Helen of Greece and Denmark
Greek and Romanian Royal (1896–1982)
Helen of Greece and Denmark (Greek: Ελένη, romanized: Eléni; Romanian: Elena; 2 May 1896 – 28 November 1982) was the queen mother of Romania during the reign of her son King Michael I (1940–1947). Her humanitarian efforts to save Romanian Jews during World War II led to her being awarded by the State of Israel with the honorific of Righteous Among the Nations in 1993.
Daughter of King Constantine I of Greece and his wife, Princess Sophia of Prussia, Helen spent her childhood in Greece, the United Kingdom and Germany. The outbreak of World War I and the overthrow of her father by the Allies in 1917 permanently marked her and also separated her from her favorite brother, the young Alexander I of Greece. Exiled in Switzerland along with most members of the royal family, Helen then spent several months caring for her father, plagued by disease and depression. In 1920, the princess met Carol, Crown Prince of Romania, who quickly asked her hand in marriage. Despite the bad reputation of the prince, Helen accepted and moved to Romania, where she soon gave birth to their only son, Prince Michael, in 1921.
The situation of her family, however, continued to worry Helen, who made several trips abroad to visit her parents when they did not simply reside with her in Bucharest. In doing this, she distanced herself from her husband, whose multiple affairs ended when he fell in love with Magda Lupescu in 1924. Finally, in 1925, Crown Prince Carol abandoned his wife and renounced the throne in order to live openly with his mistress.
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This entry incorporates text from “Helen of Greece and Denmark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.