Alexandra of Greece and Denmark

Infobox Yugoslavian Royalty|majesty|consort
name =Alexandra of Greece
title =Queen consort of Yugoslavia


imgw = 180px
caption =Queen Alexandra, circa 1960
reign =March 20, 1944 - November 9, 1945
reign-type =Consort
spouse =Peter II
spouse-type =Consort to
issue =Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia
royal house =House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
House of Karađorđević
titles ="HM" Queen Alexandra
"HM" The Queen of Yugoslavia
"HRH" Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark
father =Alexander I of Greece
mother =Aspasia Manos
date of birth =birth date|1921|3|25|mf=y
place of birth =flagicon|Greece|royal Athens, Greece
date of death =death date and age|1993|1|30|1921|3|25|mf=y
place of death =flagicon|United Kingdom East Sussex, England
place of burial =Tatoi Royal Cemetery, Greece|

Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (25 March 1921 - 30 January 1993) was the wife of the last King of Yugoslavia, Peter II and mother of the current pretender, Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia.

She was born five months after the death of her father, King Alexander I of the Hellenes, to his morganatic widow, Aspasia Manos. 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 lack the right of succession to the throne that dynastic princesses enjoyed under the monarchist constitution. As a result, instead of a first Greek queen regnant, she eventually became Yugoslavia's last queen consort [cite book| author = Diesbach, Ghislain de| others = translated from the French by Margaret Crosland| title = Secrets of the Gotha| year = 1967| publisher = Chapman & Hall| location = London| pages = p. 225] [cite book| last = Valynseele| first = Joseph| title = Les Prétendants aux trônes d'Europe| year = 1967| location = Paris| language = French| pages = page 442|]

Hence, she and her mother were accorded the title "Princess of Greece and Denmark" and the style of "Royal Highness". [cite book| editor = Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh| title = Burke's Guide to the Royal Family| date = 1973-03-06| publisher = Burke's Peerage | location = London| id = ISBN 0-220-66222-3] 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.

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. 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, but his lineage included some Greek ancestry dating back to the Middle Ages, cf Byzantine descent of Danish royals of Greece. In 1944, she moved to London and married Peter II of Yugoslavia and gave birth to Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia on 17 July 1945 there. Unfortunately, they were too ill-equipped to raise him and Alexander was instead raised by his maternal grandmother, Aspasia.

Queen Alexandra died in East Sussex, England and was buried in the former private Greek royal residence at Tatoi in Greece.

ources

* Marlene Eilers König, Descendants of Queen Victoria

References

-