Sisters of the Duke of Edinburgh


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Before Ingrid Frederik IX was engaged to Princess Olga of Greece in 1922 who was a first cousin of the sisters, but the engagement was broken off because Frederik was overly fond of alcohol. Maybe the sisters also knew this and bad reputation followed him so maybe that's why he married only in 1935 when he was already 36.

If Ingrid who was considered the most eligible princess in Europe liked Frederik (and his position, and the fact he fell quite hard for her) enough to take him for what he was, I'm not sure why girls from a poor, broken home (which Olga wasn't) would be picky.
 
Gustav of Sweden (father of the present King Carl Gustav) married Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg, so maybe there weren't any eligible Scandinavian princes available for the Greek princesses? (I'm not sure, without checking, of the dates of the weddings I have just mentioned)




There where plenty of scandinavian Princes. The father of King Carl Gustaf married after the four sisters and he had 3 younger brothers alll close in age to the sisters and there where also the Princes Lennart and Carl jr. And also the future King Frederik of Denmark and his brother Knud where not married yet when the greek Princesses married.
 
If Ingrid who was considered the most eligible princess in Europe liked Frederik (and his position, and the fact he fell quite hard for her) enough to take him for what he was, I'm not sure why girls from a poor, broken home (which Olga wasn't) would be picky.

No matter how poor they were all Greek princesses were always considered beautiful and very well connected, so I assume they didn't have a problem to find a husband.

Olga ditched King Frederik for his alcohol problems, but her financial situation was no less better than her cousins. Once her sister Marina observed that while in exile in Paris they didn't have enough money for an evening dress and that they better seek their luck in Hollywood.

Princess Alexandra of Greece ditched King of Albania who was 26 years her senior and who proposed a marriage. As a poor Princess born to a morganatic marriage she couldn't have hoped for a better marriage proposal, but her mother rejected this and said that she was beautiful, young and as such will sure find a better match. And she did.
 
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There where plenty of scandinavian Princes. The father of King Carl Gustaf married after the four sisters and he had 3 younger brothers alll close in age to the sisters and there where also the Princes Lennart and Carl jr. And also the future King Frederik of Denmark and his brother Knud where not married yet when the greek Princesses married.

Yes I checked online and in the book I've got about Queen Victoria's family and discovered that Gustaf and Sibylla met in 1931 and married a year later, after the 4 Greek princesses were married. I'd forgotten Gustaf had younger brothers/cousins who would have been around the age of the Greek girls.

Olav of Norway had married Martha of Sweden in 1929 and as you and others have pointed out Fred of Denmark didn't marry Ingrid till 1935.
 
No matter how poor they were all Greek princesses were always considered beautiful and very well connected, so I assume they didn't have a problem to find a husband.

From what I've heard, Philip's sisters were not considered raving beauties. Philip seems to have got all the looks. So being not especially beautiful or stylish, and certainly not rich, doesn't seem to have helped either of the older ones find a husband in England, especially with the postwar gender imbalance on top of that.

The only one who seemed to have a somewhat normal marriage timing was Cecile, who was considered the prettiest, but her older sisters did not get married quite so easily and Sophie was almost alarmingly young, especially with hindsight. I think they all had issues looking for a spouse.
 
From what I've heard, Philip's sisters were not considered raving beauties. Philip seems to have got all the looks. So being not especially beautiful or stylish, and certainly not rich, doesn't seem to have helped either of the older ones find a husband in England, especially with the postwar gender imbalance on top of that.

The only one who seemed to have a somewhat normal marriage timing was Cecile, who was considered the prettiest, but her older sisters did not get married quite so easily and Sophie was almost alarmingly young, especially with hindsight. I think they all had issues looking for a spouse.

This is true, but they waited and in the end all of them married rich royal husbands as their family expected.
 
Possibly they preferred German husbands, albeit I suspect they just wanted to be married and have someone to support them, of suitable rank and fortune...
 
CoE is Church of England.

I never heard that Sophie was unhappy with her choice. Of course, like several Royal Houses in Germany at that time the von Hesse House turned to Nazism in the 1930s as a bulwark against Communism.


Christoph, Sophie’s husband, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Party along with his brother Phillip quite early in the 1930s. Royals and the Reich, a book by Jonathon Petropoulos is interesting and concentrates on the two brothers.


Perhaps the fact that he was high up in the Nazi Armed Forces put some of the Extended family off, but Prince Philip once told the writer Giles Brendryth that his brother in law Christoph was not what one would imagine, that he was in fact gentle and soft-voiced.


Prince Christoph, btw. was a grandson of princess Thyra of Denmark, the sister of queen Alexandra of the UK, Empress Dagmar of Russia, king Frederick VIII. of Denmark and king George I of the Hellenes, so he really was Sophie's second cousin.
 
Prince Christoph, btw. was a grandson of princess Thyra of Denmark, the sister of queen Alexandra of the UK, Empress Dagmar of Russia, king Frederick VIII. of Denmark and king George I of the Hellenes, so he really was Sophie's second cousin.

And a grandson of Empress Frederick and great-grandchild of Queen Victoria on the other side, so he was also her second cousin once removed, if I'm counting correctly.
 
I believe that in the late 1920s the former German Royals were not yet convinced they had lost their realms for good. Hitler got them on promising them high positions in society and support for their claims if they helped him become chancellor. At that time the Nazis were considered violent, but not more violent than the communists, who had stripped the Russian nobility of their estates. Marrying a "princess of Greece and Denmark" was surely a good prospect for the princes, while the Scandinavian princes, who were from reigning Houses, surely were discouraged from marrying princesses from a house that still fought to get their throne back.
 
I believe that in the late 1920s the former German Royals were not yet convinced they had lost their realms for good. Hitler got them on promising them high positions in society and support for their claims if they helped him become chancellor. At that time the Nazis were considered violent, but not more violent than the communists, who had stripped the Russian nobility of their estates. Marrying a "princess of Greece and Denmark" was surely a good prospect for the princes, while the Scandinavian princes, who were from reigning Houses, surely were discouraged from marrying princesses from a house that still fought to get their throne back.

not sure it was a good prospect for the German princes.. to marry girls who had royal titles but no settled country and not much money
 
I believe that in the late 1920s the former German Royals were not yet convinced they had lost their realms for good. Hitler got them on promising them high positions in society and support for their claims if they helped him become chancellor. At that time the Nazis were considered violent, but not more violent than the communists, who had stripped the Russian nobility of their estates. Marrying a "princess of Greece and Denmark" was surely a good prospect for the princes, while the Scandinavian princes, who were from reigning Houses, surely were discouraged from marrying princesses from a house that still fought to get their throne back.

That makes sense, but Olga was all slated and approved to be future Queen of Denmark; it just didn't happen.
 
Prince Christoph, btw. was a grandson of princess Thyra of Denmark, the sister of queen Alexandra of the UK, Empress Dagmar of Russia, king Frederick VIII. of Denmark and king George I of the Hellenes, so he really was Sophie's second cousin.


That was Berthold of Baden whose mother was Princess Marie Louise of Hannover. Christoph's grandmother was the Empress Friedrich
 
I'm getting off-topic but...according to royal historian Trond Norén Iskasen it was Crown Prince Frederik who broke his engagement to Olga of Greece, not the other way around.

I can't find my copy of the article and can't remember the details, but Frederik realized he had made a mistake within weeks of the engagement. Olga's father Prince Nicholas was furious and in order to allow her to save face, the Danish royal family agreed to let Olga claim she had broken the engagement.

Source: Trond Norén Iskasen, "A Broken Engagement: Frederik of Denmark and Olga of Greece," Royalty Digest Quarterly (March 2010).
 
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I'm getting off-topic but...according to royal historian Trond Norén Iskasen it was Crown Prince Frederik who broke his engagement to Olga of Greece, not the other way around.

I can't find my copy of the article and can't remember the details, but Frederik realized he had made a mistake within weeks of the engagement. Olga's father Prince Nicholas was furious and in order to allow her to save face, the Danish royal family agreed to let Olga claim she had broken the engagement.

Source: Trond Norén Iskasen, "A Broken Engagement: Frederik of Denmark and Olga of Greece," Royalty Digest Quarterly (March 2010).

Right, but whoever did it and for whatever reasons, it was almost certainly personal, and nothing to do with Greek politics or matters of standing. It was considered a suitable, approved match, even if it didn't go through.
 
Right, but whoever did it and for whatever reasons, it was almost certainly personal, and nothing to do with Greek politics or matters of standing. It was considered a suitable, approved match, even if it didn't go through.

Exactly. The Scandinavian royals had no objections to marrying princesses from dispossessed royal families. Gustaf of Sweden even married Sibylla of Coburg, from a dispossessed German royal family.

I suspect Philip's sisters did not marry Scandinavian princes because the interest simply wasn't there, on one side or the other or both. Aside from Frederik, Knud, and Axel of Denmark, Gustaf of Sweden, and Olav of Norway, the other Scandinavian princes didn't even make "equal" marriages.
 
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From what I've heard, Philip's sisters were not considered raving beauties. Philip seems to have got all the looks. So being not especially beautiful or stylish, and certainly not rich, doesn't seem to have helped either of the older ones find a husband in England, especially with the postwar gender imbalance on top of that.

The only one who seemed to have a somewhat normal marriage timing was Cecile, who was considered the prettiest, but her older sisters did not get married quite so easily and Sophie was almost alarmingly young, especially with hindsight. I think they all had issues looking for a spouse.

Their cousins Elizabeth and Marina of Greece, who were considered beauties, did not marry until they were 29 and 28 respectively, so finding a suitable husband with both title and money must have been quite an undertaking.

According to Hugo Vickers' biography of Princess Alice, Philip's oldest sister Margarita was involved in a romance with Prince Franz Ferdinand of Isenburg-Birstein in 1927 but nothing came of it. Religious differences may have played a part, since Franz Ferdinand was a Roman Catholic and Margarita made it clear she would not convert.

I don't know if the sisters had any other suitors.

Incidentally, Franz Ferdinand eventually chose another bride and became the grandfather of Princess Sophie of Isenburg-Birstein, wife of Prince Georg Wilhelm of Prussia.
 
Their cousins Elizabeth and Marina of Greece, who were considered beauties, did not marry until they were 29 and 28 respectively, so finding a suitable husband with both title and money must have been quite an undertaking.

Elizabeth and Marina had the very picky and status-conscious Aunt Ellen for a mother, so finding matches up to her imperial approval was undoubtedly an undertaking. ;)

Alice's daughters had different hurdles, but their mom having Princess Nicholas standards was not the issue. :)
 
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I never heard that Sophie was unhappy with her choice.


And her grandmother Victoria Milford Haven would agree with you.

When Christoph died in 1943, Victoria Milford Haven wrote a letter to a friend: "Poor dear Tiny [Sophie], she loved her husband & had been so anxious about him ever since he was in Sicily...."

Source: Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (2005), p. 310.
 
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Elizabeth and Marina had the very picky and status-conscious Aunt Ellen for a mother, so finding matches up to her imperial approval was undoubtedly an undertaking. ;)

Alice's daughters had different hurdles, but their mom having Princess Nicholas standards was not the issue. :)

Yes, that's a very good point. Olga's husband Paul of Yugoslavia always felt his mother-in-law was never quite satisfied with him. Apparently a Karadjordjevic wasn't up to her high standards. After all, his mother was a mere Demidoff, a subject of Ellen's grandfather, the Tsar of All the Russias. LOL!
 
Yes, that's a very good point. Olga's husband Paul of Yugoslavia always felt his mother-in-law was never quite satisfied with him. Apparently a Karadjordjevic wasn't up to her high standards. After all, his mother was a mere Demidoff, a subject of Ellen's grandfather, the Tsar of All the Russias. LOL!

True, Olga wrote in her biography that her mother always wanted a throne for her daughter and that she was against the marriage with a Prince who will not sit on the throne and whose mother (Princess Aurora Demidoff) was a subject of her family...

She allowed the marriage only because he was enormously rich and that was her only satisfaction.
 
They had to marry protestants and in the years after WWI there weren't a lot of protestants around who weren't Germans in the right age bracket. There were two British princes, for instance: Henry and George, who ended up marrying one of their first cousins anyway in Marina.
:previous:

I am not sure if marrying catholics was such a big problem for the Greeks. There were quite a few of catholic marriages in the family: Prince George with Marie Bonaparte, their daughter Eugenie firstly with Dominic Radziwill and secondly with the Prince of Torre e Tasso. Princess Elisabeth married Prince Hans-Veit of Toerring-Jettenbach, Princess Irene married the duke of Aosta, Prince Christopher married a Princess of Orléans and Princess Sofia married the king of Spain.

I can't see why a very distant possibility of succession rights int he UK would have influenced marital choices for Prince Philip's sisters. All the grooms-to-be seemed to be rather suitable candidates, three of them heirs of the great dynasties of Germany.
The pre-revolution Romanovs preferred Protestant bride's for their sons because it was to much of a hassle having to deal with the Catholic Church. This is also something we saw time and time again during the early 1900s during the negotiating of marriages between Balkan royals and Catholics. It all culminated with Margrethe Bourbon-Parma famously pounding her fist in frustration on the Pope's desk when she and Helen Romania tried to get the marriage between Anne & Michael approved.
 
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The pre-revolution Romanovs preferred Protestant bride's for their sons because it was to much of a hassle having to deal with the Catholic Church.

They also preferred Orthodox born brides. There were quite few of them:

Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (1870-1891)
Princess Maria of Greece and Denmark (1876-1940)
Princess Militza of Montenegro (1866-1951)
Princess Anastasia of Montenegro (1868-1929)
Princess Helena of Serbia (1884-1962)
 
That’s true. It just struck me as....interesting I guess that they ALL married Germans.

The reason why Germans figure so prominently in discussions about marriages (and also in discussions about the ethnicity/nationality/heritage) of royals is because prior to unification there were 25+ Germanic political / royal entities that were classified as either kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies and principalities. If a royal house practiced equal marriages, either as a requirement, or by custom/preference, it was inevitable that they would be a lot of matches with German royals because of the numerous German states that existed up until the mid-to-late 19th century.

Some argue that there were eligible Scandinavian royals, which is true, but you are still talking about, at best, a pool of a dozen or so eligible Scandinavian royals versus a pool of dozens of eligible German royals.
 
Wasn’t that the occasion when Philip’s sisters, not having seen him since he was a schoolboy/naval cadet before the war, commented on his likeness in manner, way of speaking, laugh etc to their father, the dead Prince Andrew? I think it was in Eade’s book ‘Young Philip’. It must have been a very joyful occasion.
 
Wasn’t that the occasion when Philip’s sisters, not having seen him since he was a schoolboy/naval cadet before the war, commented on his likeness in manner, way of speaking, laugh etc to their father, the dead Prince Andrew? I think it was in Eade’s book ‘Young Philip’. It must have been a very joyful occasion.

The book apparently says it was Sophie when he came for her wedding in April 1946, so this must have been a separate trip before his own.
 
True, Olga wrote in her biography that her mother always wanted a throne for her daughter and that she was against the marriage with a Prince who will not sit on the throne and whose mother (Princess Aurora Demidoff) was a subject of her family...

She allowed the marriage only because he was enormously rich and that was her only satisfaction.


So what did she think of the marriage of her second daughter to a mere Count from a mediatized Family?
 
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