Broken Engagement of Frederik IX of Denmark and Olga of Greece


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NotAPretender

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In 1922, then-Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark was engaged to Princess Olga of Greece, daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece. The engagement was broken, and in 1923, Olga married Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.

Frederick, on the other hand, did not marry until 1935, when he married Princess Ingrid of Sweden.

What was the reason given for the breaking of the engagement, and why did Frederick wait 12 years to marry?

Thanks!
 
I've read that Olga thought that Frederik was a bit too much of a rough sailor type for her and decided she didn't want to marry him. I have no idea why he waited another 12 years, though.
 
The rough sailor type meaning that the the crown prince was too fond of alcohol, that is what I read in a book (I believe a book about Olga's sister Marina; though I will have to check it).

Anyway, at least we have this to remember it by: click here.
 
Wow I didn't know these two had been engaged. How interesting.
 
Wonder if theyd have made a good couple?
 
Well, nobody knows. It seem they themselves didn't think so. They broke up!
 
Interesting...I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I can't say I am saddend to hear that. Queen Ingrid was a fantastic lady and most importantly queen of Denmark. She was very much beloved and respected there. :flowers:
 
Woh, I didn't know this. That means, if I am not mistaken that Frederik 's daughter, Anne Marie, some years after, married the nephew of his former fiancee....

Was Olga at the wedding of Anne Marie???

It sounds really intriguing...
 
I think:

This was not unusual at this era. At that time, the members of European monarchies were not knew between they, because the means of transportation were not as evolved as after , especially the plane.
In this era were very famous "Engagement
"(sponsalitia) between high social classes, the bourgeoisie, the aristocrecia and the Monarchy.
The monarchs , when their children were small, signed a contract (Engagement)with other monarchy ,it was a contract by which committed that their children will marry in future.
But when the princes knew,the prince did not like the princess or upside down . And they didn´t accepted the contract.
These contracts have disappeared with the development of means of transportation, because the Princes and princesses started to go to weddings, christenings ... They were knew between them.

In Spain, the newspaper ABC, in early SXX did a survey of their readers where they had to vote who was the suitable candidate for the Prince Alfonso XIII, in the newspaper carried pictures of Princesses chosen by the monarchists. On the list was Victoria Eugenia of Battenbeg, she was chosen by the readers and she was the Queen.

The mother of Alfonso XIII and the monarchists signed the "Engagement"(sponsalitia) with the family of Victoria Eugenia.
 
I've read that Olga thought that Frederik was a bit too much of a rough sailor type for her and decided she didn't want to marry him. I have no idea why he waited another 12 years, though.

This is possibly the best explanation at hand! I don't know whether CP Frederik's alcohol problem had materialised at the time, but what we do know a little about is that he was very much enjoying naval life, including the runs ashore, mess dinners etc.!

There is every reason to believe that this liaison was arranged! I have no idea what princesses were "on the market" at the time, however a Greek
princess was related to the Danish RF and yet - at the time - sufficiently spaced genetically. Fortunately the pair had the good sense of breaking up before they married!
 
For Olga, it was certainly an arranged marriage. She has never seemed very excited about this project to marry Frederik. Her younger sister Marina had told their parents: " but why would you like she marry him because she does not love him ?". When she met Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and that she fell in love, Olga broke immediately.
Frederik, who had fallen in love with the princess, was very saddened this broke and he would not ever hear about marriage for several years until he met Ingrid.​
 
I read somewhere that Prince Frederick was too uncouth for Olga. For example, he used to like unscrew a gold tooth to entertain his guests.

Had this prince calmed down a bit by the time he met Ingrid? Why would Ingrid find acceptable a prince that Olga found unattractive? After all, Ingrid would have been a much better catch for any prince, so if anyone should have been a stickler it should have been Ingrid and not Olga...

Just think. If Ingrid had married the PoW and Marina had still married Kent, the Windsors would have had a quartet of powerful matriarchs in the making. Instead of the abdication debacle and Wallis Simpson.
 
For Olga, it was certainly an arranged marriage. She has never seemed very excited about this project to marry Frederik. Her younger sister Marina had told their parents: " but why would you like she marry him because she does not love him ?". When she met Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and that she fell in love, Olga broke immediately.​



Frederik, who had fallen in love with the princess, was very saddened this broke and he would not ever hear about marriage for several years until he met Ingrid.​

I always thourgt that the reason for Olga to break off the engagement was because that she was not abel to change her belife/faith from being Orthodox and to a Protestant.
 
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Was she Catholic or Orthodox? My guess is Orthodox, but I'm not sure.
 
Olga was orthodox.
 
Wow!

I read somewhere that Prince Frederick was too uncouth for Olga. For example, he used to like unscrew a gold tooth to entertain his guests.
.

That. Is. Hilarious.

Where on earth did you find that out? Wherever it was, please tell me, I would love to have that material. I'm still laughing.
 
I'm sorry, NotAPretender. I'm so old that I've forgotten where I've read these things. My guess is probably Royalty or Majesty magazines.
 
I told my husband about the gold tooth, IowaBelle, and he about fell over laughing.

Royalty. Entertaining in so many ways - many times, not as intended. :)
 
Well, he was a sailor, and they can be a little rough around the edges.
 
Well, he was a sailor, and they can be a little rough around the edges.

One may conclude that Frederick was too "rough" for Olga and Olga too refined and sophisticated for Frederick. It is important to remember that unlike his brothers, prince Nicholas of Greece was an accomplished painter and his daughters inherited finesse and style.
It is also interesting that at least two of the three daughters of Nicholas and Elena of Greece, Marina and Olga, married sophisticated, cosmopolitan and refined men. I guess, this was consistent with their upbringing and their interpretation/perception of the man of their dreams, that is, comparable to the personality of their own father.
 
I know this thread is exactly hot anymore but I do believe there was another aspect to the break-up.

Frederik's younger brother prince Knud was believed to be somewhat dim-witted. Whether or not this was justified I cannot say. But the fact is that he had suffer a certain amount of public rudicule; the chorus of a song from the time went "let's go over it it one more time for Prince Knud".

Now I know this is pure speculation but in latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th Eugenics was a widely recognized science (it's wasn't until later when the Nazis took it too extremes that it was abandoned). It is not impossible that CP Frederik and/or Olga had heard about eugenics (as in genetic hygiene not nazism).
So with a dopey brother the prospect of marrying a woman who is your cousin twice* over may have caused the CP to have doubts about the health of the their children and the future of the monarchy. Or maybe it was Olga who feared for the sanity of her children if they married.
I have to stress that this is pure speculation but I believe that this thought must at some point crossed their minds and it may have been a contributing factor in breaking the engagement.



* they both decend from King Christian IX & Queen Louise and Grand Duke Frederik Franz II of Mecklenburg-Schwerin & Augusta of Reuss Köstritz
 
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Did Frederik have great difficulty accepting the break of the engagement? Who originally broke the engagement: Olga or Frederik?
 
An interesting extract from the book "Rytterkongen", translated by the poster Stig:

There is much more to the story than his drinking. According to “Rytterkongen” - the authorized biography on Christian X written by professor Knud J. V. Jespersen - Frederik’s proposal was somewhat impulsive, and the Crown Prince confided to a friend that he had second thoughts already the next day. A few weeks after the betrothal he went to Athens to meet Olga again and to spend time with her family. Jespersen writes (translated from Danish):

"During their daily interactions, the two young people soon realised that they were not at all suited to each other. What should have been confidential talk between new lovers turned into formal conversation instead, and apart from the occasional kiss on the cheek, there was no physical contact. When the Crown Prince asked hopefully whether Olga was not looking forward to coming to Denmark, she simply replied sullenly and dismissively that she was supposed to. The whole thing gradually developed so sadly that the Crown Prince made it a habit in the evenings, after saying goodnight to his in-laws, to wander over to King Constantine's palace, where he sought - and found - comfort and support from the King's two eldest daughters, Helene, married to the Romanian Crown Prince Carol, and Irene, who was unmarried and a year younger than Princess Olga. The two lively young girls took loving and understanding care of the unhappy young Danish Crown Prince. And with Princess Irene in particular, he seems to have developed such a warm and intimate relationship that it could well resemble mutual infatuation, which of course further complicated his relationship with Princess Olga.

The end of it all was indeed a break-up. Just before the end of the visit, which was supposed to have confirmed the relationship between the two newly engaged, Crown Prince Frederik finally summoned up all his courage and openly told his parents-in-law that he no longer cared for their daughter and that it was all a misunderstanding. The father-in-law was furious and scolded the young man, while the mother-in-law almost dismissed it, thinking that things would be fine again and that they would just have to wait and see."

https://members3.boardhost.com/scandinavia/msg/1681317670.html
 
An interesting extract from the book "Rytterkongen", translated by the poster Stig:

https://members3.boardhost.com/scandinavia/msg/1681317670.html


Robert Prentice says much the same in his biography of Princess Olga, written with her family’s cooperation, who gave him access to family letters and diaries.

Here’s a summary of what he writes:

Frederik proposed to Olga almost immediately after meeting her at Cannes in February 1922. The meeting wasn't accidental. Olga's uncle Prince Christopher had invited Olga, her mother and sisters to stay with him in Cannes while Frederik was "conveniently" there to visit his maternal grandmother, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who was Princess Nicholas's cousin.

Olga accepted his proposal, which was followed by Frederik's visit to Athens in March, when he presented her with an engagement ring. But the visit wasn’t a success, as Olga’s mother reported in a letter to Frederik’s mother Queen Alexandrine: “Rico, instead of trying to know and understand her better, was often a little rough and off-handish with her telling her little things that hurt her feelings…” The sensitive Olga became “silent and seemingly cold till Rico thought she didn’t care for him anymore and they both ended by being cold and indifferent to each other…” Olga subsequently “had it out” with Frederik who on the day of his departure informed Olga’s parents that he no longer wanted to marry her. They told him not to make a rash decision and encouraged him to continue writing to Olga as “through letters one often comes to know each better than by talking.” Frederik asked that nothing be said to Olga about this discussion.

Both sets of parents agreed the couple should meet again, which they did in a private, 45-minute meeting in Paris on September 11. Prentice writes: “Unsurprisingly, given his previous attitude in Athens, Rico had decided that the romance could not be salvaged and when Olga tried to reach out to him, he was crushing in his repost and ‘said he had no more love for me.’ With the decision made, she returned the engagement ring to Frederick and observed philosophically that his love ‘couldn’t have been very strong while it was there.’” On September 24 the Danish court announced that the engagement had been broken off “by mutual arrangement.”

According to Prentice, Olga later implied that she had broken the engagement, but “this may have been to help her deal with the pain of rejection, for even some fifty-five years later, as she browsed through her 1922 diary, Olga could still clearly recall ‘the distress it caused me.’”

Prentice also writes: “There is an final interesting footnote to this story: Olga’s parents apparently ‘accused’ her cousin Irene of ‘spoiling’ her chances of marriage with Rico during his stay in Athens. This was something Irene always ‘flatly denied.’ However, there may have been some truth to this story, as Irene later revealed to Olga ‘par hasard one day, that Rico had written to her a proposal, after our engagement was broken off, the first time she ever mentioned such a thing to me!’”

Source: Robert Prentice, Princess Olga of Yugoslavia: Her Life and Times (Grosvenor House, 2021), pp. 43-46
 
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