Born the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II, Princess Marie became Romania’s last queen—and personally redrew her adopted nation’s map at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On October 15, 1922, Marie of Romania was crowned queen of a country nearly twice the size it had been four years earlier. The ceremony at Alba Iulia marked her coronation as ruler over ten million additional subjects and 295,000 square kilometers of newly acquired territory gains she had secured herself at the Paris Peace Conference three years earlier.
While Allied leaders debated borders and reparations in 1919, Marie had charmed them into granting Romania extensive territorial expansion in Dobruja, Bessarabia, and Bukovina.
This was unusual for one reason: Romania had lost the war.
Marie Left England Forever at 17
Marie was born on October 29, 1875, at Eastwell Manor in Kent. Her father was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, a son of Queen Victoria. Her mother was Grand Duchess Alexandrovna, daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The princess spent her childhood traveling between royal capitals for weddings and state occasions, raised variously between England and Germany, with an extended stay in Malta in the late 1880s when her father commanded the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet there.
As a granddaughter of two of Europe’s most powerful monarchs, Marie was always destined for an arranged marriage with another European royal house. For a time in the early 1890s, consideration was given to marrying her to her cousin George, second son of the Prince of Wales. When George’s older brother Albert Victor died unexpectedly in 1892, George became heir to the English throne and was betrothed to Mary of Teck instead.
A new arrangement was made. Marie would marry Prince Ferdinand of Romania, crown prince and heir to the Romanian throne. In late 1892, at just 17 years old, Marie left England. It was the last time she would ever call England home.
King Carol Took Marie’s Children Away
Marie and Ferdinand were married at Sigmaringen Castle in southern Germany on January 10, 1893. The ceremony was performed as both a Catholic and Protestant service to accommodate their different religious backgrounds. Afterward they traveled by train into the Kingdom of Romania, a new state that had achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 to 1878. Prince Karl Friedrich Ludwig of the German house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had been crowned as King Carol I—Marie’s new father-in-law, and one day her husband would succeed him.
The first years in Bucharest were not easy. King Carol was a domineering figure. Ferdinand was pleasant but timid and never challenged his uncle. The marriage produced children quickly—their first son, Carol, arrived in October 1893, nine months after the wedding—but King Carol and Queen Elisabeth were convinced that royal children should be placed in a separate household for their upbringing. Marie’s children were taken from her care almost as soon as they were born.
As the years passed, Marie grew into the situation and became well-liked by the Romanian people. While her marriage to Ferdinand was always cordial, she engaged in several affairs from the late 1890s. One of these, with Lieutenant Gheorghe Cantacuzene, a member of an ancient Romanian royal line, is believed to have resulted in a pregnancy. Marie briefly went to stay with her mother in Germany, almost certainly to give birth to an illegitimate child who was sent to an orphanage.
Marie Nursed Soldiers During Cholera Outbreak
Marie became more determined to resist her father-in-law’s autocratic behavior and carve her own path. An opportunity presented itself when the Second Balkan War erupted in summer 1913 following Bulgaria’s declaration of war on Greece. Romania allied with Greece in the conflict, which lasted little over a month. No sooner had it commenced than Marie began working in Romanian field hospitals established for the kingdom’s wounded soldiers.
Death stalked the hallways. A virulent outbreak of cholera made the hospitals more dangerous than the battlefield. Marie ignored warnings and became a nurse, tending to the wounded for several weeks. She held the hands of dying patients and nursed those who were ill. She refused to wear a mask, arguing that to do so would dehumanize the sick in their last moments. Her reputation in Romania soared.
Ferdinand Became King in 1914
On October 10, 1914, King Carol I died. Ferdinand succeeded him as king. Marie became queen consort—the wife of the effective ruler—though as the years passed it became clear in Europe’s capital cities that it was Queen Marie who really determined the policies emanating from the royal palace in Bucharest.
Marie became queen in the midst of a profound crisis. A few months before King Carol died, the First World War had broken out across Europe following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Empire of Austria-Hungary, in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist. The old king had favored joining the war on the side of the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—but his government had determined Romania should remain neutral.
When Ferdinand was crowned, Marie was clear in her views: Romania should enter the war on the side of her homeland Britain, which was in alliance with France and Russia. It took many months to convince all political parties in Bucharest, but eventually this option was chosen in August 1916. The final decision had reportedly been taken when Marie told Ferdinand in no uncertain terms that Romania was entering the conflict on the side of the British, French, and Russians.
Romania Signed a Humiliating Treaty
The war was disastrous. At first Romania put up a decent showing against its larger neighbors, aiding Russia on the Eastern Front. Once the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 and Russia left the war, Romania found itself surrounded by the Central Powers. The country was occupied. In May 1918, Romania signed the Treaty of Bucharest, ceding extensive territory, agreeing to disband much of its army, and leasing the country’s vast oil wells to Germany.
Marie, who had returned to nursing work under the Red Cross once Romania entered the war in 1916, was highly opposed to the Treaty. There was little that could be done to resist the Central Powers when it was signed in early summer 1918.
Marie Personally Negotiated Romania’s Borders
Ultimately Romania lost the war but won the peace. In 1917 the United States had joined the war on the side of Britain and France. As more American troops and aid arrived in France throughout 1918, it became clear Germany would be defeated. Romania re-entered the war on November 10, 1918, one day before an armistice was signed bringing the conflict to an end.
In the peace negotiations that followed in Paris, the Romanian delegation was initially in dispute with France over the terms of the post-war settlement in the Balkans. Then Marie traveled to France to personally oversee matters. She charmed the Allied leaders. Under the terms of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine and other peace agreements of 1919 and 1920, the Kingdom of Romania not only had all its former territory restored but gained extensive lands in Dobruja, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. A Greater Romania was formed.
When Ferdinand and Marie were crowned as king and queen of this enlarged state at Alba Iulia on October 15, 1922, they became rulers of ten million more subjects and an extra 295,000 square kilometers of land.
Carol II Deposed His Son
Ferdinand and Marie’s time as king and queen did not last as long as it might have. In 1927, Ferdinand died prematurely of cancer at 61 years of age. Marie had always been the power behind the throne and had used the mid-1920s to spread the country’s influence by undertaking a much-feted tour of the United States.
The last years of her reign were troubled by the succession. In early 1926, Crown Prince Carol had renounced his succession rights after entering into a very public extramarital affair. It was the latest in a string of scandals surrounding Carol. The succession would now pass to his son Michael. When Ferdinand died two years later, this became a problem: Michael was just five years old.
Marie turned down an offer to become part of the regency government appointed to rule on Michael’s behalf during his minority. This led to accusations that Marie was plotting a coup against her own grandson. The accusations were unfounded.
In the end, it was not King Michael’s grandmother who overthrew him, but his own father. Having returned to Romania from abroad after deciding he wished to rule the country after all, Carol deposed his son in 1930 and was crowned as King Carol II. Marie was initially relieved that this might bring stability to the succession issue. She was surprised when Carol shut her out and refused to give her any significant role within the new regime.
Marie largely retired to her estate by the Black Sea and spent much of the rest of her life there. In 1937, the Queen Dowager was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, though she had abstained from alcohol throughout her entire life. She died just weeks later at age 62. Marie had spent much of her later years writing, a habit she had started decades earlier. By the time she died, she had published 34 books and many short stories.
Her popularity waned in her final years, in large part owing to a determined campaign to denigrate her legacy by the authorities in Bucharest. Carol ruled until 1940, when he was forced to abdicate as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia dismembered the country as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to divide up Eastern Europe. He was succeeded by his son, who now found himself King of Romania for the second time. When Michael was finally deposed in 1947, the Romanian monarchy was brought to an end and a communist regime came to power.
Neither Carol II nor Michael had been married during their reigns. Although the monarchy outlived Ferdinand and Marie’s reign by twenty years, she was the last Queen of Romania.
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