Princess Alice of Battenberg | |||||
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Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark | |||||
Born |
Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England |
25 February 1885||||
Died | 5 December 1969 Buckingham Palace, London |
(aged 84)||||
Burial | Church of Mary Magdalene, Gethsemane, Jerusalem | ||||
Spouse | Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark | ||||
Issue |
Margarita, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg Theodora, Margravine of Baden Cecilie, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hesse Sophie, Princess George of Hanover Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh |
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House | Battenberg | ||||
Father | Prince Louis of Battenberg | ||||
Mother | Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine | ||||
Signature |
Full name | |
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Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie |
Princess Alice of Battenberg, later Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; 25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969), was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II.
A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she grew up in Germany, England, and the Mediterranean. She was congenitally deaf. After marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she lived in Greece until the exile of most of the Greek royal family in 1917. On returning to Greece a few years later, her husband was blamed in part for the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the family were once again forced into exile until the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935.
In 1930, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland; thereafter, she lived separately from her husband. After her recovery, she devoted most of her remaining years to charity work in Greece. She stayed in Athens during the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees, for which she is recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded an Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.