Prince Andrew (1882-1944) and Alice, Princess Andrew Of Greece (1885-1969)


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
:previous: Princess Alice was a unique lady.
If you have not read Vickers' book " Alice" please do so. He gives a perfect picture of her and her life and trials from Germany all the way back to London.:flowers:
 
:previous: I have read the book and lent a copy to Greek friends who were fascinated by Alice's life and how little they knew about her. Of course, these friends were born in Egypt and returned to Greece for the first time in two generations in 1967 so I guess they can be forgiven. ;)
 
I think she was not a schizophrenic woman .I read that she claimed to have received divine messages and apparitions, .The Mother Teresa of Calcuta received a message divine and therefore she became a nun and began her humanitarian work, she was not schizophrenic .... This happens to many missionaries, monks, nuns and even pontiffs .. I think that Princess Alice would not be schizophrenic, but for her family it resulted be very shocking because they did not believed in these apparitions and divine messages and they saw her as a madwoman.
I think that Princess Alice found in the Kings of Greece(pavlo and Federika) and in the Orthodox Church, understanding .I think that the Kings of Greece and the Orthodox Church did not saw to her as a schizophrenic, they believed her.
Picture , it is the baptize of Princess Alexia

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/4402/cuabdonaciopablo.jpg
and in funeral of King Pavlo
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/617...lkingpavlo.jpg
 
Beltraneja,

Thank you for posting the photographs of Princess Andrew. I do not think she was a paranoid schizophrenic either, but she definitely suffered from some mental malady which kept her sidelined through the period of time when her four daughters married. Because of the illness, Alice missed the weddings.

Alice probably suffered a nervous breakdown and in those days, people of her social standing were taken to sanatoriums where they were kept safe but out of the public eye.
 
:previous:

Wonderful photograph, thank you! Didn't Queen Frederika create tension in the family by keeping Helen's last illness from Alice, thereby causing Alice to miss the opportunity to pay a last visit to her sister-in-law? I don't think Alice ever forgave QF and the rest of the family felt so strongly about it that Frederika was forced to later apologize to Alice.
 
:previous:
Yes, Prince Andrew did enjoy gambling at the casino...
 
Prince Andrew, or Andrea, was very poor at the time of his death, both in money and health. He died before the war ended on December 3, 1944, in his room at the Metropole in Monte Carlo. While Alice remained in Greece during the war, Andrea had largely been stuck in the south of France.
 
:previous:

Wonderful photograph, thank you! Didn't Queen Frederika create tension in the family by keeping Helen's last illness from Alice, thereby causing Alice to miss the opportunity to pay a last visit to her sister-in-law? I don't think Alice ever forgave QF and the rest of the family felt so strongly about it that Frederika was forced to later apologize to Alice.

Princesses Alice & Helen were the only two left in Athens during the war and the German occupation.
The two were never friendly or even compatible. Helen believed she was above Alice and because of her (Alice's) deafness they did not socialize.
There are many anectodes of how, Helen was almost mean towards Alice.
I wonder if the issue with Q Frederika actually existed or was something said against her as was the custom to blame her for just about everything.:flowers:
 
:previous:

In Hugo Vickers' biography of Alice, he relates that several members of the Greek and British Royal Families were upset with Frederika and her directive not to tell Alice of Helen's approaching death. It is possible that mean spirited stories were being bandied about but this appears to have some facts behind it and if Alice and Helen were not friendly to one another, then why keep it from Alice? Royals can be as petty as us mere mortals:)
 
I do not think Queen Federik did this, because I think the Queen Fedwerika had no such authority or power to decide what to say or not say Alice, Alice had family, they were who decided about her...If this was true, it was decided by her family, not Queen Federika
 
:previous:

Why wouldn't Frederika have the seeming authority to keep the news from Alice about Ellen's illness? After all, King Paul and Queen Frederika were the heads of the Greek Royal Family:

[Ellen's] surviving daughters, Olga and Marina, arrived at her bedside the night before she died. Crown Prince Constantine was likewise summoned to see his favourite great-aunt. 'Hello darling,' said Aunt Ellen, opening her eyes to see him. But Alice was not at the death bed. For some reason, not a kind one, Queen Frederika gave specific instructions that news of Ellen's illness was to be withheld from her. She was not even told that she had died. Alice had to make do with attending the funeral, after which Ellen was buried next to Prince Nicholas at Tatoi.

By June, when she attend the wedding of Alice's granddaughter, Margarita of Baden, to Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia at Salem the froideur between them had developed into open hositility. As Dickie [Mountbatten] wrote to [the Queen of Sweden]: 'Now she [Alice] has explained to me how Freddy deliberately withheld news of Ellen's illness and even death from Alice, I am on her side in her treatment of F . . .d at Salem.' Louise [Queen of Sweden and sister to Alice] replied: 'I am glad Alice was not in the wrong this time. I fear Freddy will end by getting her husband turned out.' Even at Christmas 1958, Alice declined to join King Paul and Queen Frederika for the festivities. Eventually Queen Frederika was forced to apologize.

Vickers, Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece, pp. 356-57
 
I agree with Odette.
First, princess Alice was speending her time between various monasteries or quasi-monasteries of non-descript order and Athens. She never played a role in Athenian life. Besides, the Greeks were never impressed by the Battenberg title, a minor and totally irrelevant princely house that attained status solely thanks to the British connection.
Grand Duchess Helen, princess Nikolaou of Greece was a woman of glamorous and utterly elegant appearance who socialized a lot in Athens and was always enticing and impressing the Greeks by her style. In his Modern Political History Spiros Markezinis describes in detail the appearances of princess Helen always accompanied by her lady-in-waiting Mademoiselle Mika Skouzέ.
Besides, Helen would always remind everyone that she was also the mother of two important and most elegant royal ladies, Princess Marina of Kent and Olga of Yugoslavia (La princesse Paul de Yugoslavie).

In brief, Alice of Battenberg and Helen of All Russias were two worlds apart in every respect!
 
Although there is NO denying of princess Alice's good deeds and good will, there is also little doubt that the Battenberg family was quite eccentric to say the least. A lot has been written about Queen Louise's wandering alone in London. Winston Churchill was making unkind references to Lord Mountbatten's megalomaniacal attitude etc etc.
All I am saying here is that reading about the Battenbergs (what they did, felt in various circumstances) should always be heavily scrutinized.
 
if the Alice family was not happy with the concealment, why were not they to tell Alice ?Everyone knew it, they were in disagreed, but it was easier to blame the Queen Federik. They could spoke with Alice but...
 
:previous: I agree with all of the above postings.
Royals can be petty like the rest of us and if Alice's family wanted her to know about P Helen's failing health they could disclose the information to her, rather than discussing it later and blaming Q Frederica for keeping the news from her.
Why would Q Frederika withold the news from P Alice?
I read Vicker's book and what he said about the subject but in simple terms it makes no sense.:flowers:
 
Sure, it may make no sense but that does not mean it did not happen. In my line of work, I've seen inexplicable actions by many people during times of illness and crisis, and they are usually reacting to slights in the past. Maybe it was because of tension between Alice and Frederika in the past that Frederika instructed no one to tell Alice, or she might have done it because of problems between the two princesses and she thought Ellen's wishes were being honored. Alice was certainly responsible for her share of hurt feelings but there is no denying that near the end of her life, Alice devoted more time to spiritual beliefs and perhaps, just perhaps, she wanted that last chance to see Princess Nicholas. After all, they were the only members of the Greek royal family to remain in Greece during World War II.

With the exception of Marina of Kent (who I must confess might have told Alice but perhaps she had more pressing worries like the imminent death of her mother and can justly be excused for not telling her), who else in Alice's British family would have known about Ellen? I daresay none of them would have, not even Prince Phillip, and it has never been implied that they knew anything until Ellen died. Thus, the information was known by the Greek royals, of which Alice was still a member of the family.

That being said, I love these discussions and I guess we will never really know all of the facts surrounding this very human family during the final illness of one of its members.
 
Alice and Haemophilia

I found informations suggesting that Princess Alice was a carrier of haemophilia. Apparently her grandson Prince Kraft ( daughter of Margarita and Gottfried of Hohenlohe- Langerburg) was a mild haemophiliac. Do you think this is true? I ve never heard again anything relevant. After all all of her brothers were healthy and she did bore a very healthy son ( alive and kicking at 89:D).
 
Perhaps Margarita had a spontaneous mutation in her genes which caused his condition. After all, there were no known ancestors of Queen Victoria who had the disease or were carriers.
 

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Princess Alice of Battenberg and Prince Andrew of Greece married in a civil ceremony at Darmstadt on October 6, 1903. Tsar Nicholas II, who was Prince Andrew's first cousin, gave the couple a Wolseley motor car. :coach:

Deaf Princess
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teClIAwDeRU
 
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Its still intersting as its an example of the type of gossip that goes around - a barometer of popular perceptions and an indicator of the moral Economy. Please indulge this nerd - gossip is of course not an indicator of historical fact but is interesting for contempary views of certain figures and how it reflects popular morality and social mores...
 
:ermm:Gay Influence: Prince Andrew of Greece

I was always under the impression that andrea spent the last years of his life living with a mistress, and that him and alice were happy before it all turned to custard, but whatever....

One mistress? I dont think so, I think several! he and Alice problaby had a few years of OK marriage but he was a playboy and she had various problems..Mental health and so on...
 
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