Elisabeth of Wied (Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise; 29 December 1843 – 2 March [O.S. 18 February] 1916) was the first Queen of Romania as the wife of King Carol I from 15 March 1881 to 27 September 1914. She had been the princess consort of Romania since her marriage to then-Prince Carol on 15 November 1869.
Elisabeth was born into a German noble family. She was briefly considered as a potential bride for the future British king Edward VII, but Edward rejected her. Elisabeth married Prince Carol of Romania in 1869. Their only child, Princess Maria, died aged three in 1874, and Elisabeth never fully recovered from the loss of her daughter. When Romania became a kingdom in 1881, Elisabeth became queen, and she was crowned together with Carol that same year.
Elisabeth was a prolific writer under the name Carmen Sylva.
Princess Elisabeth was born on 29 December 1843 at Castle Monrepos in Neuwied near Koblenz in Germany as the eldest child of Herman, 4th Prince of Wied, and his wife Princess Marie of Nassau. Her father was the prince of the small mediatized German Principality of Wied. Her mother was the daughter of William, Duke of Nassau and a sister of Adolf, Duke of Nassau and Queen Sophia of Sweden and Norway.
Elisabeth had artistic leanings; her childhood featured seances and visits to the local asylum for the mentally ill.
When she was about 16, Elisabeth was considered as a possible bride for Albert Edward, Prince of Wales ("Bertie"), the eldest son and heir apparent of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. The Queen strongly favored Elisabeth as a prospective daughter-in-law and urged her daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, to look further into her. Elisabeth was spending the social season at the Berlin court, where her family hoped she would be tamed into a docile, marriageable princess. Princess Victoria told the Queen, "I do not think her at all distinguée looking—certainly the opposite to Bertie's usual taste", whereas the tall and slender Alexandra of Denmark was "just the style Bertie admires". The Prince of Wales was also shown photographs of Elisabeth, but professed himself unmoved and declined to give them a second glance. In the end, Alexandra was selected for Albert Edward.
Elisabeth first met Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in Berlin in 1861. In 1869, Karl, who was now Prince Carol of Romania, traveled to Germany in search of a suitable consort. He was reunited with Elisabeth, and the two were married on 15 November 1869 in Neuwied. Their only child, a daughter, Maria, died in 1874 at age three – an event from which Elisabeth never recovered. She was crowned Queen of Romania in 1881 after Romania was proclaimed a kingdom.
In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, also known as the Romanian War of Independence, she devoted herself to the care of the wounded, and founded the Decoration of the Cross of Queen Elisabeth to reward distinguished service in such work. She founded the National Society for the Blind and was the first royal patron of the Romanian Red Cross.She fostered the higher education of women in Romania, and established societies for various charitable objects. She was the 835th Dame of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa. She died at the Golescu Mansion in Bucharest.
Early distinguished by her excellence as a pianist, organist and singer, she also showed considerable ability in painting and illuminating; but a lively poetic imagination led her to the path of literature, and more especially to poetry, folk-lore and ballads. In addition to numerous original works she put into literary form many of the legends current among the Romanian peasantry.
As "Carmen Sylva", she wrote with facility in German, Romanian, French and English. A few of her voluminous writings, which include poems, plays, novels, short stories, essays, collections of aphorisms, etc., may be singled out for special mention:
Her earliest publications were Sappho and Hammerstein, two poems which appeared at Leipzig in 1880.
In 1888 she received the Prix Botta, a prize awarded triennially by the Académie Française, for her volume of prose aphorisms Les Pensees d'une reine (Paris, 1882), a German version of which is entitled Vom Amboss (Bonn, 1890).
Cuvinte Sufletesci, religious meditations in Romanian (Bucharest, 1888), was also translated into German (Bonn, 1890), as Seelen-Gespräche.
Several of the queen's works as "Carmen Sylva" were written in collaboration with Mite Kremnitz, one of her maids of honor; these were published between 1881 and 1888, sometimes under the joint pseudonym Dito et Idem. These include:
Aus zwei Welten (Leipzig, 1884), a novel
Anna Boleyn (Bonn, 1886), a tragedy
In der Irre (Bonn, 1888), a collection of short stories
Edleen Vaughan, or Paths of Peril (London, 1894), a novel