The ups and downs of the Greek royals were many in the twentieth century and the then Prince Philip of Battenberg (later Mountbatten) is said to be just one of the protagonists, and while his Greek roots are less known than those of Germany, they are not therefore less convulsive.
The Mon Repos Palace is now just a museum, the Palaeopolis Museum on the Greek island of Corfu. In June, it will be a century since this historic building, when the summer residence of the Greek royal family, was the birth of Philip of Greece and Denmark.
In the same place, Sofia of Greece strengthened her courtship with the then Prince Juan Carlos, who had been invited to spend the summer with his family in the Hellenic Royal Palace, when the monarchy in Greece had not yet fallen and King Constantine still had it. done. not forced to leave the country.
Photo EFE
Philip of Edinburgh, the sixth and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, was born in that palace on June 10, 1921, where his family had moved after the death of King of Greece George I in 1913.
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His stay on this island and in the Hellenic country was short, for when he was only 18 months old, his father had to leave Greece after being sentenced to death, as he was considered one of the main responsible for the disastrous campaign of the Greek army. in Turkey.
Under pressure from the United Kingdom, the sentence was not carried out on the condition that Andrés of Greece banished himself from the country forever.
After spending a few years in France, the family began to disperse. He went to study in England and all his sisters married German princes, two of whom Philip would face during World War II.
‘It’s my rock. It has been my strength and my support, ”the queen once said, reluctant to show affection in public. Photo: AFP archive
Perhaps even more dramatic was the story of his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg. She was deaf from the age of four and was being treated for autism because no one recognized what was happening to her. Meanwhile, the young woman learned eight languages by lip reading.
In 1902 she met Prince Andreas, whom she married a year later in the German city of Darmstadt, before settling in the royal palaces of Greece.
During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) she worked as a volunteer nurse for the Red Cross, but after she left for France, her situation plummeted again. Her relationship with the prince deteriorated to the point that she was admitted to a sanitarium after Sigmund Freud diagnosed her with schizophrenia and subjected her to electroshock.
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When she finally left the sanitarium, she divorced her husband and returned to Germany.
Prince Felipe and then Princess Isabel were married on November 20, 1947. They had four children (Carlos, Ana, Andrés and Eduardo). Photo: AFP archive
Philip of Edinburgh was considered “the only man in the world to treat the Queen as a human being, as an equal”. Photo: AFP archive
Meanwhile, Felipe studied in England, France and Germany, and at the age of 18 he joined the United Kingdom army in 1939. Three years later he had risen to the rank of first lieutenant.
Shortly after he came of age and buried one of his sisters, the paths of the future Duke of Edinburgh took him back to Greece with the intention of living with his mother who had returned to that country a year earlier to live with the poor. to work.
He was only able to spend a month with her because his uncle, King George II of Greece, asked him to return to the United Kingdom and continue his service in the Royal Navy.
Before the outbreak of World War II, he served first on the battleship HMS Ramillies in the Indian Ocean and, after Greece’s participation in the war, in October 1940, on the battleship HMS Valiant in the Mediterranean.
“In his brilliant career, he collected a chest full of medals that he proudly displayed at numerous events. The awards include awards for his bravery in the 1939-45 war, where he distracted Nazi pilots during a bombing raid in 1943 by launching a raft with smoke floats. He was also mentioned in Dispatches for his ‘alertness’ to help detect enemy ships, ”the Daily Mail reported.
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In the 1940s, his mother stayed in Greece, occupied by Nazi Germany. After the liberation, the princess continued to work as a nun for decades and tried to found a monastery in the Greek town of Tinos.
Finally, in 1967, the Prince of Edinburgh transferred her to Buckingham Palace, where she died two years later.
Philip’s Greek story ends on November 21, 1947, before marrying Elizabeth II, when he renounces his Greek royal title, takes his mother’s last name (Mountbatten) and becomes a British citizen. In 1952, four years after his marriage to the Queen, he had to resign from the Navy. Felipe too
he was trained as a pilot with the RAF and by the age of 76, when he retired in 1997, had completed 5,986 hours of flight time.
In post-monarchical Greece, the messages of pain today have been meager: the President of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropolu, sent her condolences via Twitter, a number of condolences to which the President of the Greek Parliament has added on behalf of all by means of a note. the alternates