Why the mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II of England lived in an insane asylum for many years and how she became a smoking nun

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The mother of Prince Philip and mother-in-law of Elizabeth II, Alice of Battenberg lived a rich life, in which there were both ups and downs: from marriage and years spent in psychiatric hospitals to the monastery in which she became a nun who was unable to get rid of card games and cigarettes.

1. Deafness from birth

Alice was the eldest of four children born in Windsor territory. Her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, is a native of Austria who has been a subject of the British Crown since 1868. He entered the service of the Navy and eventually received the rank of admiral.

Her mother, Victoria Rhine, is the daughter of the daughter of Queen Victoria of England, also named Alice. Formally, Louis of Battenberg and Victoria were cousins and cousins who soon tied the knot.

As a child, Alice kept aloof, largely due to a delay in speech development. When she was four years old, it turned out that she was deaf from birth. As a result, the girl learned to read lips. With age, her hearing returned to her, but she continued to spend all her free time alone, trying once again not to catch the eye of people.

2. Marriage

Alice met the Greek Prince Andrew (aka Andrew) in 1902 at the coronation of King Edward VII. According to Alice, Andrew, the son of the Greek king George I, was exactly like the Greek god. They fell in love at first sight and exchanged letters for months until, at the beginning of 1903, the king blessed them for marriage.

The couple got married in the fall of the same year, and this event was attended by famous and crowned persons from all over Eurasia. They actually had two weddings, one Protestant and one Russian Orthodox. Alice moved to Athens with her husband and there she was accepted as a true princess and Andrei's legal wife.

Two years later, Alice gave birth to a daughter named Margarita. Later, she had three more daughters and a long-awaited son, Philip.

Alice spent most of her time with her children, constantly moving from one place to another with her husband during his service in the Greek navy. She also often visited family in England, Germany and Russia. And she took part in the discussion of the creation of a new religious order under the auspices of her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.

3. Reward

In 1912, conflict erupted on the Balkan Peninsula when Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro fought for independence from the Ottoman Empire. The First Balkan War, as it became known, led to the defeat of the Ottomans, but in 1913 war broke out again between Serbia, Greece and Romania, and their former ally Bulgaria. During this Second Balkan War, it was about the distribution of land after the conquest of Macedonia, the issue was resolved by a peace treaty in August 1913.

Prince Andrew served in the Greek navy during the Balkan Wars, while Alice, surrounded by violence and bloodshed, worked to establish military hospitals, coordinating supplies and caring for patients. Her efforts were recognized by King George V of England in 1913 when she was awarded the Royal Red Cross "in recognition of her services in caring for the sick and wounded among Greek soldiers during the recent war."

4. Escape to France

Political instability in the country before, during and after the Balkan Wars, as well as in the context of the First World War, led to the fact that members of the local nobility fell into and out of favor several times. The war, which lasted from 1919 to 1922, led to the defeat of Greece, prompting backlash against both Constantine I and military officials. As a high-ranking naval commander, Andrei was put on trial for insubordination and banished from the country forever.

Forced to leave their native land, all the noble couple, including their children, found refuge in France, although they spent a lot of time in Great Britain. They also traveled in the 1920s, visiting America in 1923, always following events in Greece, hoping they could return. Alice worked as an embroiderer and sold other Greek items while in Paris. Alice and Andrew found support from his sister-in-law Marie in Paris, who lived in a neighboring house and paid all expenses.

5. Two of her aunts were killed during the Bolshevik revolution

When Alice, her husband, children and most of the family were forced to leave Greece, her two aunts, who had married representatives of the Romanov family in Russia, met an even darker fate.

Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894, and at the same time he and Alix were married. Becoming the wife of the tsar, Alix entered the Russian Orthodox Church and took the name Alexandra Feodorovna. As the wife of the ruler of Russia, Alexandra gave birth to four daughters and, after her son Alexei was born in 1904, she constantly consulted with Grigory Rasputin about the treatment of hemophilia in the boy.

While Tsar Nicholas II fought in World War I, Alexandra was in charge of state affairs as her son's regent, making Rasputin her chief adviser. Along with her German descent, this was one of the factors that sparked hostility towards Alexandra in Russia, although the political upheavals of the Bolshevik revolution determined her fate, as well as the fate of her children and her husband.

6. Mental disorder

When, in 1930, family members were informed that Alice was in "a completely unhealthy mental and physical condition," they intervened and sent her to a sanatorium outside Berlin. Led by Dr. Ernst Simmel, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, the Tegel Sanatorium used psychoanalytic methods, and after meeting Alice, Dr. Simmel diagnosed the princess with paranoid schizophrenia with a neurotic-dopsychotic libidinal state.

To solve Alice's problem, Simmel consulted with Freud. The latter suggested exposing Alice's gonads to X-rays to speed up menopause, a treatment that would suppress her libido. According to Simmel, Alice believed that she was in a physical relationship with religious leaders, including Christ, and after several sessions this began to weaken.

When Alice's health began to improve, she wrote to her daughter that she would soon be able to return home. She was allowed to make day trips to Berlin, and after a few weeks she began to wonder why she was still in the sanatorium. She left of her own accord in April 1930, eight weeks after starting treatment.

7. Death of a daughter

Alice's stay at the sanatorium led to a break in her marriage. And after she returned home, the lack of improvement in her wife's health still worried and upset Andrew. He talked to Alice's mother and found new doctors for her.

In May 1930, she was sent to hospital again, this time to Kreuzlingen in Switzerland.

From that day on, Andrei and Alisa hardly communicated. Now the decision about her daughter's health was made by her mother Victoria, and Andrew spent time in Paris, Germany and southern France. Alice's daughters - Cecilia, Sophie and Theodora - were engaged and lived on their own, but Philip was still a very young boy. As a result, he was sent to England, where he was cared for by Victoria, as well as aunts and uncles, including Alice's brother George, who was Philip's legal guardian. The incident that brought Alice and Andrei together was the funeral of their daughter Cecilia.

8. Red cross

Alice went home in the late 1930s, living in an apartment rather than a royal suite. With the occupation of the country, the family fled, but Alice stayed behind to return to her work with the Red Cross. The woman also worked in canteens and helped orphans, doing her best to alleviate the suffering of the Greek population.

Since all of Alice's daughters married Germans, and she herself was of German blood, it was believed that she would sympathize with the German cause. Despite internal conflicts, Alice worked against Germany, even hiding Jews from Hitler's followers. After the death of Haimaki Cohen, a friend of the royal family and a former member of parliament, Alice took on his wife Rachel and several children. Only with the help of Alice, the Coens managed not to get caught by the Gestapo and remained safe until the liberation of Athens in the fall of 1944.

The current situation in the country affected the lives of Alice's children. Her son served in the British Navy during World War II, while her two daughters' husbands were officers in the Third Reich.

9. Monastery

In the post-war period, the girl remained in her native country, founding a monastery to train nurses. Founded as an order of the Greek Orthodox Church, her sisterhood of Martha and Mary honored her aunt, Princess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and drew on her previous efforts to care for those in need.

Alice's monastery was founded on the Greek island of Tinos, where, according to her, she retired from the world in need of constant work. She built a small house with no telephone and limited electricity, determined to establish an order that would provide practical benefits.

However, Alice still had vices: being a nun, she loved to gamble, and also did not give up cigarettes.

10. Life in London

Before and after the founding of the monastery in 1949, the woman regularly traveled to England. During the marriage of her son Philip and future Queen Elizabeth in 1947, she was also present, although none of her daughters were invited, but the woman always returned home, dedicated to helping others. When political instability again threatened the monarchy in her country, Alice fled to Britain in search of safety.

In 1964, Constantine II became king of Greece following the death of his father, Paul I. Three years later, a military coup erupted after Constantine II scheduled elections to fill a vacant prime minister's seat - a post that was opened because the king fired Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou in 1965.

Constantine II's attempts to regain control of the government failed and he had to flee to Italy.

In the early stages of the chaos, Alice remained in Athens. As the situation deteriorated and her health deteriorated, the royal family intervened once again. When Lilibet personally asked her to move to London in 1967, she agreed and spent the remaining years in England.

11. Lord Louis Mountbatten

Lord Louis Mountbatten, called "Dickie" by friends and family, was one of the uncles who served as mentors to Prince Philip after his mother sent the boy to live in England. Alice's younger brother, Louis, was an accomplished naval officer and a highly regarded statesman. In the 1940s, he was the last British Viceroy of India, who rose to the rank of admiral in the 1950s.

12. Death and burial

Alice lived at Buckingham Palace for two years, passing away a few months after her eighty-fourth birthday. The day before her death, on December 5, 1969, she met with her brother Louis, who recalled:.

Before her death, she asked to be buried in Jerusalem, not far from Elizabeth Feodorovna (later canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church), who rested in the Church of Mary Magdalene after her death in 1918. Initially, this request was not granted, and Alice's body ended up in St George's Chapel in Windsor. However, in 1976, the Reverend Michael Mann, Dean of the University of Windsor, was commissioned to organize Alice's funeral in Jerusalem, for which Philip gave his permission. The dean began a correspondence with the church authorities in Jerusalem, and more than ten years later, Alice was buried on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem in August 1988.

Because Alice did so much to help the Jews during World War II, namely the Coens, she was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations, Israel's highest honor for non-Jews, in 1993. In 1994, Prince Philip visited his mother's burial site and planted a tree in her honor. Prince William, her great-grandson and prospective future king, also visited Alice's grave in 2018.

Continuing the topic of royals, read the story of how Maria de Medici became Rubens' kept woman and why she had been at odds with her own son for so long.