Sister Elisabeth, the Saint
She was born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine in 1864 at
Darmstadt, Germany. The second daughter of Queen Victoria’s third child,
Princess Alice and husband, Grand Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.
She was nicknamed Ella.
Family tragedies struct Princess Elisabeth's life. Two of her siblings
died young. A brother from hemophilia and a sister from diphtheria that had
also killed their mother at the young age of 35.
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse
Upon the death of Princess Alice, the young princesses, Victoria (the future
Marchioness of Milford-Haven and the grandmother of Prince Philip), Ella and
Alix (who would become Empress Alexandra of Russia) were taken by Queen
Victoria to live with her in Windsor Castle.
Ella was by far one of the most beautiful royal princesses in Europe
during her time. She attracted many suitors including her first cousin, Emperor
Wilhelm II of Germany, but she chose to marry her true love, Grand Duke Sergei,
the son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Her younger sister, Alix, would
marry Sergei’s nephew, the future Tsar Nicholas II, in later years.
Elisabeth became Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna after marriage and
was deeply attached to charitable works, helping to improve lives of displaced
people in the Russian society.
In 1905, her husband was assassinated, they had no children, so
Elisabeth decided to consecrate her life to religious and charitable works. She
gave up her royal possessions and entered the convent. She founded the
Charity of Martha and Mary in the Order of Mercy in Moscow, took her Holy Vow
and became a nun. She immersed herself feeding the poor.
In 1918, a day after her sister, Empress Alexandra, brother-in-law
Nicholas II and their children and servants, were massacred by the Bolshevics
in the mountain of Ekaterinburg, she and other relatives of the emperor were
arrested. They were brought to the mountain of Alapeyevsk and were thrown into
a mine shaft. As their bodies were piled below, the Bolshevics threw a hand
grenade.
Sister Elisabeth was heard singing church hymns as piles of smoke from
explosion rose into the air. The assassins made sure they were dead by piling
grass on top of the shaft and lighted by fire. The royals died from
suffocation.
When the advancing White Army arrived in Alapeyevsk, they took the
remains of the victims and were buried to the Far East. Sister Elisabeth’s body
was brought to Jerusalem and buried at the Church of Mary Magdalene.
In 1981, the Russian Orthodox church canonized her and the other
murdered imperial family members and were recognized as martyrs unfairly killed
by the revolutionists.
Princess Alice of Battenberg
She was born privilege, a princess and a scion to one of the most
powerful royal families in Europe. Her mother was Princess Victoria of Hesse
and by Rhine, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England and sister of Princess
Ella and Empress Alexandra, her father was Prince Louis of Battenberg, first
Sea Lord of England at the outbreak of World War I.
Princess Alice and Prince Andrew with their children
Her parents would soon suffer a humiliation during the war due to
anti-German sentiments in England. Prince Louis was forced to give up his post
in the Royal Navy and his princely title and was created by his cousin, King
George V of England, as the first Marquess of Milford-Haven. He also anglicized
his name to Mountbatten.
Alice was the older sister of George Mountbatten, Lord Louis Mountbatten
and Louise, Queen Consort of Sweden. In 1905, she married Prince Andrew of
Greece and Denmark, son of King George I of Greece and had five children:
Princess Margarita, Princess Theodora, Princess Cecille, Princess Sophia and
Prince Philip, who would marry the future Queen of England, Elizabeth, in 1947.
Tragedy would soon befall on her family which affected her mental
health. In 1917, her brother-in-law, King Constantine I (whose wife, Princess
Sophia, was her first cousin through Queen Victoria) was forced to abdicate.
Alice and Andrew, together with other Greek royal family members, were
sent into exile but were permitted to return to Greece during the reign of
Constantine I’s son, George II. Prince Andrew also served as his nephew’s
military commander.
However, in 1922, Greece was defeated by Turkey, many generals were
assassinated. Prince Andrew was tried and found guilty of treason for
abandoning his post under enemy’s fire. He was condemned to die by firing
squad.
But his status as a royal prince allowed him to have a grace period
before the execution will be carried out. This gap of days gave Princess Alice
an opportunity to seek help from her cousin, King George V of England.
The English king, still grieving the death of his first cousins, Emperor
Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, and his failure to rescue them, determined
never to repeat the same mistake on another cousin.
He immediately dispatched a British war ship to Greece to take Andrew
and his family out of the country. Prince Philip, who was only 18 months, was
safely put on an orange crate while the family was fleeing.
They settled outside Paris and based on Prince Philip’s recollection,
they had a happy family life. However, after their daughters married German
princes and settled in Germany, cracks in marriage would soon take over that
prompted Princess Alice to suffer a nervous breakdown.
Unable to handle the humiliation of living under financial support of
his rich royal relatives, Prince Andrew left his wife and moved to Monaco and
took a mistress. Princess Alice suffered a nervous breakdown.
By 1930, she became delusional and could no longer take care of her
young son, Prince Philip, so he was sent to England to live with his
grandmother in Kensington Palace.
Princess Alice was put in a mental asylum and was subjected to barbaric
experimental treatment of Sigmud Freud, an Austrian neurologist who pioneered
psychoanalysis. Princess Alice was diagnosed of having Schizophrenia. She tried
to escape from the sanitarium many times but was unsuccessful. Until she was
released in 1932.
For five years nothing was heard from her. She lived a nomadic life in
Germany. In 1937, one of her daughters, Princess Cecil, was killed in a plane
crash with her husband, children and mother-in-law. Princess Alice attended the
funeral and it was the first time she saw her husband and children, including
the 16 year old Prince Philip.
By then, the future Duke of Edinburgh has identified himself as
thoroughly English despite carrying the name Prince Philip of Greece and
Denmark. He was by then raised by her maternal uncle, Lord Mountbatten, and
attended Gordounston College in Scotland.
With her children already secured and a husband who chose a mistress,
Princess Alice decided to live in Greece and, just like her aunt, Princess
Elisabeth, consecrated her life to religious and charitable works.
Following the wedding of her only son to the future Queen Elizabeth II,
Alice founded a nursing order of the Greek Orthodox nuns, The Christian
Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, to feed the poor and help take care of the sick.
She opened a charity kitchen in Athens and used her influence to secure medical
supplies.
She was known to have help a Jewish family, the Cohen, to hide in her
apartment when Nazi occupied Greece.
In 1967 when her nephew, King Constantine II, was deposed by the
military junta and Greece was once again plunged into chaos, her son, Prince
Philip, took her to England for safety. She lived with the royal family in
Buckingham Palace.
Before her death in 1969, Princess Alice told her son that she wished to
be buried next to her aunt, Sister Elisabeth, at the Church of Mary Magdalene
in Jerusalem. This was not followed because of political issues and she was
buried in the royal crypt at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.
It was finally granted in 1988 and her remains were transferred to
Jerusalem. Princess Alice was posthumously awarded with Righteous Gentile of
all Nations in Israel due to her courage to protect a Jewish family. The award
was received by Prince Philip.
He also visited his mother’s grave in 1994 and Prince William in 2018.
Despite her status as royal, Princess Alice had no possessions when she died as
she had given everything to the charity. But she kept a diamond tiara, a
wedding present from her father-in-law, King George I. She gave it to her son
in 1947 when he proposed marriage to the future Queen of England.
The tiara was dismantled and made into an engagement ring and a meander
tiara as Philip’s gift to his bride.
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