Alexandra of Yugoslavia
| Alexandra of Greece and Denmark | |
|---|---|
| File:Queen Alexandra with her son, Alexander.jpg
Alexandra with her son
|
|
| Queen consort of Yugoslavia | |
| Tenure | 20 March 1944 – 29 November 1945 |
| Born | 25 March 1921 Athens, Greece |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. East Sussex, England |
| Burial | 7 February 1993 Royal Cemetery, Tatoi Palace, Greece, then Oplenac, Topola, Serbia |
| Spouse | Peter II of Yugoslavia |
| Issue | Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia |
| House | Glücksburg |
| Father | Alexander of Greece |
| Mother | Aspasia Manos |
| Religion | Eastern Orthodox |
| Styles of Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Reference style | Her Majesty |
| Spoken style | Your Majesty |
| Alternative style | Ma'am |
Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (Greek: Αλεξάνδρα, Serbian: Александра/Aleksandra; 25 March 1921 – 30 January 1993) was Queen of Yugoslavia as the wife of the last King of Yugoslavia, Peter II, and mother of Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia.
Contents
Birth and inheritance
She was born five months after the death of her father, King Alexander of Greece, to his morganatic widow, Aspasia Manos.[1] His father, King Constantine I, was restored to the Greek throne a month after Alexander's death and returned to Greece from exile. His government officially treated the brief reign of his late son as a regency, which meant that Alexander's marriage, contracted without his father's permission, was technically illegal, the marriage void, and the couple's posthumous daughter, Alexandra, illegitimate.
At the behest of Alexander's mother, Queen Sophia, a law was passed in July 1922 which allowed the King to recognize the validity of marriages of members of the Royal family contracted without the Royal assent, even retroactively, although on a non-dynastic basis. King Constantine then issued a decree, gazetted on 10 September 1922, recognizing Alexander's marriage to Aspasia. Thus Alexandra became legitimate in the eyes of Greek law, but continued to be shunned and lacked the right of succession to the throne that dynastic princesses enjoyed under the monarchist constitution.[citation needed] As a result, instead of a first Greek queen regnant, she eventually became Yugoslavia's last queen consort.[2][3]
Hence, she and her mother were accorded the title "Princess of Greece and Denmark" and the style of Royal Highness.[4] This title was borne by non-reigning members of the Greek Royal Family, who also happened to be members of a cadet branch of the reigning dynasty of Denmark. They moved to Italy, then London, then lived at the Hotel Crillon in Paris.[1]
She was educated at Heathfield School, Ascot, followed by a finishing school in Paris.[1][5]
Marriage and later life
In 1944, she moved to London, where on 20 March at the Yugoslav Legation[6] she married her third cousin, the young King of Yugoslavia, Peter II, whom she had met in 1942. (Both were great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, she through her paternal grandmother Sophia, Queen of the Hellenes, and he through his maternal grandmother, Queen Marie of Romania). Guests at the wedding included members of the British royal family, including King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; Henry, Duke of Gloucester; Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent; as well as other European royalty in exile, such as King Haakon VII of Norway and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.[7]
On 17 July 1945 she gave birth to the Crown Prince in Suite 212 of Claridge's Hotel in Brook Street. The British Government ceded sovereignty over the suite to Yugoslavia just for one day, so that the prince would be born in Yugoslav territory, which was to be the only time Queen Alexandra was in Yugoslavia.[1]
The marriage deteriorated after the war and the declaration of a Communist republic in Yugoslavia; in the late 1940s Queen Alexandra left her husband, taking their son with her, after he had sold her jewels and most of their other remaining property.
After his death in 1970, she settled in East Sussex, where she died on 30 January 1993 after suffering for several years from cancer.[1][6]
She was buried in the former private Greek royal residence at Tatoi in Greece. In May 2013, her remains were transferred to Serbia for reburial in the crypt of the Royal Mausoleum at Oplenac. The reburial of HM King Peter II and his mother, HM Queen Maria of Yugoslavia, also took place at the same time, on 26 May 2013.[8]
Publications
She published an autobiography in 1956[9] and a biography of her fathers cousin, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1961.[10]
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
- 25 March 1921 – 20 March 1944: Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark
- 20 March 1944 – 29 November 1945: Her Majesty The Queen of Yugoslavia
- 29 November 1945 – 3 November 1970 in pretense: Her Majesty The Queen of Yugoslavia
- 3 November 1970 – 30 January 1993 in pretense: Her Majesty Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia
Honours
Greek Royal Family: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Olga and Sophia[11]
House of Karađorđević: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Karađorđe[12]- House of Karađorđević: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the White Eagle[12]
- House of Karađorđević: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sava[13]
Ancestry
As daughter of Aspasia and granddaughter of Petros Manos and Maria Argyropoulos, she was the only scion of the Royal Family of Greece to be of recent Greek descent.[citation needed] Through her mother she descended from, among others, Phanariote Greeks from Constantinople. Like most European royal families, the Glücksburg dynasty, to which her husband belonged, was of predominantly German extraction.[citation needed]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ http://www.royal-magazin.de/yugoslavia/emeralds-queen-serbia-necklace.htm
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 , [1] queen Alexandra wears the Star of Karađorđe on her right shoulder and star of the White Eagle on her right stomach
- ↑ http://www.royalfamily.org/king-peter-ii-queen-alexandra-and-queen-maria-and-hrh-prince-andrej-left-the-royal-palace-chapel-this-morning-to-cathedral-church-in-belgrade/
Sources
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia. |
- Marlene Eilers König, Descendants of Queen Victoria.
|
Alexandra of Yugoslavia
Cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg
Born: 25 March 1921 Died: 30 January 1993 |
||
| Yugoslavian royalty | ||
|---|---|---|
| Vacant
Title last held by
Maria of Yugoslavia |
Queen consort of Yugoslavia 20 March 1944 – 29 November 1945 |
Monarchy abolished |
| Titles in pretence | ||
| Loss of title |
— TITULAR — Queen consort of Yugoslavia 29 November 1945 – 3 November 1970 |
Vacant
Title next held by
Princess Maria da Gloria of Orléans-Braganza |
External links
| First generation |
 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Second generation |
|
|
| Third generation |
|
|
| Fourth generation | ||
| Fifth generation |
|
|
|
See also House of Glücksburg
|
||
|
The generations are numbered from the implementation of hereditary monarchy by Frederick III in 1660.
|
||
| 1st generation |
 |
|
| 2nd generation |
|
|
| 3rd generation |
|
|
| 4th generation |
|
|
| 5th generation | ||
| 6th generation | ||
| 7th generation |
|
|
| 8th generation | ||
| 9th generation | ||
| 10th generation |
|
|
| 11th generation |
|
|
| 12th generation | ||
| 13th generation |
|
|
|
* also a princess of Greece
|
||
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles containing Greek-language text
- Articles containing Serbian-language text
- Articles with unsourced statements from March 2013
- Commons category link is locally defined
- Greek princesses
- Danish princesses
- Yugoslav queens consort
- House of Glücksburg (Greece)
- People from Athens
- 1921 births
- 1993 deaths
- Karađorđević dynasty
- Burials at the Mausoleum of the Royal House of Karađorđević, Oplenac
- Burials at Tatoi Palace Royal Cemetery
- People educated at Heathfield School, Ascot
- Greek people
![[1]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/98/1a/74/981a74d5819f32bf1c50202eb66bafb5.jpg){kind=link}