The ups and downs of the Greek royal house were numerous throughout the twentieth century and the then prince Philip of Battenberg (later Mountbatten) is said to be only one of the protagonists and, although his Greek roots are less well known than those in Germany, not for this reason.lessly convulsive.
Mon Repos Palace is today just a museum, the Palaeopolis Museum on the Greek island of Corfu. June will mark a century since this historic building, then the summer residence of the Greek royal family, saw the birth of Philip of Greece and Denmark.
In the same place, Sophia of Greece strengthened her court with the then prince Juan Carlos, who had been invited to spend the summer with his family in the Greek royal palace, when the Greek monarchy had not yet fallen and King Constantine still had it. to leave the country.
EFE photography
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 George I of Greece in 1913.
Read also: This is the unreleased video of Philip of Edinburgh, which was revealed a few hours before his death
His stay on this island and in the Greek country was short, because at the age of only 18 months, his father had to leave Greece after being sentenced to death, being considered one of the main people responsible for the disastrous campaign of the Greek army. in Turkey.
Under pressure from the United Kingdom, the sentence was not carried out on condition that Andrés from Greece be exiled 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 will face Philip during World War II.
“It is my rock. They were my strength and support “, said once the queen, not inclined to show affection in public. Photo: AFP Archive
Perhaps even more dramatic was the story of his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg. She was treated as deaf at the age of four for autism because no one recognized what was happening to her. Meanwhile, the young woman learned eight foreign languages by reading her lips.
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 assistant for the Red Cross, but after leaving for France, her situation fell apart again. Her relationship with the prince deteriorated to such an extent that she was admitted to a sanatorium after Sigmund Freud diagnosed her with schizophrenia and subjected her to electric shocks.
You may also be interested in: This was Prince Felipe of Edinburgh’s historic visit to El Salvador 46 years ago.
When she left the sanatorium for good, she separated from 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 who treated 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 was promoted to first lieutenant.
Shortly after reaching the age and burying of 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 work with those poor.
He could only be with her for a month, as his uncle, King George II of Greece, asked her to return to the United Kingdom and continue his service in the Royal Navy.
Before the outbreak of World War II, he first served on the battleship HMS Ramillies in the Indian Ocean and, after Greece entered the war in October 1940, on the battleship HMS Valiant in the Mediterranean.
“His brilliant career saw him gather a chest full of medals that he proudly displayed at many functions. The awards included decorations for his bravery in the 1939-1945 war, where he distracted Nazi pilots during a 1943 bombing by launching a raft of smoke rafts. He was also mentioned in the Dispatches for his “vigilance” in helping to detect enemy ships, “the Daily Mail reported.
What’s more: In the pictures, the love story of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of Edinburgh
In the 1940s, his mother continued in Nazi-occupied Greece. After her release, the princess continued to work as a nun for decades and tried to establish a monastery in the Greek city 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 he married Elizabeth II, when he renounced the Greek royal title, took his mother’s last name (Mountbatten) and became a British citizen. In 1952, four years after his marriage to the queen, he had to resign from the navy. And Felipe
he trained to be a pilot at the RAF and at the age of 76, when he stopped flying in 1997, he completed 5,986 flight hours.
In post-monarchical Greece, the messages of grief were weak today: Greek President Katerina Sakellaropolu sent her condolences via Twitter, some condolences to which the President of the Greek Parliament added in a note on behalf of all deputies