| AdminHistory | Born Kent, second of the five children of Queen Victoria's second son, Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, and his wife, Marie Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, 1875; educated by tutors, and raised in the Anglican faith of her father; the family moved to Malta, 1886, and Coburg, Germany, 1889; married Ferdinand, prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, heir designate to his uncle, King Carol I of Romania, 1893; six children, including Carol, subsequently King Carol II of Romania, Elisabetha, later Queen Consort of King George II of Greece, and Marie (Mignon), later Queen Consort of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia; worked in cholera camps during the Balkan wars; Ferdinand I succeeded to the throne in 1914 and Marie became Queen; took an active role in diplomacy during and after the First World War; involved in war work after Romania entered the war on the allied side in 1916; widowed, 1927; after Carol II's reclamation of the throne in 1930, she became excluded from an increasingly dictatorial Romanian court, and withdrew to her summer home at Balcic on the Black Sea; died Sinaia, Romania, 1938; publications include: fairy tales and an autobiography 'The Story of my Life'. |