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Marie of Romania

March 11, 2023

For other people named Marie of Romania, see Marie of Romania (disambiguation).

Marie (born Princess Marie Alexandra Victoria of Edinburgh; 29 October 1875 – 18 July 1938)[note 1] was the last Queen of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I.

Marie
Queen consort of Romania
Tenure10 October 1914 – 20 July 1927
Coronation15 October 1922
BornPrincess Marie of Edinburgh
(1875-10-29)29 October 1875
Eastwell Park, Kent, England
Died18 July 1938(1938-07-18) (aged 62)
Pelișor Castle, Sinaia, Romania
Burial24 July 1938[1]
Curtea de Argeș Cathedral
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1893; died 1927)​
Issue
Names
Marie Alexandra Victoria
HouseSaxe-Coburg and Gotha
FatherAlfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
MotherMaria Alexandrovna of Russia
Signature

Marie was born into the British royal family. Her parents were Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (later Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. Marie's early years were spent in Kent, Malta and Coburg. After refusing a proposal from her cousin, the future King George V, she was chosen as the future wife of Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania, the heir apparent of King Carol I, in 1892. Marie was Crown Princess between 1893 and 1914, and became immediately popular with the Romanian people.

After the outbreak of World War I, Marie urged Ferdinand to ally himself with the Triple Entente and declare war on Germany, which he eventually did in 1916. During the early stages of fighting, Bucharest was occupied by the Central Powers and Marie, Ferdinand and their five children took refuge in Western Moldavia. There, she and her three daughters acted as nurses in military hospitals, caring for soldiers who were wounded or afflicted by cholera. After the war, on 1 December 1918, the historical region of Transylvania, following Bessarabia and Bukovina, united with the Old Kingdom. Marie, now queen of Greater Romania, attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where she campaigned for international recognition of the enlarged Romania. In 1922, she and Ferdinand were crowned in a specially-built cathedral in the ancient city of Alba Iulia, in an elaborate ceremony which mirrored their status as queen and king of a united state.

As queen, Marie was very popular, both in Romania and abroad. In 1926, she and two of her children undertook a diplomatic tour of the United States. They were received enthusiastically by the people and visited several cities before returning to Romania. There, Marie found that Ferdinand was gravely ill and he died a few months later. Now queen dowager, Marie refused to be part of the regency council which reigned over the country under the minority of her grandson, King Michael. In 1930, Marie's eldest son Carol, who had waived his rights to succession, deposed his son and usurped the throne, becoming King Carol II. He removed Marie from the political scene and strived to crush her popularity. As a result, Marie moved away from Bucharest and spent the rest of her life either in the countryside or at Balchik Palace, her summer residence in Southern Dobruja by the Black Sea. In 1937, she became ill with cirrhosis and died the following year.

Following Romania's transition to a People's Republic, the monarchy was excoriated by communist officials. Several biographies of the royal family described Marie either as a drunkard or as a promiscuous woman, referring to her many alleged affairs and to orgies she had supposedly organised before and during the war. In the years preceding the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Marie's popularity recovered and she was offered as a model of patriotism to the population. Marie is primarily remembered for her work as a nurse, but is also known for her extensive writing, including her critically acclaimed autobiography.

Early life (1875–1893)

Birth

Marie was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and the former Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, respectively the son of Queen Victoria and the daughter of Emperor Alexander II. She was born at her parents' residence, Eastwell Manor in Kent, on 29 October 1875, at 10:30 a.m., in the presence of her father. Her birth was celebrated by firing the Park and Tower guns.[2] She was named Marie Alexandra Victoria, after her mother and grandmothers,[3] but she was informally known as "Missy".[4] The Duke of Edinburgh wrote that his daughter "promises to be as fine a child as her brother and gives every evidence of finely developed lungs and did so before she was fairly in the world."[5] As a grandchild of the reigning British monarch in the male line, Marie was formally styled "Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh" from birth.

Marie's baptism took place in the private chapel of Windsor Castle on 15 December 1875 and was officiated by Arthur Stanley and Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor. The baptism, "of a strictly private nature", took place one day after the ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of her paternal grandfather, Prince Albert.[6] Marie's godparents were Empress Maria Alexandrovna (her maternal grandmother, for whom Queen Victoria stood proxy), the Princess of Wales (her paternal aunt), the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (her great-aunt, for whom Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein stood proxy), the Tsarevich of Russia (her maternal uncle, for whom Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov stood proxy) and the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (her paternal uncle, for whom the Duke of Albany stood proxy).[7]

Upbringing

 
Marie, aged seven, in an 1882 portrait by John Everett Millais commissioned by Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Royal Academy[8]

Marie and her siblings, Prince Alfred (b. 1874, known as "Young Affie"), and Princesses Victoria Melita (b. 1876, known as "Ducky"), Alexandra (b. 1878, known as "Sandra") and Beatrice (b. 1884, known as "Baby Bee"), spent much of their early life at Eastwell Park, which their mother preferred instead of Clarence House, their official residence.[9] In her memoirs, Marie would remember Eastwell fondly.[10] The Duke of Edinburgh was largely absent from his children's lives, due to his position in the British Royal Navy, and their life was governed by their mother. Marie would later state that she did not even know the colour of her father's hair until she looked at later portraits of him, believing it to be much darker than it actually was.[11] When he was at home, the Duke would often play with his children, inventing many games for them.[12] Of all her siblings, Marie was closest to her sister Victoria Melita, who was one year younger, but whom everyone believed to be the older girl because of her stature, much to the princesses' dismay.[13] The Edinburgh children were all baptised and raised in the Anglican faith; this upset their Russian Orthodox mother.[3]

The Duchess of Edinburgh was a supporter of the idea of separating generations and Marie deeply regretted the fact that her mother never allowed chatting between the two "as if [they] were equals".[14] Nonetheless, the Duchess was independent-minded, cultured and "the most important person" in her children's lives.[15] At the behest of their mother, Marie and her sisters were taught French, which they detested and rarely ever spoke.[16] Overall, the Duchess neglected her daughters' education, considering them not very bright or gifted. They were permitted to read aloud, but in the fields of painting and drawing, areas in which they had inherited Queen Victoria's talent, the girls received only a "pedestrian instruction".[17] The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh frequently received members of the royal family at Eastwell Park, inviting them for breakfast nearly daily[18] and in 1885, Marie and Victoria Melita served as bridesmaids at the wedding of their aunt Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg.[19] Among Marie's playmates were her maternal cousins, Grand Dukes Nicholas (called "Nicky") and George (called "Georgie") and Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia; the other two Russian cousins, Grand Duke Michael (called "Misha") and Grand Duchess Olga being too young for the Edinburgh girls. Other playmates included the children of their maternal uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia.[20]

 
Princess Marie, photographed in 1888

In 1886, when Marie was eleven years old, the Duke of Edinburgh was named commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and the family took up residence at San Antonio Palace in Malta.[21] Marie would remember her time in Malta as "the happiest memory of my existence".[22] It was in Malta that Marie found her first love, Maurice Bourke, the captain of the Duke's ship, whom Marie called "Captain Dear". Marie was prone to fits of jealousy when Bourke would pay more attention to one of her sisters than to her.[23] The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were greatly loved in Malta and San Antonio Palace was frequently full of guests.[24] Marie and Victoria Melita received white horses from their mother and went to the local hippodrome nearly daily, apart from Saturday.[25] During their first year in Malta, a French governess oversaw the princesses' education, but, due to her failing health, she was replaced the following year by a much younger German woman.[26] At San Antonio, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh always maintained a room ready for Prince George of Wales, the second son of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, who was in the Royal Navy. George called the three elder Edinburgh girls "the three dearests", but favoured Marie the most.[27]

Meanwhile, the Duke of Edinburgh became heir presumptive to his childless paternal uncle, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, upon the Prince of Wales's renunciation of his rights to the duchy. Consequently, the family relocated to Coburg in 1889.[21] Marie later came to view this moment as "truly the end of a life that had been absolute happiness and joy without clouds, of a life with no disappointments or delusions and without any discordant note."[28] The Duchess, who was pro-German, hired a German governess for her daughters, bought them plain clothing and even had them confirmed in the Lutheran faith.[29] The family spent their summers at Rosenau Castle.[30] Duke Ernest was described by Marie as "having his oddities"; his court was less strict than other German courts of the time.[31] In Coburg, the princesses' education was broadened: more emphasis was placed on painting and music, which were taught by Anna Messing and Mrs. Helferich, respectively.[32] On Thursdays and Sundays, Marie and her sisters went to the Coburg Theatre, an experience which they enjoyed greatly.[33] Marie and Victoria Melita often observed their brother's friends and made comments on whom they liked better, an aspect which Marie believed was inevitable in the lives of girls who have brothers.[34] Another activity which the girls enjoyed at Coburg was attending winter parties organised by their mother, during which they would ice-skate and play different games, such as ice hockey.[35]

Marriage

 
Ferdinand and Marie, the Crown Prince and Princess of Romania, pictured after their 1893 marriage

Marie grew into a "lovely young woman" with "sparkling blue eyes and silky fair hair"; she was courted by several royal bachelors, including Prince George of Wales, who in 1892 became second in line to inherit the throne.[36] Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh all approved, but the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Edinburgh did not. The Princess of Wales disliked the family's pro-German sentiment and the Duchess of Edinburgh did not wish for her daughter to remain in England, which she disliked. She also disliked the fact that the Princess of Wales, whose father had been a minor German prince before being called to the Danish throne, was higher than her in the order of precedence.[37] The Duchess of Edinburgh was also against the idea of a marriage between first cousins, which was not allowed by her native Russian Orthodox Church.[38] Thus, when George proposed to her, Marie informed him that the marriage was impossible and that he must remain her "beloved chum". Queen Victoria would later comment that "Georgie lost Missy by waiting & waiting".[39]

Around this time, King Carol I of Romania was looking for a suitable bride for Crown Prince Ferdinand, in order to secure the succession and assure the continuation of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Possibly motivated by the prospect of removing tensions between Russia and Romania on the subject of control over Bessarabia, the Duchess of Edinburgh suggested that Marie meet Ferdinand.[38] Marie and Ferdinand first became acquainted during a gala dinner and the pair conversed in German. She found him shy but amiable, and their second meeting went just as well.[40] Once the pair were formally engaged, Queen Victoria wrote to another granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, that "[Ferdinand] is nice & the Parents are charming–but the country is very insecure & the immorality of the Society at Bucharest quite awful. Of course the marriage will be delayed some time as Missy won't be 17 till the end of October!"[41] German Empress Victoria, Marie's aunt, wrote to her daughter, Crown Princess Sophia of Greece, that "Missy is till now quite delighted, but the poor child is so young, how can she guess what is before her?"[42] In late 1892, King Carol visited London in order to meet the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Victoria, who eventually agreed to the marriage and appointed him a Knight of the Garter.[43]

On 10 January 1893, Marie and Ferdinand were married at Sigmaringen Castle in three ceremonies: one civil, one Catholic (Ferdinand's religion) and one Anglican. The civil ceremony was performed in the Red Hall of the castle by Karl von Wendel, the German Emperor being the first of the witnesses present to sign the marriage act. At four o'clock, the Catholic ceremony took place at the Town Church, with Marie being led to the altar by her father. The Anglican ceremony was more modest and was conducted in one of the chambers of the castle.[44][45] Although King Carol granted the couple "Honigtag" (one day of honeymoon), Marie and Ferdinand spent a few days at the Castle of Krauchenwies in Bavaria. From there, they left for the countryside, their journey being interrupted briefly by a stop at Vienna, where they visited Emperor Franz Joseph. Due to growing tensions between Austria and Romania (the visit took place during the ongoing movement of the Transylvanian Memorandum), the couple's visit was brief and they arrived in the border town of Predeal following a nighttime crossing of Transylvania by train.[46] Marie was warmly welcomed by the Romanian people, who were longing for a more personal monarchy.[47]

Issue

See also: Royal descendants of Queen Victoria and King Christian IX
Name Birth Death Spouse and children
King Carol II of Romania 189315 October
1893		 19534 April
1953		 Married 1918, Ioana Maria Valentina "Zizi" Lambrino (1898–1953);
1 son (Carol Lambrino)
Married 1921, Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark (1896–1982);
1 son (King Michael of Romania)
Married 1947, Elena "Magda" Lupescu (died 1977) no issue
Queen Elisabeth of Greece 189412 October
1894		 195615 November
1956		 Married 1921, King George II of Greece (1890–1947) no issue
Queen Maria of Yugoslavia 19006 January
1900		 196122 June
1961		 Married 1922, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia (1888–1934);
3 sons (including King Peter II of Yugoslavia)
Prince Nicholas[48] 190318 August
1903		 19789 June
1978		 Married 1931, Ioana Doletti (1902/9–1963) no issue;
Married 1967, Thereza Lisboa Figueira de Mello (1913–1997) no issue
Princess Ileana 19095 January
1909		 199121 January
1991		 Married 1931, Archduke Anton of Austria-Tuscany (1901–1987);
2 sons, 4 daughters
Married 1953, Dr. Stefan Issarescu (1906–2002) no issue
Prince Mircea 19133 January
1913		 19162 November
1916		 None

Crown Princess (1893–1914)

 
Crown Princess Marie, in the first photograph of her taken in Romania[49]

Domestic life

The first years of Marie and Ferdinand's marriage were not particularly easy, and Marie would later tell her husband that "it is such a shame that we had to waste so many years of our youth just to learn how to live together!"[50] Gradually, the couple's relationship became based on a cordial friendship: Marie accorded Ferdinand respect she believed he was due as a man and, later, as king, and he respected her because he realised that she had a better understanding of the world than he did.[51] Eventually, Marie came to believe that she and Ferdinand were "the best associates, the most loyal companions, but our lives intertwine only in certain matters".[52] Ferdinand enjoyed Marie's presence during military marches and consequently, she was frequently invited to this sort of event.[53]

Marie gave birth to her first child, Prince Carol, only nine months after the marriage, on 15 October 1893. Although Marie requested the use of chloroform in order to ease the pains of labour, doctors were reluctant to do so, believing that "women must pay in agony for the sins of Eve". After Marie's mother and Queen Victoria insisted, King Carol eventually allowed the use of the drug on his niece-in-law.[54] Marie did not derive much joy from the arrival of her firstborn, later writing that she "felt like turning [her] head to the wall".[55] Similarly, although Marie was constantly reminded by Carol's wife Elisabeth that childbirth is "the most glorious moment in [Marie's] life", she could only feel a longing for her mother at the birth of her second child, Princess Elisabeth, in 1894.[56] After becoming accustomed to life in Romania, Marie began to rejoice at the births of her children,[57] namely Princess Maria (1900–61), nicknamed "Mignon" in the family, Prince Nicholas (1903–78), nicknamed "Nicky",[58] Princess Ileana (1909–91) and Prince Mircea (1913–16).

King Carol and Queen Elisabeth promptly removed Prince Carol and Princess Elisabeth from Marie's care, considering it inappropriate for them to be raised by their young parents.[59] Marie loved her children, but found it difficult to even scold them at times, thus failing to properly supervise them.[60] Consequently, the royal children were given somewhat of an education, but were never sent to school. As the royal household could not provide what a classroom education would have, most of the children's personalities became severely flawed as they grew older.[61] Prime Minister Ion G. Duca would later write that "it was like [King Carol] wished to leave for Romania heirs completely unprepared for succeeding."[62]

Life at court

 
Marie in a portrait by Henry Walter Barnett, c. 1902

From the start, Marie had trouble adjusting to life in Romania. Her personality and "high spirits" frequently created controversies at the Romanian court, and she disliked the austere atmosphere of her household.[63] She wrote that she "had not been brought down to Romania to be adored and spoilt and made much of; she had come to be part of the machinery King Carol had wound up. She had been imported to be trimmed, educated, cut down and trained according to the great man's conception of things." When describing her early days in Romania, Marie wrote that "for long hours [she] would mope, whilst [her] young husband did his military service, all alone in rooms [she] hated, heavy German rooms".[64] Marie's paternal aunt, the Empress Frederick, wrote to her daughter, the Crown Princess of Greece, that "Missy of Roumania is more to be pitied than you. The King is a great tyrant in his family, & has crushed the independence in Ferdinand so that no one cares about him, & his beautiful & gifted little wife, I fear, gets into scrapes, & like a butterfly, instead of hovering over the flowers, burns her pretty wings by going rather near the fire!"[65] Easily learning to speak the Romanian language, she followed her mother's advice to dress carefully and show respect for Orthodox rituals.[66]

Marie and Ferdinand were advised by King Carol to maintain a restricted group of friends; thus, Marie would lament that her familial circle had been shrunk to only the King and Ferdinand, "who stood in mighty awe of the iron old man, forever trembling that any action of [hers] might displease that duty-bound head of the family".[64] The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Marie had found herself, "from the hour of her arrival in Bucharest under the tutelage of that stern disciplinarian King Carol I".[67]

In 1896, Ferdinand and Marie moved to Cotroceni Palace, which had been extended by the Romanian architect Grigore Cerchez, and to which Marie added her own designs.[68] The following year, Ferdinand was struck down with typhoid fever. For days, he was delirious and, despite his doctor's best efforts, came close to dying.[69] During this time, Marie exchanged numerous letters with her family in Britain[70] and was terrified at the prospect of losing her husband. King Carol still had an heir in Prince Carol, whose young age presented issues; thus, the whole family desperately wished for Ferdinand to pull through. Eventually, he did, and he and Marie went to Sinaia, the site of Peleș Castle, for a period of recovery. Nonetheless, the couple was not able to attend celebrations for Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee that summer. During Ferdinand's convalescence, Marie spent most of her time with her two children, taking them on long walks and picking flowers with them.[71] The winter of 1897/1898 was spent with the Russian Imperial family on the French Riviera, where Marie often rode horses, in spite of the low temperatures.[72]

 
Marie (far right) and her sisters in mourning after the death of their father in 1900

Around this time, Marie met Lieutenant Gheorghe Cantacuzène, a member, albeit through an illegitimate branch, of an ancient Romanian princely family and a descendant of Prince Șerban Cantacuzino. Although not very good looking, Cantacuzène stood out using his sense of humour and fashion, as well as his talent in horse-riding.[73] The two soon became romantically involved, but their affair was terminated after it became known by the public. As much as she condemned Marie's behaviour, her mother allowed her to come to Coburg when, in 1897, she apparently became pregnant. Historian Julia Gelardi believes that Marie gave birth to a child at Coburg; the child may either have been stillborn or sent to an orphanage immediately following its birth.[74] There was speculation on whether Marie's second daughter, "Mignon", was Cantacuzène's daughter, and not Ferdinand's.[75] Over the following years, Marie was also rumoured to have been romantically linked to Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia,[note 2] Waldorf Astor,[note 3] Prince Barbu Știrbey[note 4] and Joe Boyle.[80] In 1903, Ferdinand and Marie inaugurated the Pelișor Castle, an Art Nouveau castle in Sinaia that King Carol commissioned for the royal couple.[81] Marie only learned of the extent of repression used to quell the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt once it was too late to intercede. She afterwards took to dressing quite often in folk costume, both at home and in public, initiating a fashion trend among young upper-class women.[66]

 
Marie's summer residence in Balchik

On 29 June 1913, the Tsardom of Bulgaria declared war on Greece, thus starting the Second Balkan War. On 4 July, Romania entered the war, allying itself with Greece.[82] The war, which lasted a little over a month, was worsened by a cholera epidemic. Marie would look upon her first encounter with an epidemic as a turning point in her life. With the help of Dr. Ioan Cantacuzino and Sister Pucci, a Red Cross nurse, Marie travelled between Romania and Bulgaria, lending a helping hand in hospitals.[83] These events would prepare her for her experiences in the Great War.[84] As a result of the war, Romania gained possession of Southern Dobrudja, including the coastal town of Balchik (Balcic), which Marie would come to cherish in 1924 and use to host her residence, called The Quiet Nest.[85] Soon after the war ended, Carol became ill.

On 28 June 1914, at Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. This came as a shock to Marie and her family, who were vacationing at Sinaia when the news reached them. On 28 July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and, as Marie saw it, "the world's peace was torn to shreds". Then, on 3 August, King Carol held a Crown Council at Sinaia, in order to decide whether Romania should enter the war. Although Carol was in favour of his country supporting Germany and the Central Powers, the council decided against it. Not long after the council, Carol's illness worsened and he became bed-ridden; the possibility of his abdication was even discussed.[86] Eventually, he died on 10 October 1914 and Ferdinand automatically succeeded as king.

Queen of Romania (1914–1927)

World War I

On 11 October 1914, Marie and Ferdinand were acclaimed as king and queen in the Chamber of Deputies.[87] Princess Anne Marie Callimachi, a close friend of Marie's, wrote that "as Crown Princess, [Marie] had been popular; as queen, she was more loved".[88] Marie maintained a certain influence on her husband and the entire court, leading historian A. L. Easterman to write that "it was not [Ferdinand], but Marie who ruled in Romania".[89] At the time of Ferdinand's accession, the government was led by the liberal prime minister Ion I. C. Brătianu. Ferdinand and Marie jointly decided to not make many changes in court and let people accept the transition from one regime to another, rather than force them. Thus, many of Carol and Elisabeth's servants were kept in place, even the ones who were not particularly liked.[90] With Brătianu's help, Marie began pressuring Ferdinand into entering the war; concurrently, she contacted various reigning relatives in Europe and bargained for the best terms for Romania, in case the country would enter the war.[21] Marie favoured an alliance with the Triple Entente (Russia, France and Britain), partly because of her British ancestry. Neutrality was not without perils, and entering the war with the Entente meant that Romania would act as Russia's "buffer" against possible attacks.[91]

 
Marie visiting a patient in a military hospital during World War I, 1917

Eventually, Marie demanded of Ferdinand in no uncertain terms that he enter the war, leading the French minister to Romania, Auguste Félix de Beaupoil, Count of Saint-Aulaire, to remark that Marie was twice an ally to the French: once by birth and once by heart.[92] Ferdinand gave in to Marie's pleas, and he signed a treaty with the Entente on 17 August 1916. On 27 August, Romania formally declared war on Austria-Hungary.[93] Saint-Aulaire wrote that Marie "embraced war as another might embrace religion".[94] After informing their children that their country had entered the war, Ferdinand and Marie dismissed their German servants, who could only remain in their employ as "war prisoners" of sorts.[95] Early on during the war, Marie was involved in aiding the Romanian Red Cross and visited hospitals daily.[96] During the first month of hostilities, Romania fought no less than nine battles; some, such as the Battle of Turtucaia, took place on its own soil.[97]

On 2 November 1916, Marie's youngest son, Prince Mircea, who had been sick with typhoid fever, died at Buftea. Marie was distraught and wrote in her journal: "Can anything ever be the same?"[98] After Bucharest fell to Austrian troops, the royal court was transferred to Iași, capital of the Moldavia region, in December 1916.[21] There, she continued to act as a nurse in military hospitals. Daily, Marie would dress as a nurse and go to the train station, where she would receive more injured soldiers; then she would transport them to hospital.[99]

After the conclusion of the Russian Revolution in early November 1917 and the victory of the Bolsheviks, Romania became, in the words of diplomat Frank Rattigan, "an island surrounded on all sides by the enemy, with no hope of assistance from the Allies".[100] Soon afterwards, Ferdinand signed the Treaty of Focșani, on 9 December 1917.[101] Marie considered the treaty perilous, while Brătianu and Știrbey believed it was a necessary measure for obtaining more time. Later turns of events would prove Marie to have assumed correctly.[102] In 1918, Marie vehemently opposed the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, giving rise to her description as "truly the only man in Romania".[103] The Armistice with Germany (11 November 1918) put an end to fighting in Europe and, thus, to the war.

In the tenth century, the Principality of Hungary had begun conquering Transylvania, which Hungarians had fully occupied by around 1200.[104] The idea of a "Greater Romania" had existed in the minds of Romanians in Transylvania for some time[105] and Brătianu had actively supported the concept before the war.[106] In 1918, both Bessarabia and Bukovina voted for union with Romania. An assembly took place in the ancient city of Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918, where Vasile Goldiș read the resolution for the union of Transylvania with the Old Kingdom. This document, supported by Romanian as well as Saxon deputies,[107] established a High National Romanian Council (Romanian: Marele Sfat Național Român) for the province's temporary administration.[108] Marie wrote, "the dream of România Mare seems to be becoming a reality ... it is all so incredible that I hardly dare believe it."[109] After the assembly, Ferdinand and Marie returned to Bucharest, where they were met by general mirth: "a day of 'wild, delirious enthusiasm', with the bands crashing and the troops marching and the people cheering".[109] Allied troops took part in the celebration and Marie was elated to see the Entente on Romanian soil for the first time.[110] Around this time, Marie became infected with the Spanish flu, with symptoms peaking a week after Alba Iulia; her diary describes "a changed being, miserable and weak, brought to the brink of despair by so much headache and terrible sickness that sapped me of my strength".[111]

Paris Peace Conference

She is magnificent and we have, against all protocol, shouted our admiration. The day remained grey, but Queen Marie carried her light within her.

— The French writer Colette in Le Matin newspaper, 6 March 1919 [112]

Because Ferdinand had refused to sign the Treaty of Bucharest and because Romania had been hostile towards the Central Powers until the end of the war, its place among the winning countries during the Paris Peace Conference was guaranteed. The official delegation was led by Brătianu, who had just begun his third term as Prime Minister.[113] Brătianu's rigidity, combined with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau's reluctance to overlook Ferdinand's acceptance of the Treaty of Bucharest led to open conflict and the Romanian delegation left Paris, much to the dismay of the "Big Four". Hoping to resolve the situation, Saint-Aulaire suggested that Marie should be sent to the conference instead. The Queen was delighted at the prospect.[114]

 
Queen Marie with her two eldest daughters in Paris, 1919

Marie arrived in Paris on 6 March 1919.[112] She was immediately popular with the French people, due to her boldness during the War.[115] Upon meeting Marie, Clemenceau abruptly told her, "I don't like your Prime Minister", to which she replied, "Perhaps then you'll find me more agreeable."[116] He did, and president Raymond Poincaré noticed a change in Clemenceau's attitude towards Romania after Marie's arrival. After staying in Paris for a week, Marie accepted King George V and Queen Mary's invitation and crossed the English Channel, lodging at Buckingham Palace. Hoping to acquire as much goodwill for Romania as possible, Marie became acquainted with many important political figures of the time, including Lord Curzon, Winston Churchill and Waldorf and Nancy Astor. She also frequently visited her son Nicky, who was then in school at Eton College.[117] Marie was elated to have returned to England after so much time, writing that "it was a tremendous emotion to arrive in London, and to be greeted at the station by George and May."[118]

After the end of her visit in England, Marie returned to Paris, where the people were just as excited for her arrival as they had been a few weeks before. Crowds gathered around her frequently, waiting to see the "exotic" Queen of Romania. American President Woodrow Wilson remained unimpressed by Marie, and her comments on Russian laws dealing with sexual relations, which were considered inappropriate, did not help.[117] Marie shocked many officials by waving all her ministers aside and leading negotiations herself. On this, she would later comment, "Never mind, you'll all just have to get used to accepting me with the faults of my virtues."[119] Marie left Paris with numerous supplies for Romania's relief and later that year, the conference resulted in the international recognition of Greater Romania, thus doubling Ferdinand and Marie's kingdom to 295,000 square kilometres (114,000 sq mi) and increasing the population by ten million.[117] This led Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia, who briefly lived in Bucharest, to conclude that "by her charm, beauty, and ready wit, [Marie] could obtain anything she desired".[120]

Dynastic efforts

 
Queen Marie in a portrait by Constantin Pascali, early 1920s

In 1920, Marie's eldest daughter, Princess Elisabeth, was engaged to Prince George of Greece, the eldest son of the deposed King Constantine I of Greece and Marie's cousin Sophia. After inviting George and his two sisters, the Princesses Helen and Irene, to lodge with them at Sinaia, Marie organised numerous activities for the young couple and was delighted at the prospect of marrying off her daughter, whose character was severely flawed. In October, reports of King Alexander's death came from Greece; the Greek princesses had to return to their parents as soon as possible. The following day, news arrived that Marie's mother had died in her sleep in Zurich.[121] Marie made arrangements for her departure to Switzerland, where she would take Helen and Irene to their parents and arrange her mother's funeral. Meanwhile, George and Elisabeth would remain at Sinaia.[122]

Soon enough, Crown Prince Carol proposed to Princess Helen and they were married the following year. Marie was delighted, as she had frowned upon Carol's relationship with Zizi Lambrino and had been worried at the birth of their illegitimate son Carol, who, to her great relief, had been given his mother's surname.[123] In 1922, Marie married her second daughter, "Mignon", to Alexander I of Serbia (later of Yugoslavia). She was delighted at the births of her two royal grandsons, Prince Michael of Romania (1921–2017) and Prince Peter of Yugoslavia (1923–1970); the births of two grandchildren destined to sit on Europe's thrones seemed to cement her ambitions. Marie's dynastic efforts were viewed by critics as those of a manipulative mother who would sacrifice her children's happiness in order to fulfil her ambitions; in reality, Marie never forced any of her children to marry.[124] While attending Peter’s baptism, Marie met the Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth, by whom she was enchanted.[125]

In 1924, Ferdinand and Marie undertook a diplomatic tour of France, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. In England, she was warmly welcomed by George V, who declared that "apart from the common aims, which we pursue, there are other and dear ties between us. Her Majesty the Queen, my dear cousin, is British born."[126] Similarly, Marie wrote that the day of her arrival in England was "a great day for me, one of emotions, sweet, happy and the same time glorious emotions to come back as Queen to my own country, to be received officially, in all honour and enthusiastically into the bargain – to feel your heart swell with pride and satisfaction, to feel your heart beat and tears start into your eyes, while something gave you a lump into your throat!"[126] These state visits were a symbolic recognition of the prestige Romania had gained after World War I. Whilst visiting Geneva, Marie and Ferdinand became the first royals to enter the newly established headquarters of the League of Nations.[126]

Coronation

 
Official coronation portrait of Queen Marie, dressed in full regalia

The location for Marie and Ferdinand's coronation was Alba Iulia, which had been an important fortress in the Middle Ages and where Michael the Brave had been declared Voivode of Transylvania in 1599, thus bringing Wallachia and Transylvania under his personal union.[127] An Orthodox cathedral was built as the Coronation Cathedral in 1921–1922.[128] An elaborate set of jewellery and clothing was made especially for the coronation. Marie's crown was designed by painter Costin Petrescu and it was made in the Art Nouveau style by "Falize", a Parisian jewelry house. The crown was inspired by that of Despina, the wife of 16th-century Wallachian ruler Neagoe Basarab, and it was made entirely out of Transylvanian gold. The crown had two pendants on the sides; one contained an image of the royal arms of Romania and the other, the arms of the Duke of Edinburgh, which Marie had used as her own arms prior to her marriage. The crown, which cost around 65,000 francs, was paid for by the state, via a special law.[129]

Among the guests at the royal couple's coronation were Marie's sister "Baby Bee", the Duke of York and French generals Maxime Weygand and Henri Mathias Berthelot, who had led the French military mission to Romania. The ceremony was conducted by the Metropolitan of All Romania, Miron Cristea, but it was not performed inside the cathedral as Ferdinand, a Roman Catholic, refused to be crowned by a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. After placing his crown on his own head, Ferdinand crowned Marie, who had knelt before him. Immediately, cannons were fired as a sign that the first king and queen of Greater Romania had been anointed. A feast was given in the same room where the union had been proclaimed in 1918; there, more than 20,000 peasants were offered roast steaks. The following day, Ferdinand and Marie triumphantly entered Bucharest.[130] The splendour of the coronation was subsequently cited as evidence of Marie's theatricality.[131] Marie would be received into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1926, mentioning a desire to be closer to her people.[66]

Visit to America

 
Queen Marie on the cover of Time, 4 August 1924

The Maryhill Museum of Art in Maryhill, Washington, was initially designed as a mansion for wealthy businessman Samuel Hill. However, at Loie Fuller's behest, the building was turned into a museum instead. Hill wished it to be dedicated in 1926, and he conceived it as a monument to peace, to his wife Mary, and to Queen Marie herself. Marie agreed to come to America and witness the dedication, especially as Fuller was an old friend of hers. Fuller quickly put together a committee that supported Marie's "tour" of America and arrangements were made for her departure.[132] Marie viewed the tour as an opportunity to "see the country, meet the people and put Romania on the map".[133] She travelled by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and disembarked in New York, on 18 October 1926, accompanied by Prince Nicholas and Princess Ileana.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Dorothy Parker, 1927[134]

Upon her arrival, Marie was welcomed enthusiastically with the "whistle of steamers, roar of guns in white smoke puffs against gray fog, voices cheering in a stinging rain". She was formally greeted by Jimmy Walker, the Mayor of New York City.[135] Constance Lily Morris, author of On Tour with Queen Marie, wrote that the people were excited for Marie's arrival mainly because of her almost mythical allure, which had been created by papers and rumour throughout her life; she observed that "the modest Queen of the Belgians had once come with her king for a brief visit and years ago the dusky Hawaiian ruler had honored us, but there had been no others. The time could not have been better set." Marie was also fairly popular within suffragette circles, where she was viewed as "a woman whose wits had devised many a coup d'état, whose brains had thought out many a difficult problem for her people, who had used the gifts given her to further every good purpose".[136]

During their time in America, Marie, Nicholas and Ileana undertook tours of several cities, including Philadelphia. They were very popular, and were greeted with equal enthusiasm in each city they visited, so much so that "[Nicholas and Ileana] seemed fairly dazed by their tremendous ovation".[137] At the White House, the official dinner was marked by awkward moments, due to the morose attitude of President Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace; Marie lingered less than two hours.[138] Before leaving the United States, Marie was presented with a bullet-proof armored town car by Willys-Knight, which she joyfully accepted. On 24 November, Marie and her children were seen off by a delegation from Washington, D.C., as they prepared to leave by ship from New York Harbor. Morris wrote that "our last view was of Her Majesty, her children on either side, waving back with that tear-and-smile of those who pass from happy scenes."[139] Morris accompanied the queen throughout her journey and offered a very detailed account of Marie's time in America in her book, published in 1927.

Marie was delighted with the visit, and wished to return to America as soon as possible. She wrote in her diaries:[140]

"both my children and I have but one dream: to return! To return to that stupendous New World, which makes you almost guiddy [sic] because of its immencity, [sic] its noise, its striving, its fearful impetuous [sic] to get on, to do always more, always bigger, quicker, more astonishingly a restless, flaring great world, where I think everything can be realised ... I know, as long as I live, breathe and think, the love for America will beautify my life and thoughts ... Perhaps Fate will allow me one day to go back to America."

Widowhood (1927–1938)

1927–1930

 
Marie with Helen and Michael, 1927–1930

Prince Carol sparked a dynastic crisis when he officially renounced his rights to succeed Ferdinand on 5 January 1926, simultaneously waiving all parental rights over Prince Michael, who had been proclaimed heir apparent. A Provisional Regency Bill was passed, creating a regency council composed of Prince Nicholas; the Orthodox Patriarch, Miron Cristea; and Gheorghe Buzdugan, the president of the Court of Cassation.[141] However, both Marie and Ferdinand were reluctant to leave the country in the hands of a five-year-old boy, even overseen by a regency, for fear that the lands gained during World War I would be reclaimed by neighbouring countries and that political disturbances might lead to civil unrest. Nevertheless, when Marie returned from America, Ferdinand's death seemed imminent. He was suffering from intestinal cancer, and by April 1927 had come so close to death as to be given the last rites of the Catholic Church. He died on 20 July, in Marie's arms. She later wrote: "'I am so tired' were his last words and when he lay so quiet in my arms one hour later, I knew that I must thank God for him at least. This was rest indeed."[142]

Michael automatically succeeded as king upon Ferdinand's death and the regency council took charge of his role as monarch. In May 1928, Carol, who had found his life abroad with Magda Lupescu unsatisfactory,[140] attempted to return to Romania with the help of the 1st Viscount Rothermere. He was prevented from doing so by English authorities, who then proceeded to expel him from England. Infuriated, Marie sent an official apology to George V on behalf of her son, who had already begun plotting a coup d'état.[143] Carol succeeded in divorcing Princess Helen on 21 June 1928, on grounds of incompatibility.[144]

Marie's popularity was severely affected during Michael's reign and, after refusing to be part of the regency council in 1929, she was accused by the press, and even by Princess Helen, of plotting a coup.[145] During this time, there were numerous rumours as to Princess Ileana's marriage. After talk of Ileana marrying the Tsar of Bulgaria or the Prince of Asturias,[146] she was eventually betrothed to Alexander, Count of Hochberg, a minor German prince, in early 1930.[147] This betrothal was, however, short-lived and Marie never managed to conclude a political marriage for her youngest daughter, instead marrying her to Archduke Anton of Austria–Tuscany in 1931.[146]

Carol II's reign

 
Marie in a Philip de László painting, 1936

On 6 June 1930, Carol arrived in Bucharest and made his way into Parliament, where the Act of Succession 1927 was duly declared null. Thus, Carol usurped the throne from his son, becoming King Carol II. Upon hearing of Carol's return, Marie, who was abroad, was relieved. She had been growing anxious with the direction in which the country was heading and viewed Carol's return as the return of the Prodigal Son. However, as soon as she arrived in Bucharest, she became aware that things would not go well. Carol refused to accept his mother's advice to take Helen back[145] and never sought Marie's counsel during his reign, thus making the already existing breach between mother and son complete.[148]

Desolate and almost stripped of her belief, Marie turned to the religious teachings of the Baháʼí Faith, which she found "vastly appealing". She was particularly attracted by the idea of humanity's unification under one faith, given her own religiously divided family.[149] Introduced to the doctrine by Martha Root,[150] Marie carried on a correspondence with Shoghi Effendi, then head of the Faith, where she expressed herself as a follower of the Baháʼí teachings. Additionally, she made several public statements promoting the teachings of Baháʼu'lláh, describing him as a prophet similar to Jesus or Muhammad. This written correspondence has led Baháʼís to regard her as the first royal convert to their religion.[151][152][153] Biographer Hannah Pakula notes that Marie "continued to attend the Protestant Church", even though she "prayed 'better at home with my Baha-u-llah books and teachings.'"[149] In 1976, William McElwee Miller published a polemical book against the religion,[154] which included selections from a letter written in 1970 by Marie's daughter Ileana denying any such conversion had taken place.[155]

In 1931, Prince Nicholas eloped with Ioana Doletti, a divorced woman. Marie strongly disapproved of her son's actions and felt hurt by Doletti's repeated attempts to keep Nicholas from communicating with his mother. Although she blamed the women in her sons' lives for a while, she also came to blame herself, for failing to educate them properly. However, she stubbornly and continually refused to meet Magda Lupescu, even after Carol's pleas. Until her last years, Marie seldom even mentioned Lupescu's name.[156]

With Carol's mistress hated throughout the country, it was only a matter of time before opposition to the King emerged. This opposition most prominently came under the form of the Iron Guard, a group supported by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. After Carol turned to Ion Duca for help, the Iron Guard assassinated Duca in December 1933.[156] After Duca's death, Carol's popularity plummeted and there were rumours that an attempt would be made on his life at the annual independence parade. In order to avoid this, he instead had Marie attend the parade, in what would be her final public appearance.[157]

After the parade, Carol set out to destroy his mother's popularity among Romanians and tried to push her out of the country. Marie, however, did not comply, instead retreating to either of two locales.[158] The first was Bran Castle. Located near Brașov in southern Transylvania and given to her as a gift in 1920 by grateful local officials, she had it restored over the next seven years.[159] The other was Balchik, where she had built a palace and a small chapel called Stella Maris and tended to her garden. She also visited Ileana and her children in Austria. Ileana rarely received permission from Carol to visit Romania; this irritated Marie greatly. She also spent some time in Belgrade with her daughter "Mignon" and her son-in-law, King Alexander. In 1934, Marie visited England once again.[158]

Illness and death

 
Marie's tomb in Curtea de Argeș Monastery

During the summer of 1937, Marie fell ill.[21] Her personal physician, Dr. Castellani, determined she had pancreatic cancer, although her official diagnosis was cirrhosis of the liver. Marie had not been a drinker and, upon hearing the news, she reportedly said: "then there must be a non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, because I have never in my life tasted alcohol."[160] She was prescribed a diet of cold foods, injections and bed rest. Marie was so weak at times that she could not even pick up a pen. In February 1938, she was sent to a sanatorium in Italy, in hopes that she might recover. There, she was visited by Nicholas and his wife, whom Marie eventually forgave for her transgressions. She was also visited by Princess Helen, whom she had not seen in nearly seven years, and Waldorf Astor. Marie was eventually transferred to a sanatorium in Dresden. Growing weaker and weaker, she requested that she be taken back to Romania, in order to die there. Carol denied her a journey by aeroplane,[161] and she declined a medical flight offered by Hitler,[162] instead choosing to return to Romania by train. She was brought to the Pelișor Castle.[161][note 5]

Marie died on 18 July 1938, at 5:38 p.m., eight minutes after lapsing into a coma.[163] Her two eldest children, Carol and Elisabeth, accompanied by Prince Michael, were at her deathbed.[161] Two days later, on 20 July, Marie's body was brought to Bucharest, where she lay in state in the white drawing room at Cotroceni Palace. Her coffin was surrounded by flowers and glowing tapers and was guarded by officers of the Fourth Hussars. Thousands of people filed by Marie's bier during the three-day lying in state and, on the third day, the palace was opened for factory workers. Marie's funeral cortege made its way to the train station, passing under the Arch of Triumph. Her coffin was taken to Curtea de Argeș Monastery, where she was interred. Marie's heart, according to her own wishes, was placed in a small golden casket embellished with the emblems of the Romanian provinces and interred in her Stella Maris chapel in Balchik. In 1940, after Southern Dobrudja was ceded to Bulgaria during World War II, her heart was transferred to Bran Castle.[164] There, Ileana built a chapel to house the heart, kept in two nested boxes placed inside a marble sarcophagus.[165]

Marie was the last queen consort of Romania, as Princess Helen was accorded only the title of Queen Mother between 1940 and 1947. She was one of Queen Victoria's five crowned granddaughters and one of three to retain their positions as consort after the conclusion of World War I, alongside the Queen of Norway and the Queen of Spain.

Legacy

Author

According to one of her biographers, Diana Mandache, Marie published 34 books and short stories during her lifetime.[166] Encouraged to write by her aunt Queen Elisabeth, she found a source of inspiration in the memoirs of King Carol I.[167] Her first book, The Lily of Life, appeared at Bucharest in 1912. Written in the English she would always use, but soon translated into Romanian, it is a fairy tale with symbolic characters.[168] My Country, published in London in 1916 and in Paris the following year, combined a variety of genres in an effort to raise Allied support for Romania. Nicolae Iorga wrote and published a Romanian translation in 1917,[169] and an expanded version appeared in 1925.[170]

Her critically acclaimed autobiography, The Story of My Life, published by Cassell in London, in three volumes,[171] came out in 1934-1935.[170] The book was reviewed by Virginia Woolf, who felt it was too familiarizing of the royal family. She stated that "suppose that among the autumn books of 2034 is Prometheus Unbound, by George the Sixth, or Wuthering Heights, by Elizabeth the Second, what will be the effect upon their loyal subjects? Will the British Empire survive? Will Buckingham Palace look as solid then as it does now? Words are dangerous things, let us remember. A republic might be brought into being by a poem."[171] At the same time, she appreciated its depiction of a “royal animal” escaping its gilded cage.[170] Critic Octav Șuluțiu emphasized the work’s value as a historical document and its psychological insight.[172]

Marie wrote a few diary pages in 1914 upon the death of Carol I, but started keeping a daily diary in August 1916, on the day Romania entered World War I. She wrote new entries almost every day during the war and after, with some pauses in her later years. [169] The first volume was published in 1996.[173] Ten additional books of entries appeared between 2006 and 2014; Marie’s war diary, edited by Lucian Boia, was published in 2014; and the entries from her final years were released to the public in 2018.[174]

Public figure

 
A medal depicting Marie

Even before becoming queen, Marie had succeeded in establishing her public image as that of "one of the best-looking and richest princesses in Europe".[175] She was known primarily for her talent in horse-riding, writing, painting, sculpting and dancing, as well as for her beauty.[176] Her popularity was dimmed by two slanderous campaigns: that conducted by the Central Powers during World War I;[177] and that led by Communist officials after Romania's transition to a Socialist Republic in 1947.

During Romania's 42 years under Communist rule, Marie was alternately depicted as either an "agent of English capitalism" or as a devoted patriot who believed that her destiny was intertwined with that of Romania. In the 1949 Adevărata istorie a unei monarhii ("The True History of a Monarchy"), author Alexandru Gârneață refers to orgies that supposedly were held by Marie at Cotroceni and Balchik and claims that her cirrhosis was caused by her heavy drinking, even offering examples of instances when a drunken Marie needed to be carried off a yacht by her fellow drinkers. Marie's supposed extramarital affairs were brought forward as evidence of promiscuity, which contravened Communist values.[178] In 1968, Communist officials vandalised the chapel sheltering Marie's heart, opening the sarcophagus and taking the boxes as well as the heart into Bran Castle. In 1971, these were transferred to Bucharest's National Museum of Romanian History.[165][179] It was not until the late period of Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime, the last years before the Romanian Revolution, that Marie's merits came to be acknowledged.[178]

In Romania, Marie is known by the nickname Mama Răniților ("Mother of the Wounded"),[180] or simply as "Regina Maria", while in other countries she is remembered as the "Soldier Queen" and "Mamma Regina".[181][182] Marie is also nicknamed "the mother-in-law of the Balkans", due to her children's marriages into the region's ruling houses. By the time of her death, Marie's children had ruled in three Balkan countries,[124][183] although her descendants no longer occupy any European throne. Marie was called "one of the greatest figures in Romanian history" by Constantin Argetoianu,[184] and in her honour, Romania established the Order of the Cross of Queen Marie in 1917.[185]

 
Statue celebrating Queen Marie's birth at Eastwell Park, Ashford, Kent

Oscar Han executed a bronze bust of Marie. Unveiled in the center of Balchik in 1933, it was evacuated to Constanța during the Romanian withdrawal of 1940. It then spent most of the next eight decades in storage, at times being threatened with melting under the Communist regime and receiving a bullet hole in the back of the head. The restored bust was placed in front of the Constanța art museum in 2020.[186] A statue of Queen Marie was unveiled in Ashford, Kent, in December 2018, to mark her birth and childhood at the nearby Eastwell Park.[187] Soon afterwards, a fictionalised account of her role in the Paris Peace Conference was given in a feature film, Queen Marie,[188] while American author Laurie R. King depicted the queen at Bran in the mystery novel Castle Shade.[189]

Personal effects and jewels

Prior to 2009, many of Marie's personal belongings were on display at Bran Castle, her residence in her later years, which functions as a museum.[190] That year, when the castle was legally restored to Princess Ileana's heirs, the Culture Ministry moved the collection of her items to a nearby building, Vama Medievală, which is also open to visitors.[191] In 2015, the casket containing the queen's heart was placed on a pedestal in the room at Pelișor where she died; the display can be viewed by the public.[192]

The Maryhill Museum of Art holds a permanent exhibition titled "Marie, Queen of Romania". This display includes the queen's coronation gown, a copy of the crown, silverware, gilt furniture, and jewelry, among other items.[193][194]

The Queen Marie of Romania Sapphire is named from its association with Marie. Originally set in a necklace by Cartier in 1913, the drop jewel weighs 478 carats. It was transferred to a diamond necklace in 1919 and King Ferdinand purchased it for Marie in 1921. The price was 1,375,000 francs, to be paid in four instalments until 1924. At the time, large jewelry had not excited Marie's interest; she preferred to wear a Greek cross or, when she attended the Paris Opera, her pearls. However, the sapphire sautoir (jewel chain) was an ideal match for the sapphire tiara she had bought from Russian exile Grand Duchess Vladimir. She wore them both at her coronation receptions and when sitting for her portrait by Philip de László.[195] During her visit to the United States, when she presided over a ball at the New York Ritz-Carlton, one observer remarked: "There was a heavy chain of diamonds, broken at intervals with squares of massive design. From this chain was suspended an unbelievable egg-shaped sapphire, one of the largest, it is said, in the world".[138]

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

  • 29 October 1875 – 10 January 1893: Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh[196][197]
  • 10 January 1893 – 10 October 1914: Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Romania[198]
  • 10 October 1914 – 20 July 1927: Her Majesty The Queen of Romania
  • 20 July 1927 – 18 July 1938: Her Majesty Queen Marie of Romania

Honours

Marie was a recipient of the following national and foreign honours:[199]

Arms

As a male-line grandchild of a British Sovereign, Marie bore the arms of the kingdom, with an inescutcheon for Saxony, differenced by a five-point label argent, the outer pair of which bore anchors azure, the inner roses gules, and the central a cross gules. In 1917, the inescutcheon was dropped by Royal Warrant from George V.[213]

  •  

    Marie's coat of arms as a British princess

  •  

    Early monogram of Queen Marie

  •  

    Monogram of Queen Marie of Romania

  •  

    Monogram of Queen Marie of Romania

Written works

Books

  • The Lily of Life (1912)
  • The Dreamer of Dreams (1913)
  • Ilderim (1915)
  • Four Seasons. Out of a Man’s Life (1915)
  • The Naughty Queen (1916)
  • The Stealers of Light. A legend (1916)
  • My Country (1916); enlarged as The Country That I Love: An Exile's Memories (1925)
  • Roumania Yesterday and To-day, by Winifred Gordon (1918) [1st chapter by Queen Marie]
  • The Story of Naughty Kildeen (1922)
  • Ode to Roumania (1923)
  • Why?: A Story of Great Longing (1923)
  • The Queen of Roumania's Fairy Book (1925)
  • The Voice on the Mountain: A Story for Those Who Understand (1926)
  • The Lost Princess: A Fairy Tale (1927)
  • The Magic Doll of Roumania (1929)
  • The Story of My Life (3 vol., 1934-1935)
  • Masks (1937)
  • Later Chapters of My Life: The Lost Journal of Queen Marie of Romania (2004)

Short stories

Poems

  • "A Robin Redbreast’s Carol", The Lady's Realm, January 1903

Songs

  • "Byzantine Princess Song" (1933)

Nonfiction

  • "What the River Says", The Lady's Realm, November 1899
  • "Romantic Rumania", The Saturday Evening Post, 7 December 1918
  • "A Queen Looks at Life", North American Newspaper Alliance, June 1925 [syndicated series][note 6]
  • "A Queen Talks About Love", Cosmopolitan, September 1925
  • "The Intimate Thoughts of a Queen Facing Fifty", Cosmopolitan, October 1925
  • "Foreword", Art and Archeology, January 1926
  • "At Grand-Mama’s Court", McCall's, March 1926
  • "My Impressions of America", North American Newspaper Alliance, 21 October – 4 December 1926 [14-part syndicated series]
  • "The Story of My Life", The Saturday Evening Post, 16 December 1933 - 3 February 1934 [8 parts]
  • "My Life as a Crown Princess", The Saturday Evening Post, 14 April – 16 June 1934 [8 parts; not in 12 May 9 June]
  • "My Mission: I. In Paris", The Cornhill Magazine, October 1939
  • "My Mission: II. At Buckingham Palace", The Cornhill Magazine, November 1939
  • "My Mission: III. Paris Again", The Cornhill Magazine, December 1939

Letters

  • A Biographer's Notebook, by Hector Bolitho (1950) [includes Queen Marie's letters to her "American friend"]
  • Queen Mary of Romania: Letters to Her King (2015)
  • Queen Marie of Romania: Letters to Her Mother (2 vol., 2016)

Ancestry

References

Endnotes

  1. ^ All dates in this article use the Gregorian calendar, which was not in use in Romania until 1919. The Julian calendar which Romania then used was 12 days behind before 1900 and 13 days behind after 1900.
  2. ^ Boris was rumoured to have been "Mignon"'s natural father; the princess's paternity was reputedly "a public secret"[76] and Marie frequently taunted King Carol by telling him that Boris was, in fact, "Mignon"'s father.[77]
  3. ^ Astor was rumoured to have been the father of Prince Nicholas, Marie's second son, whose blue eyes and "hawk nose" resembled those characteristic of the Astors.[78] As he grew older, Nicholas came to resemble his Hohenzollern relatives, thus quelling prior gossip.[79]
  4. ^ Știrbey was rumoured to have been the father of Princess Ileana and Prince Mircea, Marie's youngest children.
  5. ^ According to official reports, in keeping with Carol's cult of personality, Marie was still alive upon reaching the castle. However, she may in fact have died while on the train, in the Bacău area. At the time, another rumour suggested that Carol had fired a gun at Nicolae, the bullet hitting Marie when she threw herself before the latter.[162]
  6. ^ According to "A Bookman's Notes: Ghost Writing", The Bookman, October 1927, Zoë Beckley, journalist for the Famous Features Syndicate, ghostwrote Queen Marie's newspaper articles. According to Philip Schuyler, "Who Piqued the Interest of a Queen?", Editor & Publisher, 13 June 1925, Beckley solicited this particular series from the queen in Bucharest on 1 February 1925, but denied ghosting it, restricting herself to typing, and correcting punctuation and spelling.

Footnotes

  1. ^ United Press (19 July 1938). "Roumanian Queen to Lie in State at Son's Palace". Delaware County Daily Times. Beaver and Rochester, Penn. p. 12.
  2. ^ "No. 24261". The London Gazette. 30 October 1875. p. 5161.
  3. ^ a b Marie 1990, p. 19.
  4. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 6.
  5. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 7.
  6. ^ The Times, 16 December 1875.
  7. ^ "No. 24276". The London Gazette. 17 December 1875. p. 6461.
  8. ^ "Princess Marie of Edinburgh (1875–1938)". Royal Collection Trust. Inventory no. 400920.
  9. ^ Gauthier 2010, p. 9.
  10. ^ Marie 1990, p. 12.
  11. ^ Marie 1990, p. 8.
  12. ^ Marie 1990, p. 15.
  13. ^ Marie 1990, p. 9.
  14. ^ Marie 1990, p. 21.
  15. ^ Van der Kiste 1991, p. 20.
  16. ^ Marie 1990, pp. 31–32.
  17. ^ Pakula 1984, p. 49.
  18. ^ Marie 1990, p. 47.
  19. ^ "Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg with their bridesmaids and others on their wedding day". National Portrait Gallery, London.
  20. ^ Marie 1990, pp. 88–89.
  21. ^ a b c d e Pakula, Hannah (2004). "Marie, Princess (1875–1938)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/64674. Retrieved 3 November 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  22. ^ Marie 1990, p. 83.
  23. ^ Elsberry 1972, pp. 17–19.
  24. ^ Marie 1990, p. 105.
  25. ^ Marie 1990, pp. 106–7.
  26. ^ Marie 1990, p. 109.
  27. ^ Marie 1990, p. 136.
  28. ^ Marie 1990, p. 146.
  29. ^ Sullivan 1997, pp. 80–82.
  30. ^ Marie 1990, p. 155.
  31. ^ Marie 1990, p. 152.
  32. ^ Marie 1990, p. 169.
  33. ^ Marie 1990, p. 177.
  34. ^ Marie 1990, p. 190.
  35. ^ Marie 1990, p. 194.
  36. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 31.
  37. ^ Pope-Hennessy 1959, pp. 250–51.
  38. ^ a b Mandache 2001, p. 334.
  39. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 32.
  40. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 33.
  41. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 34.
  42. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 35.
  43. ^ Elsberry 1972, p. 44.
  44. ^ Supplement to The Graphic, 21 January 1893.
  45. ^ Pakula 1984, p. 68.
  46. ^ Marie 1991, Vol 2, pp. 10–14.
  47. ^ Gauthier 2010, p. 52.
  48. ^ Eilers 1987, p. 192.
  49. ^ Marie 1991, Vol 2, p. 15.
  50. ^ Wolbe 2004, p. 214.
  51. ^ Ciubotaru 2011, p. 22.
  52. ^ Marie 2004, p. 122.
  53. ^ Marie 1991, Vol 2, p. 121.
  54. ^ Gelardi 2005, p. 49.
  55. ^ Elsberry 1972, p. 54.
  56. ^ Elsberry 1972, p. 57.
  57. ^ Marie 1991, Vol 2, pp. 171, 316–17.
  58. ^ Marie 1991, Vol 2, pp. 312–13.
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Bibliography

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  • Botoran, Constantin; Moisuc, Viorica (1983). România la Conferința de Pace de la Paris (in Romanian). Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. OL 18196100M.
  • Ciubotaru, Ștefania (2011). Viața Cotidiană la Curtea Regală a României (in Romanian). Bucharest: Cartex. ISBN 978-606-8023-13-7.
  • Crawford, Donald (2011). The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II. Edinburgh: Murray McLellan Limited. ISBN 978-0-9570091-1-0.
  • Daggett, Mabel Potter (1926). Marie of Roumania. New York: George H. Doran & Co. OCLC 1075530.
  • Duca, Ion G. (1981). Amintiri Politice. Bucharest: Humanitas. ISBN 978-973-28-0183-3.
  • Dună, Raluca (2021). "'Memory, Though, is as Strong as Hope'. Queen Marie of Romania and her War Literature". Philologica Jassyensia. Iași. year XVII, nr. 1 (33): 81–93. ISSN 2247-8353.
  • Easterman, Alexander Levvey (1942). King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu. London: V. Gollancz Ltd. OCLC 4769487.
  • Eilers, Marlene A. (1987). Queen Victoria's Descendants. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8063-1202-5.
  • Elsberry, Terence (1972). Marie of Romania. New York: St. Martin's Press. OCLC 613611.
  • Gauthier, Guy (2010). Missy, Regina României (in Romanian). Bucharest: Humanitas. ISBN 978-973-50-2621-9.
  • Gelardi, Julia (2005). Born to Rule. London: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-32423-0.
  • Giurescu, Constantin C. (1972). Istoria României în date (in Romanian). Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică. OCLC 637298400.
  • Horedt, Kurt (1958). Contribuţii la istoria Transilvaniei în secolele IV-XIII (in Romanian). Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne.
  • Hupchik, Dennis (1995). Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-12116-7.
  • Mandache, Diana (May 2001). "The Marriage of Princess Marie of Edinburgh and Ferdinand, the Crown Prince of Romania". Royalty Digest. 10 (119): 333–38. ISSN 0967-5744.
  • Mandache, Diana (2011a). Later Chapters of My Life: The Lost Memoir of Queen Marie of Romania. Gloucestershire: Sutton. ISBN 978-0-7509-3691-0.
  • Marcus, Della (2000). Her Eternal Crown: Queen Marie of Romania and the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: George Ronald. ISBN 0-85398-442-5.
  • Marghiloman, Alexandru (1927). Note politice, 1897–1924. Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice "Eminescu". OCLC 23540746.
  • Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1932). A Princess in Exile. New York: Viking. OCLC 1372354.
  • Marie, Queen of Romania (1990). Povestea Vieții Mele (in Romanian). Vol. 1. Iași: Moldova. ISBN 973-9032-01-X.
  • Marie, Queen of Romania (1991). Povestea Vieții Mele (in Romanian). Vol. 2. Bucharest: Eminescu. ISBN 973-22-0214-9.
  • Marie, Queen of Romania (1991). Povestea Vieții Mele (in Romanian). Vol. 3. Bucharest: Eminescu. ISBN 973-22-0215-7.
  • Marie, Queen of Romania (2004). Însemnări Zilnice. Bucharest: Albatros. ISBN 978-973-24-0323-5.
  • Morris, Constance Lily (1927). On Tour with Queen Marie. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co. OCLC 2048943.
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General bibliography

  • Cristescu, Sorin (2017). Queen Marie of Romania and Colonel Boyle. Confessions. Bucharest: Tritonic. ISBN 978-606-749-210-1.
  • Cristescu, Sorin (2018). Queen Marie of Romania. Confessions, February 1914 - March 1927. Bucharest: Tritonic. ISBN 978-606-749-296-5.
  • Cristescu, Sorin (2015). Queen Marie of Romania - Letters to Her King. Bucharest: Tritonic. ISBN 978-606-749-102-9.
  • Cristescu, Sorin (2016). Queen Marie of Romania - Letters to Her Mother, vol. I: 1901 -1906. Bucharest: Tritonic. ISBN 978-606-749-145-6.
  • Cristescu, Sorin (2016). Queen Marie of Romania - Letters to Her Mother, vol. II: 1907 -1920. Bucharest: Tritonic. ISBN 978-606-749-153-1.
  • Mandache, Diana (2011b). Dearest Missy. The Letters of Marie Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, Duchess of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and of her daughter, Marie, Crown Princess of Romania, 1879-1900. Falköping: Rosvall. ISBN 978-91-975671-7-6.
  • Zimmermann, Silvia Irina (2020). The Child of the Sun: Royal Fairy Tales and Essays by the Queens of Romania, Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva, 1843-1916) and Marie (1875-1938). Stuttgart: Ibidem. ISBN 978-3-8382-1393-4.

Archives

A large part of Queen Marie's papers (including correspondence and photographs) is preserved in different American institutions, including the "Queen Marie of Romania Papers" collection in the Library of Kent State University (Kent, Ohio),[1] the "George I. Duca Papers" collection in the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, California),[2] and the "Lavinia A. Small Papers" collection in the Library of the University of Colorado at Boulder (Boulder, Colorado).[3]

Marie's letters to her parents-in-law, Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Antonia of Portugal, between 1892 and 1904 are preserved in the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family archive, which is in the State Archive of Sigmaringen (Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen) in the town of Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.[4][5] Marie's letters to her husband's grandmother, Josephine of Baden, between 1893 and 1899 are also preserved in the State Archive of Sigmaringen (Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen).[6]

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Queen Marie of Romania.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Marie of Romania.
  • Works by or about Marie of Romania at Internet Archive
  • Works by Marie of Romania at Project Gutenberg
  • British Pathé newsreels depicting Marie of Romania: 1914, 1917, 1924, 1930, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1938
  • Works by Marie of Romania at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • Treaty between Great Britain and Roumania for the Marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Great Britain and Ireland with His Royal Highness the Prince Ferdinand of Roumania – 15 December 1892
  • Newspaper clippings about Marie of Romania in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
Marie of Romania
Cadet branch of the House of Wettin
Born: 29 October 1875 Died: 18 July 1938
Romanian royalty
Preceded by Queen consort of Romania
10 October 1914 – 20 July 1927 		Vacant
Title next held by
Anne of Bourbon-Parma
as titular queen
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Cover of Time Magazine
4 August 1924 		Succeeded by
  1. ^ "Queen Marie of Romania Papers". Department of Special Collections and Archives. Kent State University Libraries and Media Services. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  2. ^ "George I. Duca Papers". Hoover Institution Library & Archives. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  3. ^ "Lavinia A. Small Papers". University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, Special Collections, Archives and Preservation Department. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  4. ^ "Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria ("Missy") von Rumänien, geb. Prinzessin von Edinburgh und Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, an ihre Schwiegereltern Fürst Leopold und Fürstin Antonia von Hohenzollern". Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  5. ^ "Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria ("Missy") von Rumänien an ihren Schwiegervater Fürst Leopold von Hohenzollern". Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  6. ^ "Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria ("Missy") von Rumänien, geb. Prinzessin von Edinburgh und Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, an Fürstin Josephine von Hohenzollern". Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen. Retrieved 1 October 2021.

March 11, 2023
marie, romania, other, people, named, disambiguation, marie, born, princess, marie, alexandra, victoria, edinburgh, october, 1875, july, 1938, note, last, queen, romania, wife, king, ferdinand, mariequeen, consort, romaniatenure10, october, 1914, july, 1927cor. For other people named Marie of Romania see Marie of Romania disambiguation Marie born Princess Marie Alexandra Victoria of Edinburgh 29 October 1875 18 July 1938 note 1 was the last Queen of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I MarieQueen consort of RomaniaTenure10 October 1914 20 July 1927Coronation15 October 1922BornPrincess Marie of Edinburgh 1875 10 29 29 October 1875Eastwell Park Kent EnglandDied18 July 1938 1938 07 18 aged 62 Pelișor Castle Sinaia RomaniaBurial24 July 1938 1 Curtea de Argeș CathedralSpouseFerdinand I of Romania m 1893 died 1927 wbr IssueCarol II of Romania Elisabeth Queen of the Hellenes Maria Queen of Yugoslavia Nicholas Prince Regent Ileana Archduchess of Austria Prince MirceaNamesMarie Alexandra VictoriaHouseSaxe Coburg and GothaFatherAlfred Duke of Saxe Coburg and GothaMotherMaria Alexandrovna of RussiaSignatureMarie was born into the British royal family Her parents were Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh later Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia Marie s early years were spent in Kent Malta and Coburg After refusing a proposal from her cousin the future King George V she was chosen as the future wife of Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania the heir apparent of King Carol I in 1892 Marie was Crown Princess between 1893 and 1914 and became immediately popular with the Romanian people After the outbreak of World War I Marie urged Ferdinand to ally himself with the Triple Entente and declare war on Germany which he eventually did in 1916 During the early stages of fighting Bucharest was occupied by the Central Powers and Marie Ferdinand and their five children took refuge in Western Moldavia There she and her three daughters acted as nurses in military hospitals caring for soldiers who were wounded or afflicted by cholera After the war on 1 December 1918 the historical region of Transylvania following Bessarabia and Bukovina united with the Old Kingdom Marie now queen of Greater Romania attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where she campaigned for international recognition of the enlarged Romania In 1922 she and Ferdinand were crowned in a specially built cathedral in the ancient city of Alba Iulia in an elaborate ceremony which mirrored their status as queen and king of a united state As queen Marie was very popular both in Romania and abroad In 1926 she and two of her children undertook a diplomatic tour of the United States They were received enthusiastically by the people and visited several cities before returning to Romania There Marie found that Ferdinand was gravely ill and he died a few months later Now queen dowager Marie refused to be part of the regency council which reigned over the country under the minority of her grandson King Michael In 1930 Marie s eldest son Carol who had waived his rights to succession deposed his son and usurped the throne becoming King Carol II He removed Marie from the political scene and strived to crush her popularity As a result Marie moved away from Bucharest and spent the rest of her life either in the countryside or at Balchik Palace her summer residence in Southern Dobruja by the Black Sea In 1937 she became ill with cirrhosis and died the following year Following Romania s transition to a People s Republic the monarchy was excoriated by communist officials Several biographies of the royal family described Marie either as a drunkard or as a promiscuous woman referring to her many alleged affairs and to orgies she had supposedly organised before and during the war In the years preceding the Romanian Revolution of 1989 Marie s popularity recovered and she was offered as a model of patriotism to the population Marie is primarily remembered for her work as a nurse but is also known for her extensive writing including her critically acclaimed autobiography Contents 1 Early life 1875 1893 1 1 Birth 1 2 Upbringing 1 3 Marriage 1 4 Issue 2 Crown Princess 1893 1914 2 1 Domestic life 2 2 Life at court 3 Queen of Romania 1914 1927 3 1 World War I 3 2 Paris Peace Conference 3 3 Dynastic efforts 3 4 Coronation 3 5 Visit to America 4 Widowhood 1927 1938 4 1 1927 1930 4 2 Carol II s reign 4 3 Illness and death 5 Legacy 5 1 Author 5 2 Public figure 5 3 Personal effects and jewels 6 Titles styles honours and arms 6 1 Titles and styles 6 2 Honours 6 3 Arms 7 Written works 7 1 Books 7 2 Short stories 7 3 Poems 7 4 Songs 7 5 Nonfiction 7 6 Letters 8 Ancestry 9 References 9 1 Archives 10 External linksEarly life 1875 1893 EditBirth Edit Marie was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh and the former Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia respectively the son of Queen Victoria and the daughter of Emperor Alexander II She was born at her parents residence Eastwell Manor in Kent on 29 October 1875 at 10 30 a m in the presence of her father Her birth was celebrated by firing the Park and Tower guns 2 She was named Marie Alexandra Victoria after her mother and grandmothers 3 but she was informally known as Missy 4 The Duke of Edinburgh wrote that his daughter promises to be as fine a child as her brother and gives every evidence of finely developed lungs and did so before she was fairly in the world 5 As a grandchild of the reigning British monarch in the male line Marie was formally styled Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh from birth Marie s baptism took place in the private chapel of Windsor Castle on 15 December 1875 and was officiated by Arthur Stanley and Gerald Wellesley Dean of Windsor The baptism of a strictly private nature took place one day after the ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of her paternal grandfather Prince Albert 6 Marie s godparents were Empress Maria Alexandrovna her maternal grandmother for whom Queen Victoria stood proxy the Princess of Wales her paternal aunt the Duchess of Saxe Coburg and Gotha her great aunt for whom Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein stood proxy the Tsarevich of Russia her maternal uncle for whom Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov stood proxy and the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn her paternal uncle for whom the Duke of Albany stood proxy 7 Upbringing Edit Marie aged seven in an 1882 portrait by John Everett Millais commissioned by Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Royal Academy 8 Marie and her siblings Prince Alfred b 1874 known as Young Affie and Princesses Victoria Melita b 1876 known as Ducky Alexandra b 1878 known as Sandra and Beatrice b 1884 known as Baby Bee spent much of their early life at Eastwell Park which their mother preferred instead of Clarence House their official residence 9 In her memoirs Marie would remember Eastwell fondly 10 The Duke of Edinburgh was largely absent from his children s lives due to his position in the British Royal Navy and their life was governed by their mother Marie would later state that she did not even know the colour of her father s hair until she looked at later portraits of him believing it to be much darker than it actually was 11 When he was at home the Duke would often play with his children inventing many games for them 12 Of all her siblings Marie was closest to her sister Victoria Melita who was one year younger but whom everyone believed to be the older girl because of her stature much to the princesses dismay 13 The Edinburgh children were all baptised and raised in the Anglican faith this upset their Russian Orthodox mother 3 The Duchess of Edinburgh was a supporter of the idea of separating generations and Marie deeply regretted the fact that her mother never allowed chatting between the two as if they were equals 14 Nonetheless the Duchess was independent minded cultured and the most important person in her children s lives 15 At the behest of their mother Marie and her sisters were taught French which they detested and rarely ever spoke 16 Overall the Duchess neglected her daughters education considering them not very bright or gifted They were permitted to read aloud but in the fields of painting and drawing areas in which they had inherited Queen Victoria s talent the girls received only a pedestrian instruction 17 The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh frequently received members of the royal family at Eastwell Park inviting them for breakfast nearly daily 18 and in 1885 Marie and Victoria Melita served as bridesmaids at the wedding of their aunt Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg 19 Among Marie s playmates were her maternal cousins Grand Dukes Nicholas called Nicky and George called Georgie and Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia the other two Russian cousins Grand Duke Michael called Misha and Grand Duchess Olga being too young for the Edinburgh girls Other playmates included the children of their maternal uncle Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia 20 Princess Marie photographed in 1888 In 1886 when Marie was eleven years old the Duke of Edinburgh was named commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and the family took up residence at San Antonio Palace in Malta 21 Marie would remember her time in Malta as the happiest memory of my existence 22 It was in Malta that Marie found her first love Maurice Bourke the captain of the Duke s ship whom Marie called Captain Dear Marie was prone to fits of jealousy when Bourke would pay more attention to one of her sisters than to her 23 The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were greatly loved in Malta and San Antonio Palace was frequently full of guests 24 Marie and Victoria Melita received white horses from their mother and went to the local hippodrome nearly daily apart from Saturday 25 During their first year in Malta a French governess oversaw the princesses education but due to her failing health she was replaced the following year by a much younger German woman 26 At San Antonio the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh always maintained a room ready for Prince George of Wales the second son of the Prince of Wales later King Edward VII who was in the Royal Navy George called the three elder Edinburgh girls the three dearests but favoured Marie the most 27 Meanwhile the Duke of Edinburgh became heir presumptive to his childless paternal uncle Ernest II Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha upon the Prince of Wales s renunciation of his rights to the duchy Consequently the family relocated to Coburg in 1889 21 Marie later came to view this moment as truly the end of a life that had been absolute happiness and joy without clouds of a life with no disappointments or delusions and without any discordant note 28 The Duchess who was pro German hired a German governess for her daughters bought them plain clothing and even had them confirmed in the Lutheran faith 29 The family spent their summers at Rosenau Castle 30 Duke Ernest was described by Marie as having his oddities his court was less strict than other German courts of the time 31 In Coburg the princesses education was broadened more emphasis was placed on painting and music which were taught by Anna Messing and Mrs Helferich respectively 32 On Thursdays and Sundays Marie and her sisters went to the Coburg Theatre an experience which they enjoyed greatly 33 Marie and Victoria Melita often observed their brother s friends and made comments on whom they liked better an aspect which Marie believed was inevitable in the lives of girls who have brothers 34 Another activity which the girls enjoyed at Coburg was attending winter parties organised by their mother during which they would ice skate and play different games such as ice hockey 35 Marriage Edit Ferdinand and Marie the Crown Prince and Princess of Romania pictured after their 1893 marriage Marie grew into a lovely young woman with sparkling blue eyes and silky fair hair she was courted by several royal bachelors including Prince George of Wales who in 1892 became second in line to inherit the throne 36 Queen Victoria the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh all approved but the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Edinburgh did not The Princess of Wales disliked the family s pro German sentiment and the Duchess of Edinburgh did not wish for her daughter to remain in England which she disliked She also disliked the fact that the Princess of Wales whose father had been a minor German prince before being called to the Danish throne was higher than her in the order of precedence 37 The Duchess of Edinburgh was also against the idea of a marriage between first cousins which was not allowed by her native Russian Orthodox Church 38 Thus when George proposed to her Marie informed him that the marriage was impossible and that he must remain her beloved chum Queen Victoria would later comment that Georgie lost Missy by waiting amp waiting 39 Around this time King Carol I of Romania was looking for a suitable bride for Crown Prince Ferdinand in order to secure the succession and assure the continuation of the House of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen Possibly motivated by the prospect of removing tensions between Russia and Romania on the subject of control over Bessarabia the Duchess of Edinburgh suggested that Marie meet Ferdinand 38 Marie and Ferdinand first became acquainted during a gala dinner and the pair conversed in German She found him shy but amiable and their second meeting went just as well 40 Once the pair were formally engaged Queen Victoria wrote to another granddaughter Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine that Ferdinand is nice amp the Parents are charming but the country is very insecure amp the immorality of the Society at Bucharest quite awful Of course the marriage will be delayed some time as Missy won t be 17 till the end of October 41 German Empress Victoria Marie s aunt wrote to her daughter Crown Princess Sophia of Greece that Missy is till now quite delighted but the poor child is so young how can she guess what is before her 42 In late 1892 King Carol visited London in order to meet the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Victoria who eventually agreed to the marriage and appointed him a Knight of the Garter 43 On 10 January 1893 Marie and Ferdinand were married at Sigmaringen Castle in three ceremonies one civil one Catholic Ferdinand s religion and one Anglican The civil ceremony was performed in the Red Hall of the castle by Karl von Wendel the German Emperor being the first of the witnesses present to sign the marriage act At four o clock the Catholic ceremony took place at the Town Church with Marie being led to the altar by her father The Anglican ceremony was more modest and was conducted in one of the chambers of the castle 44 45 Although King Carol granted the couple Honigtag one day of honeymoon Marie and Ferdinand spent a few days at the Castle of Krauchenwies in Bavaria From there they left for the countryside their journey being interrupted briefly by a stop at Vienna where they visited Emperor Franz Joseph Due to growing tensions between Austria and Romania the visit took place during the ongoing movement of the Transylvanian Memorandum the couple s visit was brief and they arrived in the border town of Predeal following a nighttime crossing of Transylvania by train 46 Marie was warmly welcomed by the Romanian people who were longing for a more personal monarchy 47 Issue Edit See also Royal descendants of Queen Victoria and King Christian IX Name Birth Death Spouse and childrenKing Carol II of Romania 1893 15 October 1893 1953 4 April 1953 Married 1918 Ioana Maria Valentina Zizi Lambrino 1898 1953 1 son Carol Lambrino Married 1921 Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark 1896 1982 1 son King Michael of Romania Married 1947 Elena Magda Lupescu died 1977 no issueQueen Elisabeth of Greece 1894 12 October 1894 1956 15 November 1956 Married 1921 King George II of Greece 1890 1947 no issueQueen Maria of Yugoslavia 1900 6 January 1900 1961 22 June 1961 Married 1922 King Alexander I of Yugoslavia 1888 1934 3 sons including King Peter II of Yugoslavia Prince Nicholas 48 1903 18 August 1903 1978 9 June 1978 Married 1931 Ioana Doletti 1902 9 1963 no issue Married 1967 Thereza Lisboa Figueira de Mello 1913 1997 no issuePrincess Ileana 1909 5 January 1909 1991 21 January 1991 Married 1931 Archduke Anton of Austria Tuscany 1901 1987 2 sons 4 daughtersMarried 1953 Dr Stefan Issarescu 1906 2002 no issuePrince Mircea 1913 3 January 1913 1916 2 November 1916 NoneCrown Princess 1893 1914 Edit Crown Princess Marie in the first photograph of her taken in Romania 49 Domestic life Edit The first years of Marie and Ferdinand s marriage were not particularly easy and Marie would later tell her husband that it is such a shame that we had to waste so many years of our youth just to learn how to live together 50 Gradually the couple s relationship became based on a cordial friendship Marie accorded Ferdinand respect she believed he was due as a man and later as king and he respected her because he realised that she had a better understanding of the world than he did 51 Eventually Marie came to believe that she and Ferdinand were the best associates the most loyal companions but our lives intertwine only in certain matters 52 Ferdinand enjoyed Marie s presence during military marches and consequently she was frequently invited to this sort of event 53 Marie gave birth to her first child Prince Carol only nine months after the marriage on 15 October 1893 Although Marie requested the use of chloroform in order to ease the pains of labour doctors were reluctant to do so believing that women must pay in agony for the sins of Eve After Marie s mother and Queen Victoria insisted King Carol eventually allowed the use of the drug on his niece in law 54 Marie did not derive much joy from the arrival of her firstborn later writing that she felt like turning her head to the wall 55 Similarly although Marie was constantly reminded by Carol s wife Elisabeth that childbirth is the most glorious moment in Marie s life she could only feel a longing for her mother at the birth of her second child Princess Elisabeth in 1894 56 After becoming accustomed to life in Romania Marie began to rejoice at the births of her children 57 namely Princess Maria 1900 61 nicknamed Mignon in the family Prince Nicholas 1903 78 nicknamed Nicky 58 Princess Ileana 1909 91 and Prince Mircea 1913 16 King Carol and Queen Elisabeth promptly removed Prince Carol and Princess Elisabeth from Marie s care considering it inappropriate for them to be raised by their young parents 59 Marie loved her children but found it difficult to even scold them at times thus failing to properly supervise them 60 Consequently the royal children were given somewhat of an education but were never sent to school As the royal household could not provide what a classroom education would have most of the children s personalities became severely flawed as they grew older 61 Prime Minister Ion G Duca would later write that it was like King Carol wished to leave for Romania heirs completely unprepared for succeeding 62 Life at court Edit Marie in a portrait by Henry Walter Barnett c 1902 From the start Marie had trouble adjusting to life in Romania Her personality and high spirits frequently created controversies at the Romanian court and she disliked the austere atmosphere of her household 63 She wrote that she had not been brought down to Romania to be adored and spoilt and made much of she had come to be part of the machinery King Carol had wound up She had been imported to be trimmed educated cut down and trained according to the great man s conception of things When describing her early days in Romania Marie wrote that for long hours she would mope whilst her young husband did his military service all alone in rooms she hated heavy German rooms 64 Marie s paternal aunt the Empress Frederick wrote to her daughter the Crown Princess of Greece that Missy of Roumania is more to be pitied than you The King is a great tyrant in his family amp has crushed the independence in Ferdinand so that no one cares about him amp his beautiful amp gifted little wife I fear gets into scrapes amp like a butterfly instead of hovering over the flowers burns her pretty wings by going rather near the fire 65 Easily learning to speak the Romanian language she followed her mother s advice to dress carefully and show respect for Orthodox rituals 66 Marie and Ferdinand were advised by King Carol to maintain a restricted group of friends thus Marie would lament that her familial circle had been shrunk to only the King and Ferdinand who stood in mighty awe of the iron old man forever trembling that any action of hers might displease that duty bound head of the family 64 The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Marie had found herself from the hour of her arrival in Bucharest under the tutelage of that stern disciplinarian King Carol I 67 In 1896 Ferdinand and Marie moved to Cotroceni Palace which had been extended by the Romanian architect Grigore Cerchez and to which Marie added her own designs 68 The following year Ferdinand was struck down with typhoid fever For days he was delirious and despite his doctor s best efforts came close to dying 69 During this time Marie exchanged numerous letters with her family in Britain 70 and was terrified at the prospect of losing her husband King Carol still had an heir in Prince Carol whose young age presented issues thus the whole family desperately wished for Ferdinand to pull through Eventually he did and he and Marie went to Sinaia the site of Peleș Castle for a period of recovery Nonetheless the couple was not able to attend celebrations for Queen Victoria s diamond jubilee that summer During Ferdinand s convalescence Marie spent most of her time with her two children taking them on long walks and picking flowers with them 71 The winter of 1897 1898 was spent with the Russian Imperial family on the French Riviera where Marie often rode horses in spite of the low temperatures 72 Marie far right and her sisters in mourning after the death of their father in 1900 Around this time Marie met Lieutenant Gheorghe Cantacuzene a member albeit through an illegitimate branch of an ancient Romanian princely family and a descendant of Prince Șerban Cantacuzino Although not very good looking Cantacuzene stood out using his sense of humour and fashion as well as his talent in horse riding 73 The two soon became romantically involved but their affair was terminated after it became known by the public As much as she condemned Marie s behaviour her mother allowed her to come to Coburg when in 1897 she apparently became pregnant Historian Julia Gelardi believes that Marie gave birth to a child at Coburg the child may either have been stillborn or sent to an orphanage immediately following its birth 74 There was speculation on whether Marie s second daughter Mignon was Cantacuzene s daughter and not Ferdinand s 75 Over the following years Marie was also rumoured to have been romantically linked to Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia note 2 Waldorf Astor note 3 Prince Barbu Știrbey note 4 and Joe Boyle 80 In 1903 Ferdinand and Marie inaugurated the Pelișor Castle an Art Nouveau castle in Sinaia that King Carol commissioned for the royal couple 81 Marie only learned of the extent of repression used to quell the 1907 Romanian Peasants Revolt once it was too late to intercede She afterwards took to dressing quite often in folk costume both at home and in public initiating a fashion trend among young upper class women 66 Marie s summer residence in Balchik On 29 June 1913 the Tsardom of Bulgaria declared war on Greece thus starting the Second Balkan War On 4 July Romania entered the war allying itself with Greece 82 The war which lasted a little over a month was worsened by a cholera epidemic Marie would look upon her first encounter with an epidemic as a turning point in her life With the help of Dr Ioan Cantacuzino and Sister Pucci a Red Cross nurse Marie travelled between Romania and Bulgaria lending a helping hand in hospitals 83 These events would prepare her for her experiences in the Great War 84 As a result of the war Romania gained possession of Southern Dobrudja including the coastal town of Balchik Balcic which Marie would come to cherish in 1924 and use to host her residence called The Quiet Nest 85 Soon after the war ended Carol became ill On 28 June 1914 at Sarajevo Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated This came as a shock to Marie and her family who were vacationing at Sinaia when the news reached them On 28 July Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia and as Marie saw it the world s peace was torn to shreds Then on 3 August King Carol held a Crown Council at Sinaia in order to decide whether Romania should enter the war Although Carol was in favour of his country supporting Germany and the Central Powers the council decided against it Not long after the council Carol s illness worsened and he became bed ridden the possibility of his abdication was even discussed 86 Eventually he died on 10 October 1914 and Ferdinand automatically succeeded as king Queen of Romania 1914 1927 EditWorld War I Edit On 11 October 1914 Marie and Ferdinand were acclaimed as king and queen in the Chamber of Deputies 87 Princess Anne Marie Callimachi a close friend of Marie s wrote that as Crown Princess Marie had been popular as queen she was more loved 88 Marie maintained a certain influence on her husband and the entire court leading historian A L Easterman to write that it was not Ferdinand but Marie who ruled in Romania 89 At the time of Ferdinand s accession the government was led by the liberal prime minister Ion I C Brătianu Ferdinand and Marie jointly decided to not make many changes in court and let people accept the transition from one regime to another rather than force them Thus many of Carol and Elisabeth s servants were kept in place even the ones who were not particularly liked 90 With Brătianu s help Marie began pressuring Ferdinand into entering the war concurrently she contacted various reigning relatives in Europe and bargained for the best terms for Romania in case the country would enter the war 21 Marie favoured an alliance with the Triple Entente Russia France and Britain partly because of her British ancestry Neutrality was not without perils and entering the war with the Entente meant that Romania would act as Russia s buffer against possible attacks 91 Marie visiting a patient in a military hospital during World War I 1917 Eventually Marie demanded of Ferdinand in no uncertain terms that he enter the war leading the French minister to Romania Auguste Felix de Beaupoil Count of Saint Aulaire to remark that Marie was twice an ally to the French once by birth and once by heart 92 Ferdinand gave in to Marie s pleas and he signed a treaty with the Entente on 17 August 1916 On 27 August Romania formally declared war on Austria Hungary 93 Saint Aulaire wrote that Marie embraced war as another might embrace religion 94 After informing their children that their country had entered the war Ferdinand and Marie dismissed their German servants who could only remain in their employ as war prisoners of sorts 95 Early on during the war Marie was involved in aiding the Romanian Red Cross and visited hospitals daily 96 During the first month of hostilities Romania fought no less than nine battles some such as the Battle of Turtucaia took place on its own soil 97 On 2 November 1916 Marie s youngest son Prince Mircea who had been sick with typhoid fever died at Buftea Marie was distraught and wrote in her journal Can anything ever be the same 98 After Bucharest fell to Austrian troops the royal court was transferred to Iași capital of the Moldavia region in December 1916 21 There she continued to act as a nurse in military hospitals Daily Marie would dress as a nurse and go to the train station where she would receive more injured soldiers then she would transport them to hospital 99 Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia 1918 After the conclusion of the Russian Revolution in early November 1917 and the victory of the Bolsheviks Romania became in the words of diplomat Frank Rattigan an island surrounded on all sides by the enemy with no hope of assistance from the Allies 100 Soon afterwards Ferdinand signed the Treaty of Focșani on 9 December 1917 101 Marie considered the treaty perilous while Brătianu and Știrbey believed it was a necessary measure for obtaining more time Later turns of events would prove Marie to have assumed correctly 102 In 1918 Marie vehemently opposed the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest giving rise to her description as truly the only man in Romania 103 The Armistice with Germany 11 November 1918 put an end to fighting in Europe and thus to the war In the tenth century the Principality of Hungary had begun conquering Transylvania which Hungarians had fully occupied by around 1200 104 The idea of a Greater Romania had existed in the minds of Romanians in Transylvania for some time 105 and Brătianu had actively supported the concept before the war 106 In 1918 both Bessarabia and Bukovina voted for union with Romania An assembly took place in the ancient city of Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918 where Vasile Goldiș read the resolution for the union of Transylvania with the Old Kingdom This document supported by Romanian as well as Saxon deputies 107 established a High National Romanian Council Romanian Marele Sfat Național Roman for the province s temporary administration 108 Marie wrote the dream of Romania Mare seems to be becoming a reality it is all so incredible that I hardly dare believe it 109 After the assembly Ferdinand and Marie returned to Bucharest where they were met by general mirth a day of wild delirious enthusiasm with the bands crashing and the troops marching and the people cheering 109 Allied troops took part in the celebration and Marie was elated to see the Entente on Romanian soil for the first time 110 Around this time Marie became infected with the Spanish flu with symptoms peaking a week after Alba Iulia her diary describes a changed being miserable and weak brought to the brink of despair by so much headache and terrible sickness that sapped me of my strength 111 Paris Peace Conference Edit She is magnificent and we have against all protocol shouted our admiration The day remained grey but Queen Marie carried her light within her The French writer Colette in Le Matin newspaper 6 March 1919 112 Because Ferdinand had refused to sign the Treaty of Bucharest and because Romania had been hostile towards the Central Powers until the end of the war its place among the winning countries during the Paris Peace Conference was guaranteed The official delegation was led by Brătianu who had just begun his third term as Prime Minister 113 Brătianu s rigidity combined with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau s reluctance to overlook Ferdinand s acceptance of the Treaty of Bucharest led to open conflict and the Romanian delegation left Paris much to the dismay of the Big Four Hoping to resolve the situation Saint Aulaire suggested that Marie should be sent to the conference instead The Queen was delighted at the prospect 114 Queen Marie with her two eldest daughters in Paris 1919 Marie arrived in Paris on 6 March 1919 112 She was immediately popular with the French people due to her boldness during the War 115 Upon meeting Marie Clemenceau abruptly told her I don t like your Prime Minister to which she replied Perhaps then you ll find me more agreeable 116 He did and president Raymond Poincare noticed a change in Clemenceau s attitude towards Romania after Marie s arrival After staying in Paris for a week Marie accepted King George V and Queen Mary s invitation and crossed the English Channel lodging at Buckingham Palace Hoping to acquire as much goodwill for Romania as possible Marie became acquainted with many important political figures of the time including Lord Curzon Winston Churchill and Waldorf and Nancy Astor She also frequently visited her son Nicky who was then in school at Eton College 117 Marie was elated to have returned to England after so much time writing that it was a tremendous emotion to arrive in London and to be greeted at the station by George and May 118 After the end of her visit in England Marie returned to Paris where the people were just as excited for her arrival as they had been a few weeks before Crowds gathered around her frequently waiting to see the exotic Queen of Romania American President Woodrow Wilson remained unimpressed by Marie and her comments on Russian laws dealing with sexual relations which were considered inappropriate did not help 117 Marie shocked many officials by waving all her ministers aside and leading negotiations herself On this she would later comment Never mind you ll all just have to get used to accepting me with the faults of my virtues 119 Marie left Paris with numerous supplies for Romania s relief and later that year the conference resulted in the international recognition of Greater Romania thus doubling Ferdinand and Marie s kingdom to 295 000 square kilometres 114 000 sq mi and increasing the population by ten million 117 This led Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia who briefly lived in Bucharest to conclude that by her charm beauty and ready wit Marie could obtain anything she desired 120 Dynastic efforts Edit Queen Marie in a portrait by Constantin Pascali early 1920s In 1920 Marie s eldest daughter Princess Elisabeth was engaged to Prince George of Greece the eldest son of the deposed King Constantine I of Greece and Marie s cousin Sophia After inviting George and his two sisters the Princesses Helen and Irene to lodge with them at Sinaia Marie organised numerous activities for the young couple and was delighted at the prospect of marrying off her daughter whose character was severely flawed In October reports of King Alexander s death came from Greece the Greek princesses had to return to their parents as soon as possible The following day news arrived that Marie s mother had died in her sleep in Zurich 121 Marie made arrangements for her departure to Switzerland where she would take Helen and Irene to their parents and arrange her mother s funeral Meanwhile George and Elisabeth would remain at Sinaia 122 Soon enough Crown Prince Carol proposed to Princess Helen and they were married the following year Marie was delighted as she had frowned upon Carol s relationship with Zizi Lambrino and had been worried at the birth of their illegitimate son Carol who to her great relief had been given his mother s surname 123 In 1922 Marie married her second daughter Mignon to Alexander I of Serbia later of Yugoslavia She was delighted at the births of her two royal grandsons Prince Michael of Romania 1921 2017 and Prince Peter of Yugoslavia 1923 1970 the births of two grandchildren destined to sit on Europe s thrones seemed to cement her ambitions Marie s dynastic efforts were viewed by critics as those of a manipulative mother who would sacrifice her children s happiness in order to fulfil her ambitions in reality Marie never forced any of her children to marry 124 While attending Peter s baptism Marie met the Duchess of York later Queen Elizabeth by whom she was enchanted 125 In 1924 Ferdinand and Marie undertook a diplomatic tour of France Switzerland Belgium and the United Kingdom In England she was warmly welcomed by George V who declared that apart from the common aims which we pursue there are other and dear ties between us Her Majesty the Queen my dear cousin is British born 126 Similarly Marie wrote that the day of her arrival in England was a great day for me one of emotions sweet happy and the same time glorious emotions to come back as Queen to my own country to be received officially in all honour and enthusiastically into the bargain to feel your heart swell with pride and satisfaction to feel your heart beat and tears start into your eyes while something gave you a lump into your throat 126 These state visits were a symbolic recognition of the prestige Romania had gained after World War I Whilst visiting Geneva Marie and Ferdinand became the first royals to enter the newly established headquarters of the League of Nations 126 Coronation Edit Official coronation portrait of Queen Marie dressed in full regalia The location for Marie and Ferdinand s coronation was Alba Iulia which had been an important fortress in the Middle Ages and where Michael the Brave had been declared Voivode of Transylvania in 1599 thus bringing Wallachia and Transylvania under his personal union 127 An Orthodox cathedral was built as the Coronation Cathedral in 1921 1922 128 An elaborate set of jewellery and clothing was made especially for the coronation Marie s crown was designed by painter Costin Petrescu and it was made in the Art Nouveau style by Falize a Parisian jewelry house The crown was inspired by that of Despina the wife of 16th century Wallachian ruler Neagoe Basarab and it was made entirely out of Transylvanian gold The crown had two pendants on the sides one contained an image of the royal arms of Romania and the other the arms of the Duke of Edinburgh which Marie had used as her own arms prior to her marriage The crown which cost around 65 000 francs was paid for by the state via a special law 129 Among the guests at the royal couple s coronation were Marie s sister Baby Bee the Duke of York and French generals Maxime Weygand and Henri Mathias Berthelot who had led the French military mission to Romania The ceremony was conducted by the Metropolitan of All Romania Miron Cristea but it was not performed inside the cathedral as Ferdinand a Roman Catholic refused to be crowned by a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church After placing his crown on his own head Ferdinand crowned Marie who had knelt before him Immediately cannons were fired as a sign that the first king and queen of Greater Romania had been anointed A feast was given in the same room where the union had been proclaimed in 1918 there more than 20 000 peasants were offered roast steaks The following day Ferdinand and Marie triumphantly entered Bucharest 130 The splendour of the coronation was subsequently cited as evidence of Marie s theatricality 131 Marie would be received into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1926 mentioning a desire to be closer to her people 66 Visit to America Edit Queen Marie on the cover of Time 4 August 1924 The Maryhill Museum of Art in Maryhill Washington was initially designed as a mansion for wealthy businessman Samuel Hill However at Loie Fuller s behest the building was turned into a museum instead Hill wished it to be dedicated in 1926 and he conceived it as a monument to peace to his wife Mary and to Queen Marie herself Marie agreed to come to America and witness the dedication especially as Fuller was an old friend of hers Fuller quickly put together a committee that supported Marie s tour of America and arrangements were made for her departure 132 Marie viewed the tour as an opportunity to see the country meet the people and put Romania on the map 133 She travelled by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and disembarked in New York on 18 October 1926 accompanied by Prince Nicholas and Princess Ileana Oh life is a glorious cycle of song A medley of extemporanea And love is a thing that can never go wrong And I am Marie of Roumania Dorothy Parker 1927 134 Upon her arrival Marie was welcomed enthusiastically with the whistle of steamers roar of guns in white smoke puffs against gray fog voices cheering in a stinging rain She was formally greeted by Jimmy Walker the Mayor of New York City 135 Constance Lily Morris author of On Tour with Queen Marie wrote that the people were excited for Marie s arrival mainly because of her almost mythical allure which had been created by papers and rumour throughout her life she observed that the modest Queen of the Belgians had once come with her king for a brief visit and years ago the dusky Hawaiian ruler had honored us but there had been no others The time could not have been better set Marie was also fairly popular within suffragette circles where she was viewed as a woman whose wits had devised many a coup d etat whose brains had thought out many a difficult problem for her people who had used the gifts given her to further every good purpose 136 During their time in America Marie Nicholas and Ileana undertook tours of several cities including Philadelphia They were very popular and were greeted with equal enthusiasm in each city they visited so much so that Nicholas and Ileana seemed fairly dazed by their tremendous ovation 137 At the White House the official dinner was marked by awkward moments due to the morose attitude of President Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace Marie lingered less than two hours 138 Before leaving the United States Marie was presented with a bullet proof armored town car by Willys Knight which she joyfully accepted On 24 November Marie and her children were seen off by a delegation from Washington D C as they prepared to leave by ship from New York Harbor Morris wrote that our last view was of Her Majesty her children on either side waving back with that tear and smile of those who pass from happy scenes 139 Morris accompanied the queen throughout her journey and offered a very detailed account of Marie s time in America in her book published in 1927 Marie was delighted with the visit and wished to return to America as soon as possible She wrote in her diaries 140 both my children and I have but one dream to return To return to that stupendous New World which makes you almost guiddy sic because of its immencity sic its noise its striving its fearful impetuous sic to get on to do always more always bigger quicker more astonishingly a restless flaring great world where I think everything can be realised I know as long as I live breathe and think the love for America will beautify my life and thoughts Perhaps Fate will allow me one day to go back to America Widowhood 1927 1938 Edit1927 1930 Edit Marie with Helen and Michael 1927 1930 Prince Carol sparked a dynastic crisis when he officially renounced his rights to succeed Ferdinand on 5 January 1926 simultaneously waiving all parental rights over Prince Michael who had been proclaimed heir apparent A Provisional Regency Bill was passed creating a regency council composed of Prince Nicholas the Orthodox Patriarch Miron Cristea and Gheorghe Buzdugan the president of the Court of Cassation 141 However both Marie and Ferdinand were reluctant to leave the country in the hands of a five year old boy even overseen by a regency for fear that the lands gained during World War I would be reclaimed by neighbouring countries and that political disturbances might lead to civil unrest Nevertheless when Marie returned from America Ferdinand s death seemed imminent He was suffering from intestinal cancer and by April 1927 had come so close to death as to be given the last rites of the Catholic Church He died on 20 July in Marie s arms She later wrote I am so tired were his last words and when he lay so quiet in my arms one hour later I knew that I must thank God for him at least This was rest indeed 142 Michael automatically succeeded as king upon Ferdinand s death and the regency council took charge of his role as monarch In May 1928 Carol who had found his life abroad with Magda Lupescu unsatisfactory 140 attempted to return to Romania with the help of the 1st Viscount Rothermere He was prevented from doing so by English authorities who then proceeded to expel him from England Infuriated Marie sent an official apology to George V on behalf of her son who had already begun plotting a coup d etat 143 Carol succeeded in divorcing Princess Helen on 21 June 1928 on grounds of incompatibility 144 Marie s popularity was severely affected during Michael s reign and after refusing to be part of the regency council in 1929 she was accused by the press and even by Princess Helen of plotting a coup 145 During this time there were numerous rumours as to Princess Ileana s marriage After talk of Ileana marrying the Tsar of Bulgaria or the Prince of Asturias 146 she was eventually betrothed to Alexander Count of Hochberg a minor German prince in early 1930 147 This betrothal was however short lived and Marie never managed to conclude a political marriage for her youngest daughter instead marrying her to Archduke Anton of Austria Tuscany in 1931 146 Carol II s reign Edit Marie in a Philip de Laszlo painting 1936 On 6 June 1930 Carol arrived in Bucharest and made his way into Parliament where the Act of Succession 1927 was duly declared null Thus Carol usurped the throne from his son becoming King Carol II Upon hearing of Carol s return Marie who was abroad was relieved She had been growing anxious with the direction in which the country was heading and viewed Carol s return as the return of the Prodigal Son However as soon as she arrived in Bucharest she became aware that things would not go well Carol refused to accept his mother s advice to take Helen back 145 and never sought Marie s counsel during his reign thus making the already existing breach between mother and son complete 148 Desolate and almost stripped of her belief Marie turned to the religious teachings of the Bahaʼi Faith which she found vastly appealing She was particularly attracted by the idea of humanity s unification under one faith given her own religiously divided family 149 Introduced to the doctrine by Martha Root 150 Marie carried on a correspondence with Shoghi Effendi then head of the Faith where she expressed herself as a follower of the Bahaʼi teachings Additionally she made several public statements promoting the teachings of Bahaʼu llah describing him as a prophet similar to Jesus or Muhammad This written correspondence has led Bahaʼis to regard her as the first royal convert to their religion 151 152 153 Biographer Hannah Pakula notes that Marie continued to attend the Protestant Church even though she prayed better at home with my Baha u llah books and teachings 149 In 1976 William McElwee Miller published a polemical book against the religion 154 which included selections from a letter written in 1970 by Marie s daughter Ileana denying any such conversion had taken place 155 In 1931 Prince Nicholas eloped with Ioana Doletti a divorced woman Marie strongly disapproved of her son s actions and felt hurt by Doletti s repeated attempts to keep Nicholas from communicating with his mother Although she blamed the women in her sons lives for a while she also came to blame herself for failing to educate them properly However she stubbornly and continually refused to meet Magda Lupescu even after Carol s pleas Until her last years Marie seldom even mentioned Lupescu s name 156 With Carol s mistress hated throughout the country it was only a matter of time before opposition to the King emerged This opposition most prominently came under the form of the Iron Guard a group supported by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler After Carol turned to Ion Duca for help the Iron Guard assassinated Duca in December 1933 156 After Duca s death Carol s popularity plummeted and there were rumours that an attempt would be made on his life at the annual independence parade In order to avoid this he instead had Marie attend the parade in what would be her final public appearance 157 After the parade Carol set out to destroy his mother s popularity among Romanians and tried to push her out of the country Marie however did not comply instead retreating to either of two locales 158 The first was Bran Castle Located near Brașov in southern Transylvania and given to her as a gift in 1920 by grateful local officials she had it restored over the next seven years 159 The other was Balchik where she had built a palace and a small chapel called Stella Maris and tended to her garden She also visited Ileana and her children in Austria Ileana rarely received permission from Carol to visit Romania this irritated Marie greatly She also spent some time in Belgrade with her daughter Mignon and her son in law King Alexander In 1934 Marie visited England once again 158 Illness and death Edit Marie s tomb in Curtea de Argeș Monastery During the summer of 1937 Marie fell ill 21 Her personal physician Dr Castellani determined she had pancreatic cancer although her official diagnosis was cirrhosis of the liver Marie had not been a drinker and upon hearing the news she reportedly said then there must be a non alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver because I have never in my life tasted alcohol 160 She was prescribed a diet of cold foods injections and bed rest Marie was so weak at times that she could not even pick up a pen In February 1938 she was sent to a sanatorium in Italy in hopes that she might recover There she was visited by Nicholas and his wife whom Marie eventually forgave for her transgressions She was also visited by Princess Helen whom she had not seen in nearly seven years and Waldorf Astor Marie was eventually transferred to a sanatorium in Dresden Growing weaker and weaker she requested that she be taken back to Romania in order to die there Carol denied her a journey by aeroplane 161 and she declined a medical flight offered by Hitler 162 instead choosing to return to Romania by train She was brought to the Pelișor Castle 161 note 5 Marie died on 18 July 1938 at 5 38 p m eight minutes after lapsing into a coma 163 Her two eldest children Carol and Elisabeth accompanied by Prince Michael were at her deathbed 161 Two days later on 20 July Marie s body was brought to Bucharest where she lay in state in the white drawing room at Cotroceni Palace Her coffin was surrounded by flowers and glowing tapers and was guarded by officers of the Fourth Hussars Thousands of people filed by Marie s bier during the three day lying in state and on the third day the palace was opened for factory workers Marie s funeral cortege made its way to the train station passing under the Arch of Triumph Her coffin was taken to Curtea de Argeș Monastery where she was interred Marie s heart according to her own wishes was placed in a small golden casket embellished with the emblems of the Romanian provinces and interred in her Stella Maris chapel in Balchik In 1940 after Southern Dobrudja was ceded to Bulgaria during World War II her heart was transferred to Bran Castle 164 There Ileana built a chapel to house the heart kept in two nested boxes placed inside a marble sarcophagus 165 Marie was the last queen consort of Romania as Princess Helen was accorded only the title of Queen Mother between 1940 and 1947 She was one of Queen Victoria s five crowned granddaughters and one of three to retain their positions as consort after the conclusion of World War I alongside the Queen of Norway and the Queen of Spain Legacy EditAuthor Edit According to one of her biographers Diana Mandache Marie published 34 books and short stories during her lifetime 166 Encouraged to write by her aunt Queen Elisabeth she found a source of inspiration in the memoirs of King Carol I 167 Her first book The Lily of Life appeared at Bucharest in 1912 Written in the English she would always use but soon translated into Romanian it is a fairy tale with symbolic characters 168 My Country published in London in 1916 and in Paris the following year combined a variety of genres in an effort to raise Allied support for Romania Nicolae Iorga wrote and published a Romanian translation in 1917 169 and an expanded version appeared in 1925 170 Her critically acclaimed autobiography The Story of My Life published by Cassell in London in three volumes 171 came out in 1934 1935 170 The book was reviewed by Virginia Woolf who felt it was too familiarizing of the royal family She stated that suppose that among the autumn books of 2034 is Prometheus Unbound by George the Sixth or Wuthering Heights by Elizabeth the Second what will be the effect upon their loyal subjects Will the British Empire survive Will Buckingham Palace look as solid then as it does now Words are dangerous things let us remember A republic might be brought into being by a poem 171 At the same time she appreciated its depiction of a royal animal escaping its gilded cage 170 Critic Octav Șuluțiu emphasized the work s value as a historical document and its psychological insight 172 Marie wrote a few diary pages in 1914 upon the death of Carol I but started keeping a daily diary in August 1916 on the day Romania entered World War I She wrote new entries almost every day during the war and after with some pauses in her later years 169 The first volume was published in 1996 173 Ten additional books of entries appeared between 2006 and 2014 Marie s war diary edited by Lucian Boia was published in 2014 and the entries from her final years were released to the public in 2018 174 Public figure Edit A medal depicting Marie Even before becoming queen Marie had succeeded in establishing her public image as that of one of the best looking and richest princesses in Europe 175 She was known primarily for her talent in horse riding writing painting sculpting and dancing as well as for her beauty 176 Her popularity was dimmed by two slanderous campaigns that conducted by the Central Powers during World War I 177 and that led by Communist officials after Romania s transition to a Socialist Republic in 1947 During Romania s 42 years under Communist rule Marie was alternately depicted as either an agent of English capitalism or as a devoted patriot who believed that her destiny was intertwined with that of Romania In the 1949 Adevărata istorie a unei monarhii The True History of a Monarchy author Alexandru Garneață refers to orgies that supposedly were held by Marie at Cotroceni and Balchik and claims that her cirrhosis was caused by her heavy drinking even offering examples of instances when a drunken Marie needed to be carried off a yacht by her fellow drinkers Marie s supposed extramarital affairs were brought forward as evidence of promiscuity which contravened Communist values 178 In 1968 Communist officials vandalised the chapel sheltering Marie s heart opening the sarcophagus and taking the boxes as well as the heart into Bran Castle In 1971 these were transferred to Bucharest s National Museum of Romanian History 165 179 It was not until the late period of Nicolae Ceaușescu s regime the last years before the Romanian Revolution that Marie s merits came to be acknowledged 178 In Romania Marie is known by the nickname Mama Răniților Mother of the Wounded 180 or simply as Regina Maria while in other countries she is remembered as the Soldier Queen and Mamma Regina 181 182 Marie is also nicknamed the mother in law of the Balkans due to her children s marriages into the region s ruling houses By the time of her death Marie s children had ruled in three Balkan countries 124 183 although her descendants no longer occupy any European throne Marie was called one of the greatest figures in Romanian history by Constantin Argetoianu 184 and in her honour Romania established the Order of the Cross of Queen Marie in 1917 185 Statue celebrating Queen Marie s birth at Eastwell Park Ashford Kent Oscar Han executed a bronze bust of Marie Unveiled in the center of Balchik in 1933 it was evacuated to Constanța during the Romanian withdrawal of 1940 It then spent most of the next eight decades in storage at times being threatened with melting under the Communist regime and receiving a bullet hole in the back of the head The restored bust was placed in front of the Constanța art museum in 2020 186 A statue of Queen Marie was unveiled in Ashford Kent in December 2018 to mark her birth and childhood at the nearby Eastwell Park 187 Soon afterwards a fictionalised account of her role in the Paris Peace Conference was given in a feature film Queen Marie 188 while American author Laurie R King depicted the queen at Bran in the mystery novel Castle Shade 189 Personal effects and jewels Edit Prior to 2009 many of Marie s personal belongings were on display at Bran Castle her residence in her later years which functions as a museum 190 That year when the castle was legally restored to Princess Ileana s heirs the Culture Ministry moved the collection of her items to a nearby building Vama Medievală which is also open to visitors 191 In 2015 the casket containing the queen s heart was placed on a pedestal in the room at Pelișor where she died the display can be viewed by the public 192 The Maryhill Museum of Art holds a permanent exhibition titled Marie Queen of Romania This display includes the queen s coronation gown a copy of the crown silverware gilt furniture and jewelry among other items 193 194 The Queen Marie of Romania Sapphire is named from its association with Marie Originally set in a necklace by Cartier in 1913 the drop jewel weighs 478 carats It was transferred to a diamond necklace in 1919 and King Ferdinand purchased it for Marie in 1921 The price was 1 375 000 francs to be paid in four instalments until 1924 At the time large jewelry had not excited Marie s interest she preferred to wear a Greek cross or when she attended the Paris Opera her pearls However the sapphire sautoir jewel chain was an ideal match for the sapphire tiara she had bought from Russian exile Grand Duchess Vladimir She wore them both at her coronation receptions and when sitting for her portrait by Philip de Laszlo 195 During her visit to the United States when she presided over a ball at the New York Ritz Carlton one observer remarked There was a heavy chain of diamonds broken at intervals with squares of massive design From this chain was suspended an unbelievable egg shaped sapphire one of the largest it is said in the world 138 Titles styles honours and arms EditTitles and styles Edit 29 October 1875 10 January 1893 Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh 196 197 10 January 1893 10 October 1914 Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Romania 198 10 October 1914 20 July 1927 Her Majesty The Queen of Romania 20 July 1927 18 July 1938 Her Majesty Queen Marie of RomaniaHonours Edit Marie was a recipient of the following national and foreign honours 199 United Kingdom CI Companion of the Crown of India 1893 200 RRC Member of the Decoration of the Royal Red Cross 201 VA Royal Order of Victoria and Albert 2nd Class 200 DStJ Lady of Justice of St John 201 GCVO Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order Ernestine duchies Dame Special Class of the Decoration of Honour of the Saxe Ernestine Kingdom of Romania Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown 202 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Carol I with Collar 1906 203 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Ferdinand I with Collar 1930 204 Austria Hungary Grand Cross of the Order of Elizabeth 1913 205 France Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour March 1919 206 207 Medaille militaire 208 Grand Duchy of Hesse Dame of the Golden Lion 1 May 1896 209 Kingdom of Italy Grand Cross of the Crown of Italy 210 Kingdom of Portugal Dame of the Order of Queen Saint Isabel Russian Empire Grand Cross of St Catherine 1896 Spain Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa 1909 211 Kingdom of Yugoslavia Grand Cross of St Sava 212 Arms Edit As a male line grandchild of a British Sovereign Marie bore the arms of the kingdom with an inescutcheon for Saxony differenced by a five point label argent the outer pair of which bore anchors azure the inner roses gules and the central a cross gules In 1917 the inescutcheon was dropped by Royal Warrant from George V 213 Marie s coat of arms as a British princess Early monogram of Queen Marie Monogram of Queen Marie of Romania Monogram of Queen Marie of RomaniaWritten works EditBooks Edit The Lily of Life 1912 The Dreamer of Dreams 1913 Ilderim 1915 Four Seasons Out of a Man s Life 1915 The Naughty Queen 1916 The Stealers of Light A legend 1916 My Country 1916 enlarged as The Country That I Love An Exile s Memories 1925 Roumania Yesterday and To day by Winifred Gordon 1918 1st chapter by Queen Marie The Story of Naughty Kildeen 1922 Ode to Roumania 1923 Why A Story of Great Longing 1923 The Queen of Roumania s Fairy Book 1925 The Voice on the Mountain A Story for Those Who Understand 1926 The Lost Princess A Fairy Tale 1927 The Magic Doll of Roumania 1929 The Story of My Life 3 vol 1934 1935 Masks 1937 Later Chapters of My Life The Lost Journal of Queen Marie of Romania 2004 Short stories Edit The Serpents Isle The Lady s Realm March 1897 The Siege of Widin The Lady s Realm July 1898 Lulaloo Good Housekeeping March 1925Poems Edit A Robin Redbreast s Carol The Lady s Realm January 1903Songs Edit Byzantine Princess Song 1933 Nonfiction Edit What the River Says The Lady s Realm November 1899 Romantic Rumania The Saturday Evening Post 7 December 1918 A Queen Looks at Life North American Newspaper Alliance June 1925 syndicated series note 6 A Queen Talks About Love Cosmopolitan September 1925 The Intimate Thoughts of a Queen Facing Fifty Cosmopolitan October 1925 Foreword Art and Archeology January 1926 At Grand Mama s Court McCall s March 1926 My Impressions of America North American Newspaper Alliance 21 October 4 December 1926 14 part syndicated series The Story of My Life The Saturday Evening Post 16 December 1933 3 February 1934 8 parts My Life as a Crown Princess The Saturday Evening Post 14 April 16 June 1934 8 parts not in 12 May 9 June My Mission I In Paris The Cornhill Magazine October 1939 My Mission II At Buckingham Palace The Cornhill Magazine November 1939 My Mission III Paris Again The Cornhill Magazine December 1939Letters Edit A Biographer s Notebook by Hector Bolitho 1950 includes Queen Marie s letters to her American friend Queen Mary of Romania Letters to Her King 2015 Queen Marie of Romania Letters to Her Mother 2 vol 2016 Ancestry EditAncestors of Marie of Romania 214 8 Ernest I Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha4 Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg and Gotha9 Princess Louise of Saxe Gotha Altenburg2 Alfred Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha10 Prince Edward Duke of Kent and Strathearn5 Victoria of the United Kingdom11 Princess Victoria of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld1 Princess Marie of Edinburgh12 Nicholas I of Russia6 Alexander II of Russia13 Princess Charlotte of Prussia3 Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia14 Louis II Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine7 Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine15 Princess Wilhelmine of BadenReferences EditEndnotes All dates in this article use the Gregorian calendar which was not in use in Romania until 1919 The Julian calendar which Romania then used was 12 days behind before 1900 and 13 days behind after 1900 Boris was rumoured to have been Mignon s natural father the princess s paternity was reputedly a public secret 76 and Marie frequently taunted King Carol by telling him that Boris was in fact Mignon s father 77 Astor was rumoured to have been the father of Prince Nicholas Marie s second son whose blue eyes and hawk nose resembled those characteristic of the Astors 78 As he grew older Nicholas came to resemble his Hohenzollern relatives thus quelling prior gossip 79 Știrbey was rumoured to have been the father of Princess Ileana and Prince Mircea Marie s youngest children According to official reports in keeping with Carol s cult of personality Marie was still alive upon reaching the castle However she may in fact have died while on the train in the Bacău area At the time another rumour suggested that Carol had fired a gun at Nicolae the bullet hitting Marie when she threw herself before the latter 162 According to A Bookman s Notes Ghost Writing The Bookman October 1927 Zoe Beckley journalist for the Famous Features Syndicate ghostwrote Queen Marie s newspaper articles According to Philip Schuyler Who Piqued the Interest of a Queen Editor amp Publisher 13 June 1925 Beckley solicited this particular series from the queen in Bucharest on 1 February 1925 but denied ghosting it restricting herself to typing and correcting punctuation and spelling Footnotes United Press 19 July 1938 Roumanian Queen to Lie in State at Son s Palace Delaware County Daily Times Beaver and Rochester Penn p 12 No 24261 The London Gazette 30 October 1875 p 5161 a b Marie 1990 p 19 Gelardi 2005 p 6 Gelardi 2005 p 7 The Times 16 December 1875 No 24276 The London Gazette 17 December 1875 p 6461 Princess Marie of Edinburgh 1875 1938 Royal Collection Trust Inventory no 400920 Gauthier 2010 p 9 Marie 1990 p 12 Marie 1990 p 8 Marie 1990 p 15 Marie 1990 p 9 Marie 1990 p 21 Van der Kiste 1991 p 20 Marie 1990 pp 31 32 Pakula 1984 p 49 Marie 1990 p 47 Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg with their bridesmaids and others on their wedding day National Portrait Gallery London Marie 1990 pp 88 89 a b c d e Pakula Hannah 2004 Marie Princess 1875 1938 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 64674 Retrieved 3 November 2013 Subscription or UK public library membership required Marie 1990 p 83 Elsberry 1972 pp 17 19 Marie 1990 p 105 Marie 1990 pp 106 7 Marie 1990 p 109 Marie 1990 p 136 Marie 1990 p 146 Sullivan 1997 pp 80 82 Marie 1990 p 155 Marie 1990 p 152 Marie 1990 p 169 Marie 1990 p 177 Marie 1990 p 190 Marie 1990 p 194 Gelardi 2005 p 31 Pope Hennessy 1959 pp 250 51 a b Mandache 2001 p 334 Gelardi 2005 p 32 Gelardi 2005 p 33 Gelardi 2005 p 34 Gelardi 2005 p 35 Elsberry 1972 p 44 Supplement to The Graphic 21 January 1893 Pakula 1984 p 68 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 10 14 Gauthier 2010 p 52 Eilers 1987 p 192 Marie 1991 Vol 2 p 15 Wolbe 2004 p 214 Ciubotaru 2011 p 22 Marie 2004 p 122 Marie 1991 Vol 2 p 121 Gelardi 2005 p 49 Elsberry 1972 p 54 Elsberry 1972 p 57 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 171 316 17 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 312 13 Ciubotaru 2011 p 51 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 310 11 Ciubotaru 2011 p 92 Duca 1981 p 103 Sullivan 1997 p 141 a b Mandache 2011a p xxiii Gelardi 2005 p 87 a b c Anghel Carmen Ciobanu Luminița 10 February 2011 Regina Maria Povestea vieții mele Jurnalul Național in Romanian Archived from the original on 4 July 2017 Retrieved 17 December 2013 Mandache 2011a p xxiv Mihail Ipate Brief History of Cotroceni Palace muzeulcotroceni ro Archived from the original on 15 April 2014 Pakula 1984 p 117 Mandache 2011a p xiv Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 146 50 Pakula 1984 p 145 Pakula 1984 p 118 Gelardi 2005 pp 87 88 Veiga 1995 p 185 Crawford 2011 p 28 Gelardi 2005 p 88 Pakula 1984 p 136 155 Gelardi 2005 p 109 Pakula 1984 pp 146 48 Mihai Dana 3 February 2013 110 ani de la inaugurarea Castelului Pelișor darul făcut de Carol I lui Ferdinand și Reginei Maria Adevărul in Romanian Retrieved 18 December 2013 Giurescu 1972 p 295 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 356 64 Gelardi 2005 p 184 Rădulescu George Balcic suma Balcanilor Historia Magazine historia ro Archived from the original on 17 December 2013 Retrieved 17 December 2013 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 398 401 Marie 1991 Vol 2 pp 409 12 Pakula 1984 p 180 Easterman 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78 a b Gelardi 2005 p 308 Bousfield Arthur Toffoli Garry 2002 The Queen Mother and Her Century Toronto Dundurn p 49 ISBN 1 55002 391 8 a b c Mandache 2011a pp 152 53 Elsberry 1972 p 178 Claudiu Alexandru Vitanos 2011 Imaginea Romaniei prin turism targuri și expoziții universale in perioada interbelică Editura Mica Valahie p 149 ISBN 978 6 06 830440 3 Ilie Cornel Constantin November 2011 Coroana reginei Maria Istorie și Civilizație 3 26 78 ISSN 2066 9429 Anghel Costin 1 December 2007 Incoronarea Regilor Romaniei Desăvărșite Jurnalul Național in Romanian Archived from the original on 17 December 2013 Retrieved 7 December 2013 Pakula 1984 p 318 Pakula 1984 p 341 Elsberry 1972 p 196 Rawson Hugh Miner Margaret eds 2006 The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 516823 5 Morris 1927 p 13 Morris 1927 pp 18 19 Morris 1927 p 29 a b Gelardi 2005 p 324 Morris 1927 p 232 a b Gelardi 2005 p 327 Reununciation of Prince Charles The Age Melbourne Vic 6 January 1926 p 5 Gelardi 2005 pp 327 28 Gelardi 2005 pp 329 30 Lee Arthur Gould 1956 Helen Queen Mother of Rumania Princess of Greece and Denmark An Authorized Biography London Faber and Faber p 121 OCLC 1485467 a b Gelardi 2005 p 332 a b Mandache 2011a p 152 Ileana Engaged The Outlook 134 7 257 58 February 1930 Easterman 1942 pp 86 87 a b Pakula 1984 p 337 Hutchinson Sandra Hollinger Richard 2006 Women in the North American Bahaʼi Community In Keller Rosemary Ruether Rosemary eds Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America Bloomington Ind Indiana University Press p 779 ISBN 0 25334 685 1 Marcus Della L 2015 Marie Alexandra Victoria Encyclopaedia Iranica Retrieved 27 September 2017 Hassel Graham Fazel Seena 1998 100 Years of the Bahaʼi Faith in Europe Bahaʼi Studies Review 8 35 44 Marcus 2000 pp 10 12 passim Elwell Sutton L P 1976 Review of The Baha i Faith Its History and Teaching by William McElwee Miller Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 108 2 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Staatshandbuch der Osterreichisch Ungarischen Monarchie Vienna Druck und Verlag der K K Hof und Staatsdruckerei 1918 p 328 Mandache 2011a p 41 M Wattel B Wattel 2009 Les Grand Croix de la Legion d honneur de 1805 a nos jours Titulaires francais et etrangers Paris Archives amp Culture pp 21 512 612 ISBN 978 2 35077 135 9 Marghiloman 1927 p 131 Goldener Lowen orden Grossherzoglich Hessische Ordensliste in German Darmstadt Staatsverlag 1914 p 3 via hathitrust org Marghiloman 1927 p 199 Real orden de Damas Nobles de la Reina Maria Luisa Guia Oficial de Espana 1920 p 230 Retrieved 21 March 2019 Acovic Dragomir 2012 Slava i cast Odlikovanja među Srbima Srbi među odlikovanjima Belgrade Sluzbeni Glasnik p 369 marks of cadency in the British royal family www heraldica org Louda Jiri Maclagan Michael 1999 Lines of Succession Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe London Little Brown p 34 ISBN 978 1 85605 469 0 Bibliography Aronson Theo 1973 Grandmama of Europe London Cassell ISBN 0 304 29063 7 Botoran Constantin Moisuc Viorica 1983 Romania la Conferința de Pace de la Paris in Romanian Cluj Napoca Dacia OL 18196100M Ciubotaru Ștefania 2011 Viața Cotidiană la Curtea Regală a Romaniei in Romanian Bucharest Cartex ISBN 978 606 8023 13 7 Crawford Donald 2011 The Last Tsar Emperor Michael II Edinburgh Murray McLellan Limited ISBN 978 0 9570091 1 0 Daggett Mabel Potter 1926 Marie of Roumania New York George H Doran amp Co OCLC 1075530 Duca Ion G 1981 Amintiri Politice Bucharest Humanitas ISBN 978 973 28 0183 3 Dună Raluca 2021 Memory Though is as Strong as Hope Queen Marie of Romania and her War Literature Philologica Jassyensia Iași year XVII nr 1 33 81 93 ISSN 2247 8353 Easterman Alexander Levvey 1942 King Carol Hitler and Lupescu London V Gollancz Ltd OCLC 4769487 Eilers Marlene A 1987 Queen Victoria s Descendants Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Company ISBN 0 8063 1202 5 Elsberry Terence 1972 Marie of Romania New York St Martin s Press OCLC 613611 Gauthier Guy 2010 Missy Regina Romaniei in Romanian Bucharest Humanitas ISBN 978 973 50 2621 9 Gelardi Julia 2005 Born to Rule London St Martin s Griffin ISBN 978 0 312 32423 0 Giurescu Constantin C 1972 Istoria Romaniei in date in Romanian Bucharest Editura Enciclopedică OCLC 637298400 Horedt Kurt 1958 Contribuţii la istoria Transilvaniei in secolele IV XIII in Romanian Bucharest Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romine Hupchik Dennis 1995 Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe New York Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 0 312 12116 7 Mandache Diana May 2001 The Marriage of Princess Marie of Edinburgh and Ferdinand the Crown Prince of Romania Royalty Digest 10 119 333 38 ISSN 0967 5744 Mandache Diana 2011a Later Chapters of My Life The Lost Memoir of Queen Marie of Romania Gloucestershire Sutton ISBN 978 0 7509 3691 0 Marcus Della 2000 Her Eternal Crown Queen Marie of Romania and the Baha i Faith Oxford George Ronald ISBN 0 85398 442 5 Marghiloman Alexandru 1927 Note politice 1897 1924 Bucharest Institutul de Arte Grafice Eminescu OCLC 23540746 Maria Pavlovna of Russia 1932 A Princess in Exile New York Viking OCLC 1372354 Marie Queen of Romania 1990 Povestea Vieții Mele in Romanian Vol 1 Iași Moldova ISBN 973 9032 01 X Marie Queen of Romania 1991 Povestea Vieții Mele in Romanian Vol 2 Bucharest Eminescu ISBN 973 22 0214 9 Marie Queen of Romania 1991 Povestea Vieții Mele in Romanian Vol 3 Bucharest Eminescu ISBN 973 22 0215 7 Marie Queen of Romania 2004 Insemnări Zilnice Bucharest Albatros ISBN 978 973 24 0323 5 Morris Constance Lily 1927 On Tour with Queen Marie New York Robert M McBride amp Co OCLC 2048943 Nadelhoffer Hans 2007 Cartier London Chronicle Books ISBN 978 0 8118 6099 4 Pakula Hannah 1984 The Last Romantic New York Simon and Schuster ISBN 0 671 46364 0 Pope Hennessy James 1959 Queen Mary 1867 1953 London G Allen and Unwin OCLC 1027299 Rattigan Frank 1924 Diversions of a Diplomat London Chapman and Hall Ltd OCLC 11319209 Saint Aulaire Auguste Felix de Beaupoil Count of 1953 Confession d un Vieux Diplomate in French Paris Flammarion OCLC 3450664 Sullivan Michael John 1997 A Fatal Passion The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia New York Random House ISBN 0 679 42400 8 Van der Kiste John 1991 Princess Victoria Melita Gloucestershire Sutton ISBN 0 7509 3469 7 Veiga Francisco 1995 Istoria Gărzii de Fier 1919 1941 Mistica Ultranaționalismului Bucharest Humanitas ISBN 978 973 28 0392 9 Wolbe Eugen 2004 Ferdinand I Intemeietorul Romaniei Mari Bucharest Humanitas ISBN 978 973 50 0755 3 General bibliography Cristescu Sorin 2017 Queen Marie of Romania and Colonel Boyle Confessions Bucharest Tritonic ISBN 978 606 749 210 1 Cristescu Sorin 2018 Queen Marie of Romania Confessions February 1914 March 1927 Bucharest Tritonic ISBN 978 606 749 296 5 Cristescu Sorin 2015 Queen Marie of Romania Letters to Her King Bucharest Tritonic ISBN 978 606 749 102 9 Cristescu Sorin 2016 Queen Marie of Romania Letters to Her Mother vol I 1901 1906 Bucharest Tritonic ISBN 978 606 749 145 6 Cristescu Sorin 2016 Queen Marie of Romania Letters to Her Mother vol II 1907 1920 Bucharest Tritonic ISBN 978 606 749 153 1 Mandache Diana 2011b Dearest Missy The Letters of Marie Alexandrovna Grand Duchess of Russia Duchess of Edinburgh and of Saxe Coburg and Gotha and of her daughter Marie Crown Princess of Romania 1879 1900 Falkoping Rosvall ISBN 978 91 975671 7 6 Zimmermann Silvia Irina 2020 The Child of the Sun Royal Fairy Tales and Essays by the Queens of Romania Elisabeth Carmen Sylva 1843 1916 and Marie 1875 1938 Stuttgart Ibidem ISBN 978 3 8382 1393 4 Archives Edit A large part of Queen Marie s papers including correspondence and photographs is preserved in different American institutions including the Queen Marie of Romania Papers collection in the Library of Kent State University Kent Ohio 1 the George I Duca Papers collection in the Hoover Institution Archives Stanford California 2 and the Lavinia A Small Papers collection in the Library of the University of Colorado at Boulder Boulder Colorado 3 Marie s letters to her parents in law Leopold of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen and Antonia of Portugal between 1892 and 1904 are preserved in the Hohenzollern Sigmaringen family archive which is in the State Archive of Sigmaringen Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen in the town of Sigmaringen Baden Wurttemberg Germany 4 5 Marie s letters to her husband s grandmother Josephine of Baden between 1893 and 1899 are also preserved in the State Archive of Sigmaringen Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen 6 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Queen Marie of Romania Wikiquote has quotations related to Marie of Romania Works by or about Marie of Romania at Internet Archive Works by Marie of Romania at Project Gutenberg British Pathe newsreels depicting Marie of Romania 1914 1917 1924 1930 1930 1931 1932 1938 Works by Marie of Romania at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Treaty between Great Britain and Roumania for the Marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Great Britain and Ireland with His Royal Highness the Prince Ferdinand of Roumania 15 December 1892 Newspaper clippings about Marie of Romania in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBWMarie of RomaniaHouse of Saxe Coburg and GothaCadet branch of the House of WettinBorn 29 October 1875 Died 18 July 1938Romanian royaltyPreceded byElisabeth of Wied Queen consort of Romania10 October 1914 20 July 1927 VacantTitle next held byAnne of Bourbon Parmaas titular queenAwards and achievementsPreceded byWilliam Sproule Cover of Time Magazine4 August 1924 Succeeded byJohn J Pershing Queen Marie of Romania Papers Department of Special Collections and Archives Kent State University Libraries and Media Services Retrieved 1 October 2021 George I Duca Papers Hoover Institution Library amp Archives Retrieved 1 October 2021 Lavinia A Small Papers University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries Special Collections Archives and Preservation Department Retrieved 1 October 2021 Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria Missy von Rumanien geb Prinzessin von Edinburgh und Sachsen Coburg Gotha an ihre Schwiegereltern Furst Leopold und Furstin Antonia von Hohenzollern Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen Retrieved 1 October 2021 Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria Missy von Rumanien an ihren Schwiegervater Furst Leopold von Hohenzollern Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen Retrieved 1 October 2021 Briefe der Kronprinzessin Maria Missy von Rumanien geb Prinzessin von Edinburgh und Sachsen Coburg und Gotha an Furstin Josephine von Hohenzollern Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen Retrieved 1 October 2021 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Marie of Romania amp oldid 1139009036, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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