Prince Andrew of Greece

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His Royal Highness Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (January 20, 1882 - December 3, 1944), of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was the son of King George I (1845-1913), King of the Hellenes, and of Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinova (1851-1926) of Russia.

As he grew up he was taught English by his nannies, so in conversations with his parents he mostly spoke English. He was better at learning to speak Greek than his siblings.

Prince Andrew married HSH Princess Alice of Battenberg in a civil wedding on October 6, 1903 at Darmstadt and in a religious wedding the next day in the Russian Chapel, Darmstadt. Princess Alice was a daughter of His Serene Highness, Prince and Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Louis of Battenberg. As such Princess Alice was a great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria and in the line of succession to the British throne.

Their children were:

  • Princess Margarita (1905-1981). Married Prince Gottried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
  • Princess Theodora (1906-1969). Married Prince Berthold of Baden.
  • Princess Cecilie (1911-1937). Married George Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (son of Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine). The couple with their two young sons and Cecilie's mother-in-law died in an accident when their plane crashed near Ostend on their way to George brother's marriage. A daughter survived them for eighteen months.
  • Princess Sophie (1914-2001). Married first Prince Christoph of Hesse and second prince George Wilhelm of Hanover.
  • Philip (born 1921), later Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Prince Andrew was given command of the XI Division with the rank of Major-General. Later, he would be promoted to Lieutenant-General in charge of the B' Army Corps. He was stripped of command after failing twice to obey Greek Commander-in-Chief Anastasios Papoulas' orders to advance upon the enemy. His second act of disobedience left the A' Army Corps' flanks exposed to the enemy. Following the Asia Minor Disaster in 1922, a group of officers rebelled against the royalist government and overthrew them. Six members of the government, including Dimitrios Gounaris, were put on trial and executed. Prince Andrew also faced charges of treason but escaped the death penalty. Instead, he was stripped of his royal title and sent into exile for life. During this time the family became more and more torn apart, Alice and her daughters eventually settling in Germany separated from Andrew, and Philip wound up being taken care of by his relatives in the United Kingdom. Andrew went to Monte Carlo, Monaco, lived a lascivious life and died there, in 1944, in the arms of his mistress.

Alice became a Greek Orthodox nun following her husband's death. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in Switzerland, emerged and founded (in 1949) the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, an order of nuns tending the poor and sick on the island of Tinos in Greece. She sheltered Jewish families in Greece and was posthumously honored for heroism by Israel.