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'Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark' (
20 January 1882(
O.S.) -
3 December 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.
Birth and early life
Born in Athens, he was taught
English by his caretakers as he grew up, but in conversations with his parents he refused to speak anything but
Greek,
[1] which he was better at learning to speak than his siblings.
Marriage and children
Prince Andrew married
Her Serene Highness Princess Alice of Battenberg in a civil wedding on
6 October 1903 at
Darmstadt. The following day two religious wedding services were performed: one
Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and another
Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe.
[2] Princess Alice was a daughter of
His Serene Highness Louis Prince of Battenberg (later 1st Marquess of Milford Haven) and
Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, daughter of
HRH Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. As such, Princess Alice was a great-granddaughter of
Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert and in the line of succession to the British throne. Prince Andrew was also in the British line of succession, but much lower down, due to the descent of his mother from George II through his eldest daughter Princess Anne of Orange. Incidentally, his father was descended from two other daughters of George II: Louise and Mary.
Prince and Princess Andrew had five children:
Early career
He attended cadet school and staff college at
Athens,
[3] but took no active part in the
Balkan Wars during which he ran a field hospital.
[4] In
1914, Prince Andrew (like many European princes) held honorary military posts in both the
German and
Russian empires, as well as
Prussian, Russian, Danish and Italian knighthoods.
[5]
During
World War I, he continued to visit Britain, despite veiled accusations in the
British House of Commons that he was a German agent.
[6]
Exile from Greece
In
1917 he left
Greece with his brother,
King Constantine, who had abdicated in favour of his son after unsuccessfully attempting to keep Greece neutral in
World War I. After his brother was restored to the throne of Greece four years later, Andrew was given command of the Second Army Corps during the
Battle of the Sakarya, which effectively stalemated the
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). Dissatisfaction with the progress of the war led to a
coup d'état in
1922 during which Prince Andrew was arrested, court-martialled and found guilty of "disobeying an order" and "acting on his own initiative" during the battle the previous year. Although many defendants in the treason trials that followed the coup were shot,
[7] Andrew was banished for life and his family fled into exile aboard a British cruiser,
HMS ''Calypso''.
[8] In
1930, the Prince published his own version of events in a book entitled ''Towards Disaster: The Greek Army in Asia Minor in 1921''. In
1936, the sentence was quashed by emergency laws, which also restored land and annuities to the King.
[9] Andrew returned to Greece for a brief visit that May.
[10]
During their time in exile the family became more and more dispersed, his daughters eventually settled in
Germany separated from Andrew, and Philip wound up being taken care of by his relatives in the
United Kingdom. Alice suffered a
nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in
Switzerland, and after her recovery returned to Greece. Andrew went to live in the South of France onboard a yacht with his lady friend, Countess Andrée de La Bigne. He died in the Metropole Hotel,
Monte Carlo,
Monaco of heart failure and arterial sclerosis.
[1]
Alice founded (in
1949) the
Greek Orthodox Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, a religious order tending the poor and sick in Greece. She sheltered a Jewish family and was posthumously honored for heroism by
Israel.
Ancestors
Notes and sources
1. Vickers, p.309
2. ''The Times (London)'', Thursday 8 October 1903, p.3
3. ''The Times (London)'', Monday 4 December 1922, p.17
4. ''The Times (London)'', Wednesday 19 March 1913, p.6
5. Marquis of Ruvigny, ''The Titled Nobility of Europe'' (Harrison and Sons, London, 1914) p.71
6. ''The Times (London)'', Friday 23 November 1917, p.10
7. ''The Times (London)'', Friday 1 December 1922, p.12
8. ''The Times (London)'', Tuesday 5 December 1922, p.12
9. ''The Times (London)'', Monday 27 January 1936, p.9
10. ''The Times (London)'', Wednesday 20 May 1936, p. 15
11. Vickers, p.309
Reference
★ Vickers, Hugo, ''Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece'' (Hamish Hamilton, London, 2000) ISBN 0-241-13686-5
Titles
★ ''His Royal Highness'' Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
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