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Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................4
Chapter 1: Early life (187593).......................................................................5
1.1. Birth.......................................................................................................5
1.2. Upbringing............................................................................................6
1.3. Marriage................................................................................................8
Chapter 2: Crown Princess (18931914)........................................................9
2.1. Domestic Life........................................................................................9
2.2. Bringing Up Her Children.................................................................12
2.3. Queen Marie about Her Children.....................................................13
Chapter 3: Queen of Romania (191427).....................................................14
3.1. World War I..........................................................................................14
3.2. Queen Marie as Commander..............................................................16
3.4. Coronation.............................................................................................19
3.5. Visit to America.....................................................................................20
Chapter 4: Widowhood (192738).................................................................21
4.1. Carol's Reign.........................................................................................22
4.2. Illness and Death...................................................................................23
Conclusion.......................................................................................................28
Bibliography....................................................................................................29
Introduction
I have chosen to write about Queen Marie because I think she was one of
the most valuable Romanian personalities, a role model for future generations.
Marie of Romania was one of the most fascinating women of her perioda
queen descended from the highest royalty of Europe.NicolaeIorgasaid about
her that: She believed in kings and their missions, but also in their rights. She
was not haughty, nor humble, but she was royal from head to toe, imperious,
bright, active, the happy little girl full of life and faith in her race.
Her education and her principles influenced the cultural and public life of
Romania, in spite of her life being the subject of gossips on three
continents.During World War I Marie did what most of her female relatives:
volunteered as a Red Cross nurse to help the sick and wounded. She poured
her heart and soul into this work and did not take very good precautions to
ensure her own life. One of the reasons she isstill so fascinating is that she had
a rare combination of royal snobbery, common sense and kindness.
Great Britain gave us something priceless, something that we should be
proud of: a real queen!
I was barely seventeen when I came to you. I was young and ignorant, but very
proud of my native country, and even now, I am proud to have been born an
Englishwoman... but I bless you, dear Romania, country of my joy and my grief,
the beautiful country which has lived in my heart.
-Queen Marie of Romania
1.1.
Birth
Marie was born at her parents' official residence, Eastwell Manor in Kent,
on 29 October 1875, at 10:30 a.m.She was the eldest daughter and second
child of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Maria Alexandrovna,
Duchess of Edinburgh. She was named Marie Alexandra Victoria, after her
mother and grandmothers,but she was informally known as "Missy". 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." 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.
1.2.
Upbringing
Marie and her siblings, Prince Alfredand Princesses Victoria Melita,
Alexandra and Beatricespent much of their early life at Eastwell Park, which
their mother preferred instead of Clarence House, their official residence. 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.
1.3.
Marriage
Marie grew into a "lovely young woman" with "sparkling blue eyes and
silky fair hair" and her suitors soon multiplied. Among these was Prince
George of Wales, who in 1892 became second in line to inherit the throne.
Queen Victoria and the Duke of Edinburgh all approved, but the Princess of
Wales and the Duchess of Edinburgh did not.. Queen Victoria would later
comment that "Georgie lost Missy by waiting & waiting".
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. Marie and Ferdinand
first became acquainted during a gala dinner. She did not actually liked him
and she found him shy but amiable. Once the pair were formally engaged,
Queen Victoria wrote to Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine that
"[Ferdinand] is nice and the Parents are charmingbut the country is very
insecure and the immorality of the Society at Bucharest quite awful". In late
1892, King Carol visited London in order to meet the Duke of Edinburgh and
Queen Victoria, who eventually agreed to the marriage.
On 10 January 1893, Marie and Ferdinand were married at Sigmaringen
Castle in three ceremonies: one civil, one Catholic and one Anglican.
She had come to this unfamiliar Eastern country, as she told us later, to live
with a husband she hardly knew, as an inexperienced child
Domestic Life
The first years of Marie and Ferdinand's marriage were not particularly
easy. One thing that they found they had in common was their love of their
country, Marie later stating that "any mistakes we will have made, we have
always had the best of intentions in mind and I am convinced that the people
know this". Gradually, the couple's relationship became based on a cordial
friendship: Marie respected Ferdinand for his superiority 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. King Carol gradually realized that
Marie was the stronger of the royal pair and she told us he then began to
consult her on state matters.
Marie gave birth to her first child, to the great joy of the whole country,
Prince Carol, only nine months after the marriage, on 15 October. Marie was
hardly permitted any contact with her child. Presently she discovered an
escape from her boring life in riding. She loved to gallop over the countryside
and in this way she came to know and love the peasants, the real Romanian
people, into whose homes she would go and talk
In 1896, Ferdinand and Marie moved to Cotroceni Palace, which had been
especially arranged for them by King Carol. In 1903, Ferdinand and Marie
inaugurated Pelior, an Art Nouveau castle in Sinaia that King Carol
commissioned for the royal couple. 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.
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
10
itself with Greece. The war, which lasted a little over a month, was worsened
by a cholera epidemic. With the help of Dr. IoanCantacuzino and Sister Pucci,
a Red Cross nurse, Marie travelled between Romania and Bulgaria, lending a
helping hand in hospitals. 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. Soon after
the war ended, King Carol became ill.
On 28 June 1914, at Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated. On 28 July, Austria-Hungary
declared war on Serbia and, as Marie saw it, "the world's peace was torn to
shreds". 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. Eventually, he died on 10
October 1914 and Ferdinand automatically succeeded as king.
11
2.2.
Relationships between the parents and children were apparently normal, but
in fact both king and queen were not involved in the education of the royal
children, so much as it would have beennecessary.The children received, of
course, the proper instruction, but the Royal House could not substitute a true
educational institution
For Marie "My children were the central interest of my life. Those of our
race are passionate mothers, and we cannot conceive of a world without
children. But she couldnt decide to discipline their children as she should
have: "I was not by nature a pedagogueI was, in fact, inclined to be too
lenient always, as I hated the feeling of any sort of tyranny or coercion, and
had an insurmountable aversion to scolding. I hated being scolded, and still
more did I hate having to scold".
12
2.3.
"I had now six children and I had the feeling that this essential part of my
duty was at an end. I had not disappointed Rumania in its expectations; the
royal family was copiously establishedthree sons and three daughters.
About Carol: "Carol, the eldest of our children, was plump, merry and
docile as a small boy. Being the first, he was of course spoilt by high and low.
He was the long-hoped-for heir and, therefore, the great favorite".
About Mignon: "Mignon was all smiles and passivity; she was pleased with
everything. Her nature was based upon sweetness and patience.
About Ileana: "Ileana was certainly the child of my soul.Her birth was a
great joy to me and I was glad she was a girl. I remember how I lay on my
back, the struggle over, the new little world wanderer pressed to my heart,
listening to the royal salutetwenty-one guns for a princess."
About Elisabeta: Lisabetha was much more classically beautiful, but was
always a solemn, rather austerely silent child, unable to express her feelings.
Her look was straight, almost defiant, full of ardour, fantasy and imagination
and fond of being alone".
About Nicolae: "I had always remembered him welcoming, sympathetic,
full of quiet charm. He seemed to live in a sort of imperial mist".
13
At the time of Ferdinand's ascension, the government was led by the liberal
prime minister Ion I. C. Brtianu. With Brtianu'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. Marie favoured an alliance
with the Triple Entente (Russia, France and Britain), partly because of her
14
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.
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 AustriaHungary. Early on during the war, Marie was involved in aiding the Romanian
Red Cross and visited hospitals daily.
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?". After Bucharest fell to Austrian
troops, the royal court was transferred to Iai, capital of the Moldavia region,
in December 1916.
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". Soon afterwards, Ferdinand signed the Treaty of
Focani, on 9 December 1917. Marie considered the treaty perilous. Later
turns of events would prove Marie to have assumed correctly. In 1918, Marie
vehemently opposed the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, giving rise to her
description as "truly the only man in Romania". The Armistice with Germany
(11 November 1918) put an end to fighting in Europe and, thus, to the war.
The idea of a "Greater Romania" had existed in the minds of Romanians in
Transylvania for some. 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. Marie wrote, "the dream of Romnia Mare seems to be
becoming a reality ... it is all so incredible that I hardly dare believe it." 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".
15
The spiritual connection between Marie and the army was very.During the
Balkan War, Princess Marie has worked in the health service, caring for the
sick in Cholera camps, risking her live unreservedly. Then during World War
Ithough now she was queen, she cared for the sick people with typhus in
Moldova. Arthur Gould Lee described these gestures of Queen Marie: "People
were excited about her exuberance and they admired her spirit, especially the
incredible courage shown during the Balkan wars of 1913, when not only she
had indifferent passed through the frontline trenches, through fire, but she had
also showed a fearless and unusual contempt, for the contagious diseases from
the hospitals. Without worrying about the risks, she was next to the young
soldiers, who were dying of cholera, shedding tears for each of them.
16
In October 1917, on the front of Moldova, the Queen was pictured wearing
an officers uniform, in the first sector named Ciresoaia, in front of the sign of
altitude 443, in the first line, 200 meters from enemy.
During the time she lived at Cotroceni, at a precise time, the Queen used to
watch from her window the parade organized in her honor. It is interesting to
note that the figure of Queen Marie was never altered by the communist
regime, and the army continued to promote the old spirit of worshiping our
heroes. In the closed circuit lessons of the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of
Interior, historians like Michael E. Ionescu, Talpes or RazvanTheodorescuused
to hold lectures with the topic: The life and work of Queen Marie of Romania
accomplisher of the Romanian nation.
Before being driven from Cotroceni Palace on her last way, the queen
wasgreeted by the soldiers with their bayonets stuck in the ground and the
buttsof their arms upwards,a unique gesture that the army had not offered to
any other man.
17
18
3.4. Coronation
An elaborate set of jewelry and clothing was made especially for the
coronation. The crown 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 ceremony was conducted by the Metropolitan of All Romania,
MironCristea. After placing his crown on his own head, Ferdinand crowned
Marie, who had knelt before him. The following day, Ferdinand and Marie
triumphantly entered Bucharest. The splendour of the coronation was
subsequently cited as evidence of Marie's theatricality. Marie would be
received into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1926, mentioning a desire to
be closer to her people.
19
20
21
22
During the summer of 1937, Marie fellill.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, and she declined a medical flight offered by Hitler, instead choosing
to return to Romania by train. She was brought to Pelior Castle.
Marie died on 18 July 1938, at 5:38 p.m.Although Maries official
biographies say she died of internal haemorrhages after spending several
months in hospitals, other sources claim it was during an argument between
Carol and Nicholas that Marie perished. She died after being accidentally shot
by her younger son while covering the elder one with her body. Nobody knows
for sure what exactly happened between the three of them. Some historians
have accepted that the gun was fired by accident.
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. Thousands of
people filed by Marie's bier during the three-day lying in state and, on the third
23
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 Arge Monastery, where she was interred. Marie's heart,
according to her own wishes, was placed in small golden casket embellished
with the emblems of the Romanian provinces and interred in her Stella Maris
chapel in Balchik
Marie was the last Queen consort of Romania. She was one of Queen
Victoria's five reigning granddaughters and one of three to retain their position
as consort after the conclusion of World War I.
24
and
grandmother,
she
was
still
coquettish,
still
beautiful.
25
"Whatever Queen Marie's errors before and after the war, the war remains
her page, the page of which she may boast, the page that will seat her in
history's place of honor. [...] We find her in the trenches among the
combatants, in forward positions; we find her in the hospitals and all the
medical units; among the wounded, among the sick; we find her present
wherever people met to try to do some good. She knew no fear of bullets and
bombs, just as she knew no fear or disgust at disease, or impatience with the
often useless efforts provoked by her desire for something better. Queen Marie
fulfilled her duty on all the multiple fronts of her activity."
26
heartily attached to Pelisor too, where after she died the rooms suddenly burst
with the smell of violets, recognized by the old caretakers as a particular
favorite of the queen.Formula As team charged with finding paranormal
facts.These apparitions, extremely rare, are, as a matter of fact, almost angelic.
"At Pelisor, from time to time, in certain rooms, one could smell, without any
explanation, the Queen Marie's perfume".
Queen Marie, as she has been described, seemed quite capable of offering
this kind of after-death surprises: preoccupied to stage her own funeral, she
instructed that violet be worn at her funeral.
In accordance with her will, her heart was kept in a cloister at the Balchik
Palace which she had built. In 1940, when Balchik and the rest of Southern
Dobrudja were returned to Bulgaria, Queen Maries heart was transferred to
Bran Castle.
27
Conclusion
In this paperIintended to show and demonstrate what this English princess,
who later became queen, had meant for Romania.Despite criticism, Queen
Mariecertaintydid what she thought was appropriate for her adoptive country.
The way in which she influenced the political, economical and social life in
Romania, support this statement.
The purpose of this work is to remind us of a real historical personality in
Romania and observe the tremendous influence that she dedicated to the
country and people and to emphasize the impact she had on the development
of this country.
The royal family remains part of our history as a story from long ago. If any
royal personality has maintained a certain connection, however shaky, within
the people of my country, especially the older generation and historians
Marie is probably the one. I am tended to believe that the most beloved
monarch in Romanian history, Queen Marie, is as popular now as she ever
was. The films and documentaries about her life that can be found on the
internet are widely appreciated as well as her books still offer a fascinating
lecture.
Love, Faith, Courage with these three we can win the world. Queen
Marie of Romania
28
Bibliography
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