Prince George of Greece and Denmark

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Infobox Greek Royalty|highness
name =Prince George
title =Prince George of Greece and Denmark


imgw = 180px
spouse = Princess Marie Bonaparte
issue = Prince Peter
Princess Eugénie
full name =
titles ="HRH" Prince George of Greece and Denmark
royal house =House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
father =George I of Greece
mother =Olga Constantinovna of Russia
date of birth =Birth date|1869|6|24|df=yes
place of birth = Corfu, Greece
date of death =Death date and age|1957|11|25|1869|6|24|df=yes
place of death = Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France, France
date of christening =
place of christening =

Prince George of Greece and Denmark, known as Uncle Goggy to his family, (Greek: Πρίγκιπας Γεώργιος) (24 June 1869–25 November 1957) was the second son of King George I of the Hellenes and Grand Duchess Olga, and is remembered chiefly for having saved the life of a future Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II. He served as high commissioner of Crete during its transition towards independence from Ottoman rule and union with Greece.

Youth

From 1883, George lived at the castle of Bernstorff in Copenhagen with Prince Valdemar of Denmark, his father's younger brother. The king had taken the boy to Denmark to enlist him in the Danish royal navy, and consigned him to the care of Valdemar, who was an admiral in the Danish fleet. Feeling abandoned by his father on this occasion, George would later describe to his fiancée the profound attachment he developed for his uncle from that day forward. [cite book|last= Bertin|first= Celia|title= Marie Bonaparte: A Life|year= 1982|publisher= Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|location= New York|isbn= 0-15-157252-6|pages=85–86|chapter = A False Happiness|quote= From that day, from that moment on, I loved him and I have never had any other friend but him...You will love him too, when you meet him.|]

In 1891, George accompanied his cousin the Tsarevich Nicholas on his voyage to Asia, and saved him from an assassination attempt in Japan, in what became known as the Otsu Incident.

Greek endeavors

George, along with his brothers Constantine and Nicolas, were involved with the organization of the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. George served as president of the Sub-Committee for Nautical Sports.

Although much of modern Greece had been independent since the 1820s, Crete remained in Ottoman hands. For the rest of the 19th century, there had been many rebellions and protests on the island. A Greek force arrived to annex the island in 1897 and the Great Powers acted, occupying the island and dividing it into British, French, Russian and Italian areas of control.

In 1898, Turkish troops were ejected and a national government was set up, still nominally under Ottoman suzerainty. Prince George, not yet thirty, was made High Commissioner and a joint Muslim-Christian assembly was part-elected, part-appointed. However, this was not enough to satisfy Cretan nationalists.

Eleftherios Venizelos was the leader of the movement to reunite Crete with Greece. He had fought in the earlier revolts and was now a member of the Assembly, acting as minister of justice to Prince George. They soon found themselves opposed. George, a staunch royalist, had assumed absolute power.Fact|date=June 2008 Venizelos led the opposition to this. In 1905, however, he summoned an illegal revolutionary assembly in Theriso, in the hills near Chania, the then capital of the island.Fact|date=June 2008

During the revolt, the newly-created Cretan Gendarmerie remained faithful to George. In this difficult period, the Cretan population were divided: in the 1906 elections the pro-Prince parties took 38,127 votes, while pro-Venizelos parties took 33,279. But the Gendarmerie managed to execute its duties without taking sides. Finally, British diplomats brokered a settlement and in September 1906 George was replaced by former Greek prime minister Alexandros Zaimis, and left the island. In 1908, the Cretan Assembly unilaterally declared "enosis" with Greece.

Family affairs

Prince George was married in 1907 to Princess Marie Bonaparte, daughter of Prince Roland Bonaparte, an heiress to the Blanc banking and casino fortune through her mother. When George brought his bride to Bernstorff for the first family visit, Marie d'Orléans was at pains to explain to Marie Bonaparte the intimacy which united uncle and nephew, so deep that at the end of each of George's several yearly visits to Bernstorff, he would weep, Valdemar would take sick, and the women learned the patience not to intrude upon their husbands' private moments. [cite book|last= Bertin|first= Celia|title= Marie Bonaparte: A Life|year= 1982|publisher= Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|location= New York|isbn= 0-15-157252-6|pages= 96–98|chapter= A False Happiness|] During the first of these visits, Marie Bonaparte and Valdemar found themselves engaging in the kind of passionate intimacies she had looked forward to with her husband who, however, only seemed to enjoy them vicariously, sitting or lying beside his wife and uncle. On a later visit, Marie Bonaparte carried on a passionate flirtation with Prince Aage, Valdemar's eldest son. In neither case does it appear that George objected, or felt obliged to give the matter any attention. [cite book|last= Bertin|first= Celia|title= Marie Bonaparte: A Life|year= 1982|publisher= Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|location= New York|isbn= 0-15-157252-6|pages= 96–97, 101|chapter=A False Happiness|]

George criticized Marie d'Orléans to his wife, alleging that she drank too much and was having an affair with his uncle's stablemaster. But Marie Bonaparte found no fault with her sister-in-law, rather, she admired the forbearance and independence of Valdemar's wife under circumstances which caused her bewilderment and estrangemet from her own husband. [cite book|last= Bertin|first= Celia|title= Marie Bonaparte: A Life|year= 1982|publisher= Harcourt Brace Jovanovich|location= New York|isbn= 0-15-157252-6|pages= 97|chapter= A False Happiness|]

Prince George and Princess Marie had two children - "Petros" and "Evgenia". Peter (1908-1980) was an anthropologist, who forfeited his dynastic rights in Greece upon marriage to a commoner. Eugenie (1910-1988) married HSH Prince Dominic Radziwill (1939), whom she divorced in 1948. Her second husband was HSH Prince Raymundo della Torre e Tasso, Duke of Castel Duino whom she married in 1949 and divorced in 1965.

On 21 February, 1957 Princess Marie and her husband celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Prince George died only four days later, aged eighty-eight. Prince George was the longest-living dynast of the House of Oldenburg of his generation.

Georgioupolis, a coastal resort between Chania and Rethimno, was named after Prince George.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

*24 June 1869–25 November 1957: "His Royal Highness" Prince George of Greece and Denmark

Ancestry

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1= 1. Prince George of Greece and Denmark
2= 2. George I of Greece
3= 3. Olga Constantinovna of Russia
4= 4. Christian IX of Denmark
5= 5. Louise of Hesse-Kassel
6= 6. Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich of Russia
7= 7. Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg
8= 8. Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg
9= 9. Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel
10= 10. Landgrave William of Hesse-Kassel
11= 11. Princess Louise Charlotte of Denmark
12= 12. Nicholas I of Russia
13= 13. Charlotte of Prussia
14= 14. Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg
15= 15. Duchess Amelia of Württemberg
16= 16. Friedrich Karl Ludwig, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck
17= 17. Countess Friederike of Schlieben
18= 18. Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Kassel
19= 19. Princess Louise of Denmark and Norway
20= 20. Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Kassel
21= 21. Princess Caroline Polyxene of Nassau-Usingen
22= 22. Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Norway
23= 23. Duchess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
24= 24. Paul I of Russia
25= 25. Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg
26= 26. Frederick William III of Prussia
27= 27. Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
28= 28. Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg
29= 29. Duchess Charlotte Georgine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
30= 30. Duke Louis of Württemberg
31= 31. Princess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg

References

infobox hrhstyles


royal name=Prince George of Greece
dipstyle=His Royal Highness
offstyle=Your Royal Highness
altstyle=Sir|