Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark
Prince Andrew of Greece
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Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (January 20, 1882 - December 3, 1944), of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was the son of George I (1845-1913), King of the Hellenes, and of Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinova (1851-1926) of Russia.
As he grew up he was taught English by his caretakers, but in conversations with his parents he refused to speak anything but Greek, which he was better at learning to speak than his siblings.
Prince Andrew married HSH Princess Alice of Battenberg in a civil wedding on October 6, 1903 at Darmstadt and in a religious wedding the next day in the Russian Chapel, Darmstadt. Princess Alice was a daughter of His Serene Highness, Prince and Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Louis of Battenberg. As such Princess Alice was a great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria and in the line of succession to the British throne.
Their children were:
- Princess Margarita (1905-1981). Married Prince Gottried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
- Princess Theodora (1906-1969). Married Prince Berthold of Baden.
- Princess Cecilie (1911-1937). Married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (son of Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine). The couple with their two young sons and Cecilie's mother-in-law died in an accident when their plane crashed near Ostend on their way to Georg's brother's marriage. A daughter survived them for eighteen months.
- Princess Sophie (1914-2001). Married first Prince Christoph of Hesse and second prince George Wilhelm of Hanover.
- Prince Philip (born 1921), later Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
After a coup d'état in Greece in 1922 Prince Andrew faced charges of treason and his family fled into exile in France. During this time the family became more and more torn apart, Alice and her daughters eventually settling in Germany separated from Andrew, and Philip wound up being taken care of by his relatives in the United Kingdom. Andrew went to Monte Carlo, Monaco and died there, twenty years later.
Alice became a Greek Orthodox nun in 1944 following her husband's death. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in Switzerland, emerged and founded (in 1949) the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, an order of nuns tending the poor and sick on the island of Tinos in Greece. She sheltered Jewish families in Greece and was posthumously honored for heroism by Israel.
| Styles of Prince Andrew of Greece |
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| Reference style | His Royal Highness |
| Spoken style | Your Royal Highness |
| Alternative style | Sir |
