Marie (Romanian: Maria; born Princess Marie of Edinburgh; 29 October 1875 – 18 July 1938) was the last queen consort of Romania from 10 October 1914 to 20 July 1927 as the wife of King Ferdinand I.
Marie was born into the British royal family. Her parents were Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (later Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. Marie's early years were spent in Kent, Malta and Coburg. After refusing a marriage proposal from her cousin, the future King George V, she was chosen in 1892 to marry Ferdinand, then crown prince of Romania, and they wed the next year. Marie was crown princess between 1893 and 1914, and became immediately popular with the Romanian people.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Marie urged Ferdinand to ally himself with the Triple Entente and declare war on Germany, which he eventually did in 1916. During the early stages of fighting, the national capital Bucharest was occupied by the Central Powers. Marie, Ferdinand and their five children took refuge in Western Moldavia. There, she and her three daughters acted as nurses in military hospitals, caring for soldiers who were wounded or afflicted by cholera. After the war, on 1 December 1918, the historical region of Transylvania, following Bessarabia and Bukovina, united with the Old Kingdom of Romania. Marie, now queen of Greater Romania, attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, where she campaigned for international recognition of the enlarged Romania. In 1922, she and Ferdinand were crowned in a specially-built cathedral in the ancient city of Alba Iulia in an elaborate ceremony which mirrored their status as queen and king of a united state.
As queen, Marie was very popular, both in Romania and abroad. In 1926, she undertook a diplomatic tour of the United States, alongside her children Nicholas and Ileana. They were received enthusiastically by the people and visited several cities before returning to Romania. There, Marie found that Ferdinand was gravely ill and he died a few months later. Now queen dowager, Marie refused to be a member of the regency council that ruled over the country during the minority of her grandson, King Michael. In 1930, Marie's eldest son, the father of King Michael, Carol, who had been forced in 1925 to renounce his rights to succession, deposed his son and usurped the throne, becoming King Carol II. He removed Marie from the political scene and strove to crush her popularity. As a result, Marie left Bucharest and spent the rest of her life either in the countryside or at Balchik Palace, her summer residence in Southern Dobruja by the Black Sea. She became ill with cirrhosis in 1937 and died the following year.
Following Romania's transition to a People's Republic, the monarchy was excoriated by communist officials. Several biographies of the royal family described Marie as a drunkard or as a promiscuous woman, referring to her many alleged affairs and to orgies she had supposedly organised before and during the war. In the years preceding the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Marie's popularity recovered and she was presented to the population as a model of patriotism. She is primarily remembered for her work as a nurse, and is also known for her extensive writing, including her critically acclaimed autobiography.
Marie was born at 10:30 am on 29 October 1875 at her parents' residence, Eastwell Manor in Kent, with her father present. She was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and the former Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, respectively the son of Queen Victoria and the daughter of Emperor Alexander II. Her birth was celebrated by firing the Park and Tower guns. She was named Marie Alexandra Victoria after her mother and grandmothers, and she was informally known as "Missy". The Duke of Edinburgh wrote that his daughter "promises to be as fine a child as her brother and gives every evidence of finely developed lungs and did so before she was fairly in the world". As a grandchild of the reigning British monarch in the male line, Marie was formally styled "Her Royal Highness Princess Marie of Edinburgh" from birth.
Marie's baptism took place in the private chapel at Windsor Castle on 15 December; Arthur Stanley and Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor, officiated. The baptism, "of a strictly private nature", took place one day after the ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of her paternal grandfather, Prince Albert. Marie's godparents were Empress Maria Alexandrovna (her maternal grandmother, for whom Queen Victoria stood proxy), the Princess of Wales (her paternal aunt), the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (her great-aunt, for whom Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein stood proxy), the Tsarevich of Russia (her maternal uncle, for whom Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov stood proxy) and the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (her paternal uncle, for whom the Duke of Albany stood proxy).
Marie and her siblings, Prince Alfred (b. 1874, known as "Young Affie"), and Princesses Victoria Melita (b. 1876, known as "Ducky"), Alexandra (b. 1878, known as "Sandra") and Beatrice (b. 1884, known as "Baby Bee"), spent much of their early life at Eastwell Park, which their mother preferred to Clarence House, their official residence. In her memoirs, Marie remembered Eastwell fondly. The Duke of Edinburgh was largely absent from his children's lives due to his position in the British Royal Navy, and their life was governed by their mother. Marie later stated that she did not even know the colour of her father's hair until she looked at later portraits of him, believing it to be much darker than it actually was. When he was at home, the Duke would often play with his children, inventing many games for them. Of all her siblings, Marie was closest to her sister Victoria Melita, who was one year younger, but whom everyone believed to be the older girl because of her stature, much to the princesses' dismay. The Edinburgh children were all baptised and raised in the Anglican faith; this upset their Russian Orthodox mother.
The Duchess of Edinburgh was a supporter of the idea of separating generations, and Marie deeply regretted the fact that her mother never allowed chatting between the two "as if [they] were equals". Nonetheless, the Duchess was independent-minded, cultured, and "the most important person" in her children's lives. At the behest of their mother, Marie and her sisters were taught French, which they detested and rarely spoke. Overall, the Duchess neglected her daughters' education, considering them not very bright or gifted. They were permitted to read aloud, but in the fields of painting and drawing, areas in which they had inherited Queen Victoria's talent, the girls received only a "pedestrian instruction". The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh frequently received members of the royal family at Eastwell Park, inviting them for breakfast nearly daily, and in 1885 Marie and Victoria Melita served as bridesmaids at the wedding of their aunt Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg. Among Marie's playmates were her maternal cousins Grand Dukes Nicholas (called "Nicky"), George (called "Georgie"), and Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia; their siblings, Michael (called "Misha") and Olga, were too young for the Edinburgh girls. Other playmates included the children of Marie's maternal uncle Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia.
In 1886, when Marie was eleven years old, the Duke of Edinburgh was named commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and the family took up residence at San Antonio Palace in Malta. Marie later described her time in Malta as "the happiest memory of my existence". It was in Malta that Marie found her first love, Maurice Bourke, the captain of the Duke's ship, whom Marie called "Captain Dear". She was prone to fits of jealousy when Bourke would pay more attention to one of her sisters than to her. The Duke and Duchess were greatly loved in Malta, and San Antonio Palace was frequently full of guests. Marie and Victoria Melita received white horses from their mother and went to the local hippodrome nearly daily, apart from Saturday. During their first year in Malta, a French governess oversaw the princesses' education, but due to her failing health, she was replaced the following year by a much younger German woman. At San Antonio, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh always maintained a room ready for Prince George of Wales, the second son of the Prince of Wales, who was in the Royal Navy. George called the three elder Edinburgh girls "the three dearests", but favoured Marie most of all.