Alexandra of Yugoslavia

Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia (Greek: Αλεξάνδρα της Ελλάδος και της Δανίας, Serbian: Aleksandra Karađorđević, Александра Карађорђевић;) (25 March 1921 – 30 January 1993) was the wife of the last King of Yugoslavia, Peter II and mother of Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia. She was previously known as Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark.

Biography

Birth and inheritance

She was born five months after the death of her father, King Alexander of Greece, 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^[1][2]

Hence, she and her mother were accorded the title "Princess of Greece and Denmark" and the style of Royal Highness.^[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.

Marriage

In 1944, she moved to London, married Peter II of Yugoslavia and gave birth to Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia on 17 July 1945 in Suite 212 of Claridge's Hotel in Brook Street, London. The British Government ceded sovereignty over the suite to Yugoslavia just for one day, so that the prince would be born in "Yugoslav territory". The couple were too ill-equipped to raise him and Alexander was instead raised by his maternal grandmother, Aspasia. Alexandra was said to have suffered from mental illness, and reportedly attempted suicide numerous times, though this was neither confirmed or denied by her family.

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

Ancestry

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.

Sources

• Marlene Eilers König, Descendants of Queen Victoria

References

1. ^ Diesbach, Ghislain de (1967). Secrets of the Gotha. translated from the French by Margaret Crosland. London: Chapman & Hall. p. 225. 
2. ^ Valynseele, Joseph (1967) (in French). Les Prétendants aux trônes d'Europe. Paris. p. 442. 
3. ^ Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh, ed (1973-03-06). Burke's Guide to the Royal Family. London: Burke's Peerage. ISBN 978-0-220-66222-6. 

External links

• obituary from The Independent