Princess Marie was born as the granddaughter of
two of nineteenth-century Europe’s most powerful monarchs, Queen Victoria I of Britain and Tsar
Alexander II of Russia. She lived at a time when monarchies were falling across Europe,
often brutally removed from power. Marie herself would become a popular Queen
of Romania, though ultimately its last. But before we jump into her story, I want to
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and download June’s Journey for free! Early Life Marie was born on the 29th of October
1875 at Eastwell Manor in Kent in the south-east of England. Her father
was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, a son of Queen Victoria I of Britain,
while her mother was the Grand Duchess Alexandrovna of Russia, a daughter
of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The princess’s life was spent at
various locations around Europe. As a member of an extended royal family in which
many cousins were married to heads of states and heirs to royal lines across Europe, Marie was
often travelling with her family to royal weddings at capitals across Europe. In between times she
was raised variously between England and Germany, with an extended stay in Malta as well
during the late 1880s when Marie’s father was named as commander-in-chief of the
Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet there. She later remembered this sojourn on the
Mediterranean island fondly, but in many ways her childhood was stunted with a mother
who was extremely distant from her children. As a daughter of the offspring of two of Europe’s
most powerful rulers there was never any doubt that Marie would enter into a marriage with a
member of one of Europe’s other royal houses, an arrangement which was reached with most of
Queen Victoria’s granddaughters. For a time in the early 1890s there was consideration given
to Marie marrying her first cousin, George, the second eldest son of the Prince of Wales,
however, when George’s older brother Albert Victor died in 1892 it suddenly placed George directly in
the line of succession to the English throne and he was betrothed to Mary of Teck, who had been due
to wed Albert Victor before his premature death. As a result a new marriage was planned for Marie
to Prince Ferdinand of Romania, the crown prince of the Kingdom of Romania and
the heir to the throne there. By late 1892 the arrangement was advanced enough
that Marie left England at just 17 years of age to marry her future husband. It was the
last time she would ever call England home. Marriage & Life in Romania
Marie and Ferdinand were married at Sigmaringen Castle in southern Germany on the
10th of January 1893. The ceremony was performed as both a Catholic and Protestant service to make
up for their different religious upbringings. Thereafter they headed on by
train into the Kingdom of Romania. This was a new state. For centuries Romania
had been ruled as part of the Ottoman Empire, however independence was achieved following
the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878. Thereafter Prince Karl Friedrich Ludwig of the
German royal house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was crowned as King Carol I of Romania. This
was Marie’s new father-in-law and one day her new husband Ferdinand would
succeed him as King of Romania. Marie was arriving to a foreign land which had
an almost mystical status for many Europeans. Just as she was arriving there Bram Stoker was
writing Dracula back in London, setting his famous vampire story in Transylvania in Romania. Yet
it was not vampires which troubled Marie’s first years in the capital of Bucharest, but rather
the dynamic which operated in her adopted family. The king was a domineering figure and her
new husband was a pleasant but timid man who never challenged Carol. Consequently, while the
marriage soon resulted in children, the first, a boy named Carol after his grandfather, arriving
in October 1893, nine months after their marriage, the first years in Bucharest were not easy
for Marie. This was compounded by her children being taken from her care almost as soon as they
were born, King Carol and Queen Elisabeth being convinced that royal children should be placed
in a separate household for their upbringing. Eventually as the years went by she grew
into the situation and became well-liked by the Romanian people. While her marriage to
Ferdinand was always cordial, she engaged in several affairs from the late 1890s. One of
these with Lieutenant Gheorghe Cantacuzene, a member of an ancient Romanian royal line,
is believed to have resulted in a pregnancy and Marie briefly went to stay
with her mother in Germany, almost certainly to give birth to an illegitimate
child which was sent to an orphanage. As she grew older Marie became more and more
determined to resist the autocratic behaviour of her father-in-law and to carve her own
path. Despite the timidity of her husband, an opportunity presented itself when the Second
Balkan War erupted in the summer of 1913 following Bulgaria’s declaration of war on Greece. Romania
soon allied with Greece in what was a short-lived conflict that latest little over a month. No
sooner had it commenced than Marie began working in the Romanian field hospitals which had been
established for the kingdom’s wounded soldiers. In these death stalked the hallways as a virulent
outbreak of cholera saw the hospitals become more dangerous than the battlefield. Yet Marie
ignored warnings about these medical centres and became a nurse tending to the wounded
for several weeks in the summer of 1913. Here she held the hands of dying patients
and nursed those who were ill. She even refused to wear a mask, arguing that
to do so would dehumanise the sick in their last moments. It
was all a powerful statement of who the next Queen of Romania would be and
Marie’s reputation in the country soared further. Queen of Romania It was not long until she became queen. On the
10th of October 1914 King Carol I finally died. He was succeeded by Ferdinand who would now rule
as King regnant. Marie became the Queen consort, which meant that she was the wife of
the effective ruler of the kingdom, but as the years went by it became clear in the
capital cities of Europe that it was Queen Marie who really determined the policies which
emanated from the royal palace in Bucharest. Marie became Queen of Romania in
the midst of a profound crisis. A few months before King Carol died the
First World War had broken out across Europe following the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Empire of Austria-Hungary, in
the city of Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist. The old king had been in favour of joining the war
on the side of the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, but his
government and ministers had determined that Romania should remain neutral for the time being.
When Ferdinand was crowned some months later Marie was clear in her views. Romania should enter
the war, but on the side of her homeland, Britain, which was in alliance with France and Russia.
It took many months for her to convince all political parties in Bucharest of this, but
eventually this option was chosen in August 1916. The final decision had apparently been taken
when Marie had told Ferdinand in no uncertain terms that Romania was entering the conflict on
the side of the British, French and Russians. The war was a very mixed affair for Romania.
At first it put up a decent showing against its larger neighbours, aiding Russia on the
Eastern Front, but once the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 and Russia left the war Romania
found itself surrounded by the Central Powers. As a result the country was occupied and in May
1918 had to sign the Treaty of Bucharest whereby it ceded extensive territory, agreed to disband
much of its army and leased the country’s vast oil wells to Germany. Marie, who had returned to
working as a nurse under the auspices of the Red Cross once Romania entered the war in 1916, was
highly opposed to the Treaty, but there was little that could be done to resist the Central Powers
when it was signed in the early summer of 1918. Ultimately Romania lost the war but won the peace.
In 1917 the United States had joined the war on the side of Britain and France and as more and
more American troops and aid arrived to France in the course of 1918 it was clear that Germany would
be defeated. Romania re-entered the war, again on the side of Britain, France and the US, on the
10th of November 1918, one day before an armistice was signed bringing the conflict to an end. In
the peace negotiations which followed in Paris the Romanian delegation was initially in dispute
with the French over the terms of the post-war settlement in the Balkans, but then Marie
headed to France to personally oversee matters. She charmed the Allied leaders and under the terms
of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine and other peace agreements of 1919 and 1920 the Kingdom of Romania
not only had all of its former territory restored, but gained extensive lands in
Dobruja, Bessarabia and Bukovina, whereby a Greater Romania was formed. When
Ferdinand and Marie were crowned as king and queen of this enlarged state at Alba Iulia on the
15th of October 1922, they became the rulers of ten million more subjects and an extra space
of land covering 295,000 square kilometres. Ultimately Ferdinand and Marie’s time as king and
queen would not last as long as it might have. In 1927 Ferdinand died prematurely of cancer
at 61 years of age. Marie had always been the power behind the throne and had used the
mid-1920s to spread the country’s influence by undertaking a much-feted tour of the United
States. She married her children into several prominent European noble houses, although the
marriages generally speaking are believed to have been agreeable to her children and she did
not force them to marry against their wills. Nevertheless, the last years of her reign
were troubled by the issue of the succession. In early 1926 Marie and Ferdinand’s
eldest child, Crown Prince Carol, had renounced his succession rights as a
result of his having entered into a very public extra-marital affair. It was the latest in a
string of scandals surrounding Carol and there was a general belief that it was just as well that
the succession would now pass to his son Michael. However, when Ferdinand died just two
years later this too became a problem as Michael was just five years old at the time. Later Life & Legacy Marie’s response to this situation
was to try to take a back seat. She turned down the offer to become a part of
the regency government which was appointed to rule on Michael’s behalf during his minority.
Yet this just led to accusations that Marie was plotting a coup against her own grandson,
but of course these were unfounded. In the end it was not King Michael’s grandmother, but his
own father, who overthrew him. Having returned to Romania from abroad after deciding
he wished to rule the country after all, he deposed his son in 1930 and was crowned as
King Carol II. Marie was initially relieved that this might bring some stability to the succession
issue, but was surprised when Carol shut her out and refused to give her any significant role
within the new dispensation. As a consequence Marie largely retired to her estate by the Black
Sea and spent much of the rest of her life there. In 1937 the Queen Dowager was diagnosed
with cirrhosis of the liver, though she had abstained from alcohol throughout her
entire life. She died just weeks later, at the age of 62. Marie had spent much of her
later years writing, a habit she had started decades earlier, and by the time she died she
had published 34 books and many short stories. Her popularity waned in her final years, in
large part owing to a determined campaign to denigrate her legacy by the authorities
in Bucharest. Carol ruled until 1940 when he was forced to abdicate as Nazi Germany
and Soviet Russia dismembered the country as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to divide
up Eastern Europe. He was succeeded by his son, who now found himself King of Romania for the
second time. When Michael was finally deposed in 1947 the Romanian monarchy was brought to an
end and a communist regime came to power. Neither Carol II nor Michael had been married during their
reigns and as a consequence, although the monarchy outlived Ferdinand and Marie’s reign by twenty
years, she was the last Queen of Romania. Thank you everyone for watching this video
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