Princess Alice of Battenberg

Princess Alice of Battenberg (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; 25 February 1885 – 5 December 1969) was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, and paternal grandmother of King Charles III. After marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she adopted the style of her husband, becoming Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark.

A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alice was born in Windsor Castle and grew up in the United Kingdom, Germany and Malta. A Hessian princess by birth, she was a member of the Battenberg family, a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was congenitally deaf. 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 country's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the family was once again forced into exile until the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935.

In 1930, Princess Andrew 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 recognised as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Israel's Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem. After the war, she stayed in Greece and founded a Greek Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.

After the fall of King Constantine II of Greece and the imposition of military rule in Greece in 1967, Princess Andrew was invited by her son and daughter-in-law to live at Buckingham Palace in London, where she died two years later. In 1988, her remains were transferred from a vault in her birthplace, Windsor Castle, to the Church of Mary Magdalene at the Russian Orthodox convent of the same name on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Alice was born on 25 February 1885 at 4:40 pm in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, in the presence of her great-grandmother Queen Victoria. She was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the Queen's second daughter. Her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Louis III, Grand Duke of Hesse. Her three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.

Alice was christened Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie in Darmstadt on 25 April 1885. She had six godparents: her three surviving grandparents, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse, Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine, and Julia, Princess of Battenberg; her maternal aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia; her paternal aunt Princess Marie of Erbach-Schönberg; and her maternal great-grandmother Queen Victoria.

Alice spent her childhood between Darmstadt, London, Jugenheim, and Malta (where her naval officer father was occasionally stationed). Her mother noticed that she was slow in learning to talk, and became concerned by her indistinct pronunciation. Eventually, she was diagnosed with congenital deafness after her grandmother, the Princess of Battenberg, identified the problem and took her to see an ear specialist. With encouragement from her mother, Alice learned to both lip-read and speak in English and German. Educated privately, she studied French, and after her engagement she learned Greek. Her early years were spent in the company of her royal relatives, and she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince George, Duke of York, and Princess Mary of Teck (later King George V and Queen Mary) in 1893. A few weeks before her 16th birthday, she attended Queen Victoria's funeral in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and shortly afterward she was confirmed in the Anglican faith.

Alice met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (known as Andrea within the family), the fourth son of King George I of Greece and Olga Constantinovna of Russia, while in London for King Edward VII's coronation in 1902. They married in a civil ceremony on 6 October 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies; one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and one Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe. She adopted the style of her husband, becoming "Princess Andrew". The bride and groom were closely related to the ruling houses of the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Greece, and their wedding was one of the great gatherings of the descendants of Queen Victoria and King Christian IX held before World War I. Prince and Princess Andrew had five children: Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie, Sophie, and Philip.