I said
that Queen Anne succeeded King William IV in 1702. Wrong. She succeeded William III, as
sister to his Queen Mary II. King William IV reigned 1830-37 between his brother George IV
and his niece Queen Victoria. Neither monarch left any legitimate
heirs.
One reader asked about Prince Philip’s Greek
roots and his family relations, so I thought I would try to tackle it this month and next.
His family history is so vast and his family tree (actually a forest) so dense that any
attempt to explain the intricacies of all the branches is far beyond the scope of this
column. So is all the historical background against which his story takes place. But a
little bit of family and historical background is necessary to make sense of the
circumstances against which the Greek Royal Family survived. Hold on, gentle reader,
it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
The seven Ionian Islands, which lie off the northwest coast of Greece, have been held by various powers throughout centuries of European warfare
in the attempt to guard their positions in the Mediterranean. In 1814 Britain assumed
ownership and set up headquarters on the island of Corfu, just across
the strait from Albania. By 1829 the
then superpowers, Britain, France and Russia, decided that their control over Greece was no longer strategically necessary in their own war with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Greece’s perennial
enemy). Under their protection the newly independent kingdom of Greece was formed in
1832. Their first king was 17-year-old Otto of Bavaria. Otto endeared himself quickly by
adopting Greek dress and changing his name to the Greek form of Orthon. But the Bavarian
advisers he brought with him, to serve as regency until he turned 21, did not. Despite his
best efforts their actions turned the government against him and in 1843 Otto agreed to a
new constitution, which he writhed under. During the Crimean War, thinking that if he
sided with the surely-victorious Russians against the Turks he could expand Greece’s borders, he declared against his
protectors Britain and France, who
fought for the Turks. Russia lost, he
was blamed and deposed in 1862.
Meanwhile back in Britain Parliament had decided
that occupation of the Ionian Islands
was no longer necessary to their Mediterranean aims. But how to get rid of them? Helping
the Greeks get their country back convinced a grateful Greece, now searching the royal houses of Europe for a new king, to set their sights on Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. But he, being of the royal
family of a protector nation, was ineligible. And he had other plans anyway-to marry Tsar
Alexander II’s daughter Marie. Their next possibility was William, an 18-year-old
naval lieutenant, and second son of King Christian IX of Denmark. His sister Alexandra had just married the Prince of Wales, and Queen Victoria was delighted enough to sweeten the pot
with the ‘gift’ of the Ionian Islands. Greece accepted him. In
an 1863 treaty signed by Great Britain,
France, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Denmark, and a further confirmatory treaty between GB, France and Russia, the
protectorate kingdom, headed by the newly crowned King George I of the Hellenes, was
established in the Athenian Royal Palace at Tatoi.
George’s sister Marie (Dagmar) had married
Tsar Alexander III. In 1867 he went to St. Petersburg to visit her, and there met and fell in love with 16-year-old Olga. The
Grand Duchess was the granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, and they were married in St. Petersburg. Once in Athens though a very homesick Olga, who spoke no Greek, Danish or English, had a
terrible time adjusting to southern climes. However she bore George seven children. The
second youngest, a son they named Andrew, was born in 1882. George insisted that his
children regard themselves as Greek, and demanded they speak only Greek. However they had
English nurses who taught them English. Their parents spoke German to each other. George
was a popular king but politics was always a precarious business in Greece and although he survived more than one
attempt on his life, an assassin’s bullet finally found him on March 18, 1913. His eldest son became King
Constantine I.
Andrew however, was destined for the life of a
soldier, and from age 14 he was tutored, mentored, instructed and browbeaten to where he
could pass the exams for the military academy. He won his commission in 1902. A year later
he married the prettiest princess in Europe, Alice of Battenburg.
Princess Alice’s grandfather, Alexander of
Hesse, the Tsar’s godson, was third son of Grand Duke Louis II of Hesse und bei Rhein. His sister married the
Tsar’s son and Alexander performed with distinction in the Russian army. For his
services the Tsar promised him the hand of his niece. But it was one of her
ladies-in-waiting, one Julie Hauke, whom he wanted to marry. Julie was a Polish commoner,
respectable enough, but not for a military hero. Both his parents and the Tsar forbade it,
but even after five years’ exile in England Alexander was adamant. He and Julie
eloped to Breslau and were married in
1851. The Grand Duke allowed them to live in Hesse and Julie moved into a small town on the River Eder, taking on its name as
her title-Countess of Battenburg.
As this was a morganatic marriage (where a person
of lesser or no titles marries someone of high rank but does not assume their titles),
their five children should not have been eligible for the succession. But the Duke
mellowed after a while and allowed Julie to be called Serene Highness, a step just below
Royal. Her first son Louis was born in 1854, followed by Henry (married Queen Victoria’s daughter Beatrice). Louis, a
product of a proud military Hessian house, and living in a part of Germany that was as far away from the sea as you
could get, wanted to be a sailor. Since Germany had no navy then to speak of it was off to England to join the Royal Navy.
In 1862 the future Grand Duke Louis
IV married Queen Victoria’s third daughter Alice. Their eldest daughter Alix married
Tsar Nicholas II and was assassinated with her family during the Russian Revolution in
1918. Their third child Ernst Ludwig had two sons, Louis and George Donatus (who both
figure prominently later). Their fourth child, Victoria of Hesse, married her first cousin
once removed, Louis of Battenburg, in 1883. This meant that Louis’ first cousin, her
father, was now also his father-in-law. Queen Victoria thought this was a great
arrangement since Louis was a friend of the Prince of Wales, and had acted as ADC to
herself, (then King Edward VII and George V). They had four children: Louis, later Earl
Mountbatten of Burma; Louise (married King Gustav of Sweden); George (second Marquess of
Milford Haven); and their second child, Victoria Alice Elisabeth Julia Marie, born at Windsor
Castle, in 1885, profoundly deaf. (She learned to lip-read in four languages, more or less
successfully). Alice and her siblings were navy brats, travelling from posting to posting
as their father’s career dictated. She grew to become a woman of high principles,
blessed with an iron will, who would need both.
Princess Alice of Battenburg met Prince Andrew of Greece and married him in 1903 in duplicate Russian
Orthodox Church and Protestant Church of the Schloss ceremonies. After a reception
at the family estate in Darmstadt, the
honeymooners headed back to Corfu,
where Andrew was established.
Things did not go well for Andrew’s career
path. In 1909 a league of Greek officers revolted, with the minor goal of preventing the
King’s sons from holding commands. Andrew and his brothers Nicholas, Christopher and
George resigned to keep the peace, and for three years he was unemployed. In 1912, the
Balkan Confederacy, including Greece,
declared war on Turkey-again. Brother Constantine was returned as Commander in Chief and
Andrew became a Major, then Colonel in the cavalry, following their victory. Constantine was now king and he sent Andrew on a
diplomatic mission to London and Paris. By the time he returned his brother had been
deposed and was in exile in Switzerland.
Andrew had hoped to be spared but as the Great Powers, who had been in on deposing the
king (too sympathetic to Germany in France’s and Britain’s view), wanted no one
loyal to him in the army’s ranks, and he and 2000 other officers were dismissed. He
joined his brother in Switzerland,
then went to Rome. A 1920 plebiscite
brought Constantine back to the
throne, and Andrew back as a Major General, because the previous administration had
started war with Turkey-again.
It was six months before Andrew got a command, but
then of troops purposely ill-equipped, poorly officered and virtually untrained. In 1921,
as his youngest child was taking his first look around at the world, Andrew refused an
order to attack, because he had a better idea. HQ refused to take his suggestion and
ordered him to stay put. The Turks attacked. The Greek troups were forced back. Andrew
took three months’ leave and came back as commander of the 5th Army Corps
of Epirus and the Ionian Islands at Smyrna. Their defeat had been engineered from the
inside. The Turks attacked Smyrna and
sacked it. Greece had lost its
2,500-year toehold on Asia Minor and
over one million Greek refugees had to be absorbed.
The treachery of the Greek officers responsible
continued as they hot-footed it to Athens to set up their own government, and executed the officers they decided to
blame for this debacle. They also blamed Constantine, who stepped down in favour of his
brother George II. In 1923 George was ordered to leave the country while the fate of the
monarchy was decided. He settled on the outskirts of Paris in a mansion in St. Cloud.
While all this conflict was going on Alice gave birth to four daughters. Margarita 1905,
Theodora (Dolla) 1906, Cecile (1911) and Sophie (1914). Because he was away so long and so
often there are considerable age gaps between them. So it was seven years before his
youngest child and only son Philip was born on June 20, 1921. A few months later Andrew was on trial for deserting his post in the face
of the enemy and refusing a direct order. He was declared guilty and sentenced to a firing
squad. Alice had been frantically
petitioning the world’s leaders to help her husband. Her brother Louis had gotten an
audience with King George V. That day one Commander Gerald Talbot, a former naval attach�
in Athens, (now doing some spying in Geneva) somehow snatched Andrew from his
captors’ clutches. The day after the trial his family frantically burned all his
important papers. Then with nothing but what they could wear and carry, were all bundled
hurriedly onto a waiting man-of-war and sailed off into permanent exile from their beloved
Greece.
Although King George II was reinstated in 1934, he
left again in 1939 when Italy invaded Greece from Albania, and Britain failed to
protect her.
Andrew and his family became more or less
penniless itinerants, depending on the generosity of family in England. Andrew, brother to two Kings of Greece, and high ranking army officer, had
now sunk to living in a small lodge on his brother’s property on the outskirts of Paris. From this he never really recovered. Still
he made sure that his girls and his little blonde toddler son, now homeless and nameless,
never lacked for love. Considering what was ahead of him, Philip would need all the love
and support he could get. Good thing he had strong roots.
- End of
Part I -
Click here for Part II
Gentle readers, the Jester hopes that, however you
celebrated it, you all had a happy Christmas full of laughter and hopefulness. On the eve
of 2005 I also hope that this new year brings to you all, including Royal Families
everywhere, courage, love, wisdom, prosperity, much luck and a song in your heart every
day of it.
Anon,
- The Court Jester
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