On the 27th of July 1932, a princess slips through an open window, and boards a train pressing towards the German border, and perceived freedom, her heart racing with fear and hope.
Just at the point of escape she was apprehended by the authorities and escorted back to Bellevue Sanitarium in Switzerland and forcibly readmitted. Trapped in a silent world, only fear remains. She was Princess Alice of Battenberg and her start in life couldn’t have been more royal.
Princess Alice Battenberg start in life couldn’t have been more royal.
Born at Windsor Castle in 1885 she was a great granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Although, her parents were more German than British Alice was raised as an English princess,
Princess Alice of Battenberg, born as “Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie”, was the eldest child ofPrincess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine and Prince Louis of Battenberg.
Through her mother, she was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, whose second daughter – Princess Alice – was her maternal grandmother. (she went by her middle name Alice, to avoid confusion between herself, her mother, and her great-grandmother).
Although London was the main residence of Alice’s family, she also spent time in Darmstadt, Judenheim, and Malta (as her father, a naval officer in the Royal Navy, was sometimes stationed there).
Her mother noted that as Alice progressed through the years, she took quite some time to learn how to talk and even then she had trouble pronouncing words.
Though it was her parents who noticed that their daughter had problems with speaking, it was actually her paternal grandmother, Princess Julia of Battenberg, who suspected that Alice had an issue that stemmed not from her tongue but her hearing.
Alice adapted to her disability by learning how to not only speak in English and German but also to lip-read both languages with her mother’s help. Later, she would also learn the French and Greek languages.
By the age of 18 Alice could not only speak clearly, but also lip read in 3 languages.
At Edward VII ‘s London on August 9, 1902 coronation, Alice attended.
At only 17 years old, she met a distant relative, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, who she quickly became infatuated with.
Prince Andrew, known as “Andrea” by his family, was the seventh child of King George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia.
Andrew was a handsome young man, just as Alice was one of the loveliest princesses in Europe at the time, and although he was shortsighted, he entered the military at a young age and became a commissioned officer in the Greek army.
His parents hoped that Alice would be a stable influence in their extravagant son’s life. Andrew was known for supporting a profligate lifestyle and, as he was bisexual, had various affairs with both men and women.
It is unlikely that Alice fully knew or understood what she was stepping into when she married Prince Andrew on October 6, 1903, or perhaps she was simply too taken by his charm and shockingly good looks to notice. Either way, the eighteen year-old Alice became a Princess of Greece and Denmark when she wed the 21 yr Andrew.
Darmstadt, Oct. 7 —
In the presence of a notable gathering, which included an Emperor, an Empress, a King, and two Queens, the marriage of Princess Alice of Battenberg and Prince Andreas of Greece was celebrated today according to the rites of the Lutheran and Greek churches.
The wedding party below:
The church was filled with diplomats, the local authorities, and the royal suites. The Protestant ceremony lasted three-quarters of an hour, the officiating clergyman being the Rev. Dr. Petersen.
The party then, amid the ringing of the famous chimes, drove in reverse order to the Greek chapel, where they were greeted by a large crowd.
There the marriage ceremony was celebrated according to the Greek rites by Archpriest Janitcheff, a Russian choir performing the musical service. All then returned directly to the palace.
A family dinner was held this evening, with forty-two covers.
Afterward the wedded couple started in a motor car, presented by the Czar, for Heiligenberg Castle on a short honeymoon
The gifts to the bridal couple include a massive silver epergne from the King and Queen of England and a magnificent diadem of brilliants from the Czar and Czarina The civil marriage of Prince Andrew and Princess Alice took place on Tuesday.
After marrying Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, she adopted the style of her husband, becoming Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
Now a married man, Andrew continued to serve in the military while Alice became devoted to charity work.
After their wedding in 1903, Alice set up home with her husband in her newly adopted country. At the Royal Family’s palace in Athens, Alice settled into her allotted role as a princess and mother. In 10 years she mothered 4 daughters and even managed to win over an increasingly anti-monarchist Greek public.
However, in marrying Prince Andrew Alice had hitched herself to the most unstable royal family in Europe.
In 1908, Alice traveled to Russia to attend the wedding of her husband’s niece, Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, to Prince William of Sweden.
She spent time with her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who she had always been very close to, more so than any of her other aunts or uncles.
Elizabeth, now a widow, talked about her plans for creating a religious order of nurses to Alice during her visit.
Alice herself laid the foundation stone of her aunt’s church when construction began.
When she came back to her home and husband in Greece, things began to slide downhill.
Andrew was never truly devoted or passionate to his wife and continued to indulge in extramarital affairs with both men and women.
He was far more concerned with his personal pleasure than caring for his wife and children and therefore, constantly ignored them.
Greece was in a state of political turmoil, as a union of unhappy military officers had formed a Greek nationalist Military League that dangerously butted heads with the monarchy.
It was this group that forced Prince Andrew to resign from the army and caused the rise of the charismatic Liberal, Eleftherios Venizelos, who became the Prime Minister in 1910.
In 1912, a brutal war broke out between the Greeks and their bitter rivals the Turks, known as the First Balkan War.
Andrew was recalled to the army as a Lt Colonel and was given command of a field hospital. Alice became involved in the conflict as well by becoming a nurse for wounded soldiers and helping to organize field hospitals.
On March 18, 1913, Andrew’s father, King George I, was assassinated by a Greek anarchist named Alexandros Schinas.
Andrew’s eldest brother, Constantine I, took the throne after their father’s death .
In 1914, when World War I began, Andrew continued to make visits to Britain as he had done in the past, but since his brother declared neutrality for Greece in order to stay out of the war, the irritated British began to whisper that Andrew was secretly a German spy.
King Constantine and his government, led by Venizelos, fought so heatedly over the country’s neutrality policy that in June 1917, public support turned against the King and Constantine had no choice but to abdicate.
The Greek royal family, including Alice, her husband, and their children, left the country in exile for Switzerland.
Determined to make herself useful Alice left her children and headed straight for the front organizing a series of desperately needed battlefield hospitals she got really stuck in she was there in the front for months on end, often working through the night in very very primitive conditions dealing with people who were being shot up all around her and losing limbs.
She was there, literally wrapping the bandages she wove herself.
She saw shattered arms legs and heads, such awful sights, cast-off bandages knee-high, the corridor full of blood.
This was just the start of 10 traumatic years for Alice and her family.
He lived in Greece until the exile of most of the Greek royal family in 1917.
By the time the Great War finally ended in 1917, Alice’s life was drastically changed.
Her family had given up their German names and titles, changing their surname of “Battenberg” to the Anglicized version – “Mountbatten”.
Two of Alice’s aunts, Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, had been murdered by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution just as the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires ceased to exist.
With the fall of the German Empire, Alice’s uncle, Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse, lost his title and power.
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.
The First World War triggered a decade of conflict in Greece between Pro and Anti Royalist forces.
To add to her worries, Alice had just given birth to a 5th child. In June 1921 Prince Philip was delivered on the kitchen table of Alice’s country home.
In 1920, when Constantine was restored to the throne, Alice and her family came back to Greece and lived at Mon Repos on Corfu, a villa that had once belonged to Andrew’s father.
Philip was born sixth in line to the increasingly beleaguered Greek throne, but the child was blissfully oblivious to the crisis engulfing his family.
Philip sits laughs all day long she has never seen such a cheerful baby, but there was no time for celebrations.
After a devastating defeat by Turkey in the Greco-Turkish War, Constantine was forced to give up his crown for a second time on September 27, 1922.
Republican troops entered, in Athens Alice’s brother-in-law, the King fled the country, but her husband Prince Andrew was arrested and put on trial by a
Revolutionary Court.
Prince Andrew, who was again a commander in the military, was arrested along with many other ministers and generals, most of whom were shot.
It was a definite Andrew would ended up being executed for not being on the right side.
He was convicted of disloyalty by the revolutionary authorities and faced a death sentence, but was granted a last-minute stay of execution due to the intervention from the King of England.
The family seized their opportunity to flee with the baby Prince Philip stowed in an orange crate as a makeshift cot.
Alice and her family boarded a British warship and sailed into a humiliating exile. Alice’s life as a conventional royal princess was over.
In 1923 princess Alice and her family including the 18-month old Prince Philip arrived in Paris as refugees in their flight from Greece Alice and her husband had not only lost their fortune, a flat deflated sense of purpose remained.
While Prince Andrew brooded on his fate, Philips mother was left isolated and emotionally vulnerable.
For her, was very frustrating in big family groups, such as 20 members around the table.
She couldn’t see people’s lips and suddenly somebody would start roaring with laughter at the end of the table.
She’d think it was a joke about her, which of course it never was.
Encased in silencer, dark thoughts began to prey on Alice’s mind. In 1928 ,aged 43 she announced a sudden conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church.
It seems she had found her comfort, but increasingly her religious beliefs were anything but Orthodox.
Princess Alice seems to have become increasingly religious. preoccupied with the spiritual she began to tell people that she had a very intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and used sexual language and spoke about flirtations with Jesus Christ and so forth. Princess Alice is what sometimes can be called religious delusions not ordinary religiosity.
Alice was in a quite abnormal state, she had visions of Christ and said she will soon have a message to deliver to the world she wonders about the house praying.
Her family turned to the fashionable new science of psychiatry .
In February 1930 (medical files from the period reveal) she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
She’d begun to hear voices and believed herself to be not only married with Christ, but with other religious figures including Buddha.
In search for the origins of Alice’s illness. Her psychiatrist discovered an important clue from one of Princess Alice’s ladies-in-waiting .
She told him (privately off the record) Princess Alice had a very very deep passion for an Englishman back in the mid 1920s which she had never consummated. Dr. Zimmel suggested there was something about her romantic history her erotic history which repressed or complicated in some way and the princesses frustrated desires were an important factor in her breakdown.
Princess Alice, we must remember was born to the royal family in 1885. At the time, women’s bodies were encased in corsets. Women were not encouraged to have any sexuality beyond procreative marital sexuality.
We must remember how shocking it would have been, not only to her relatives and friends, but to herself to have perhaps an erotic attraction toward someone other than her husband and not quite know what to do with these feelings,
Seeking advice for how to treat his royal patient, her doctor now turned to a famous colleague and mentor , Sigmund Freud the father of psychoanalysis himself.
He visited personally reviewed Princess Alice’s case. His recommendations were shocking and controversial. Freud recommended that Princess Alice be given x-rays to her ovaries.
It was shocking because Freud’s entire psychology, is based on non biological treatments not medical treatments, sometimes called the talking cure- not to give them x-rays,
So this prescription for Princess Alice is really very anomalous and very mperplexing indeed the explanation for Freud’s unusual advice lies in his connection with a Viennese scientist who specialized in the study of hormones and sexuality in the 1920s.
Egon Steiner performed a series of radical experiments including transplanting the testicles of gay men in order to cure their condition. Steiner also speculated that x-rays could be used to accelerate menopause triggering hormonal changes , whicht could cure mental illness.
At the time when Alice came to the hospital, they were discussing especially Freud and Zimmer were discussing whether hormones could help to break out of severe psychosis.
In the case of Princess Alice, his advice was to make an x-ray of the gonads to accelerate menopause to cool down her libido and her sexual excitement.
Today, the endocrinology and hormones studies began at that time in March 1930 the 45 year old princess, would not be used.
She was escorted to a treatment room and her reproductive organs subjected to a concentrated stream of x-rays. There is no evidence she was consulted about her treatment or consented to it. -or that it produced any improvement in her health.
Soon afterwards Princess Alice discharged herself and returned to her family declaring herself fit and well.
Alice’s mother disagreed her illusions are still firmly rooted her face has altered and her expression especially in the eyes is altered
When she is enjoying being among us, I feel a brute and then again, I clearly realized the need of her going away she did behave quite strangely and in those days.
On the 2nd of May, 1930, while the eight-year-old Prince Philip was taken out for the day Alice received an unexpected visit, most awful thing.
Phillip’s grandmother took Prince Philip off for a picnic and by the time he comes home his mother’s gone. Literally a car with men in white coats came to take her away. Philli’s mother was forcibly bundled into a car and given a powerful sedative concealed inside an orange.
Shortly after midnight, Alice crossed the border into Switzerland and arrived at the Bellevue sanatorium. Prince Philip’s mother was no longer just a patient but a prisoner.
Nobody wanted to talk about it and it was regarded as hushed up and not very well treated or understood.
She would have suffered very much. It was difficult to talk to other people about because they were embarrassed or ashamed. It’s all nonsense, but in those days, of course, it was something to be kept very quiet.
The Bellevue was an exclusive Swiss sanatorium that catered for the mentally ill among Europe’s richest families, but it could offer little in the way of effective treatment. While his mother is away , Phillip continues, without his mother.
For the next two and a half years ,Alice was detained at the Bellevue protesting her sanity she demanded her freedom and even made a daring escape attempt, but Alice had not only lost her Liberty she’d also been abandoned by her husband.
Though Prince Andrew had experienced much himself, he was not at all supportive, or at least did no know hot to be. He had fundamentally had enough and renounced responsibility for his wife, at that point, He lived in South of France with his mistresses and did not offer support to anybody.
Although, they would never divorce the marriage was over. Alice hadn’t only lost her husband, while she was under lock and key ,in the space of little over a year, all four of her daughters married German princes.
They had locked her away. She wasn’t allowed to go to the weddings. She didn’t even get word of them. She became an isolated lonely figure, but the hardest separation of all was from her youngest child Prince Phillip.
In his mother’s absence Phillip was packed off to boarding schools in England and during the holidays farmed out to members of the extended family .
This included, his uncle Lord Mountbatten. He was a lovely cousin to have around, but it was very difficult childhood for him .
During the holidays, he never actually knew where he was going.
He never even had a definite home.
His early life was always being shuffled from pillar to post, from one relative to the other , and as a kid of 11 or 12 had his mother suddenly abducted, being told she was mad.
At the same time his father is is vanishing off with a mistress somewhere.
It’s not really surprising he’s got a tough exterior talking about principle.
Not ever having one special home, but a series of different family homes, as a young mam.
On the 23rd of September 1932, the doors of the Bellevue psychiatric hospital swung open and for the first time in 2 ½ years. Once the worst of Alice’s symptoms receded her mother finally agreed to authorize her release.
Princess Alice was free. She had been demanding her release ever since her arrival at the Bellevue and she’d been shocked to discover, she was detained not on the authority of doctors but of her own family.
She was extremely angry when she found out and felt betrayed. She now turned her back on the family she felt had let her down.
For 5yr Prince Philip’s mother disappeared she became a nomad drifting around Germany and lodging in a succession of modest boarding houses.
Alice was emerging from her break down .with her intense religious faith intact, but as she regained her health, her thoughts turn increasingly to her young son.
It would take a tragedy to bring Alice and Phillip back together again. In 1937,
Alice’s daughter Cecile was killed in an air crash along with her husband and
three children.
At the funeral in Nazi Germany, Alice was reunited with the family for the first time in 7yr.
The family recognized the Alice of old. The death of her daughter Cecile as a real shock and seemed to sort of make her once again feel that she was needed.
She felt she should be there to help her family, suddenly there she was again. By the late 1930s, Alice’s three surviving daughters were all married,their husbands officers in Hitler’s military, but there was one of her children whose future was still undecided -her son Prince Philip.
In November 1938 ,with the Greek monarchy restored to power Alice returned to Athens for the first time since her exile and she wanted Philip to be part of her new life.
She wrote:
Dear Philip,
I have taken a small flat just for you and me !I found some furniture stored away, which I have not seen since 1917. I’m so looking forward to your living in our flat.
But there was a difficulty. During his mother’s absence Philip had been growing up under the wing of his ambitious uncle Lord Mountbatten. He saw a bright future or Prince Philip in Britain’s Royal Navy. Prince Philip must have found it was very difficult when his mother reappeared. She sort of felt he ought to become a prince of Greece and get to know Athens better because there was a chance that he might one day be king of Greece. Philip had to choose between an uncertain future in Greece with his
mother and a promising naval career in Britain.
The family was not keen for him to go and live with his mother. They felt she hadn’t been around all those years.
A lot of people didn’t really take her seriously and thought she was just off on another of her sort of fanciful idea trips. He was a bit sad for her really because again, she had not known her son while he was growing up and by then, in a sense, it too late.
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When WW II broke out in 1939, Alice had various family members on both sides of the devastating conflict. Her German relatives, including her sons-in-law, fought for the Axis Powers, while her British family members like her son, Philip, were on the Allied side.
In April of 1941, Greece was taken over and occupied by the Nazis, rendering escape impossible for Alice.
Most of the Greek royal family had fled to South Africa but Alice remained behind in Athens with the wife of her brother-in-law, Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia (the mother of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent).
But despite her inability to leave Greece, Alice became extremely involved in the war effort.
Her brother, Louis Mountbatten, would send her food parcels that she would hand out to the poor and she even hid a Jewish family in her house for more than a year, a remarkable feat considering that she lived a few years away from Gestapo headquarters.
She volunteered for the Red Cross, supported soup kitchens for famished Greek citizens, and flew to Sweden on the pretense that she was visiting her sister, Louise, when she was actually getting medical supplies to smuggle back into Athens.
She remained out of harms way from the Gestapo because they believed that since her sons-in-law were members of the Nazi party, she must also support the German cause.
They apparently didn’t take the hint that she was far from pro-German when one German general visiting her asked if he could do anything for her and she replied: “You can take your troops out of my country”.
But Alice’s greatest act of charity was still to come. In 1943 Nazi authorities in Greece began the deportation of Jews to death camps in the city of Salonika 60,000 Jews were
rounded up but a few escaped and fled south to Athens, among them were the
Cohens. The patriarch of the family was an adviser of the King, but had died before Alice met his family.
Princess Alice she faced a terrible decision to preserve the family and risk death or to remain helping those she could without such dire consequences.
For more than a year Alice concealed the Cohens on the top floor of her residence
in central Athens. Discovery would have meant certain death for them and grave danger for Alice.
One day a Nazi official called in her due to reports she was suspected of hiding indviduals, so Alice was able turn her disability into a weapon. When the Gestapo came and they wanted to know who lived in the residence Princess Alice didn’t answer, she said she was deaf and had no fear.
Alice got her wish in October of 1944 when Athens was finally liberated by the Allies.
She was able to write to her son about the “somewhat squalid conditions” she was living in. She said that in the last week before the country was liberated she had nothing to eat except for bread and butter and hadn’t eaten meat for months.
But the war in Greece was far from over; the British were now fighting Communist guerillas for control of the country. During this time, Alice learned that her estranged husband had died of heart failure and arterial sclerosis in Monaco on December 3, 1944.
With Athens liberated , Alice was free to visit her son for an important family occasion., Princess Alice had been stuck in Athens her son had fallen in love with another princess, Princess Elizabeth.
On July 10, 1947 with his engagement to the future Queen -Philips future was decided once and for all. As you can imagine, Philip did not have the optimal income, so his mother allowed him to break apart her tiara for a proper engagement ring and a wide bracelet as a wedding present to his new bride.
But there were some who raised an eyebrow at the bridegroom’s unconventional and mother. Quite a few people at court had reservations about him because of his famil who he was, and where he came from.
During the run-up to his engagement, to Princess Elizabeth he was staying at Windsor Castle and was being shown around the castle, by rather patronizing courtier, giving him the history of the castle.
Prince Philip interrupted the young man and said, “ yes ,thank you very much. I do know my mother was born here.“
Just like that, Phillip fully seemed to put his mother in her rightful place among the family.
The Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) was the 10th member of The Royal Family to be married at Westminster Abbey.
Together with her father, George VI, Princess Elizabeth arrived at the Abbey in the Irish State Coach.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s best man was David Mountbatten, the Marquess of Milford Haven.
below:Prince Phillip of Greece (later Phillip of Edinburgh)`s bachelor Party. Check his favorite uncle., Dickie Mountbatten beside him
Due to rationing measures in place following World War Two, Princess Elizabeth had to use clothing ration coupons to pay for her dress.
Hundreds of people from across the UK sent The Princess their coupons to help with the dress, although they had to be returned as it would be illegal to use them.
2,000 guests were invited to the ceremony.
A number of foreign Royals attended the wedding, including; The King of Iraq, Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and The Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Princess Elisabeth of Luxembourg.
There were 91 singers; the abbey choir was joined by the choirs of the Chapel Royal and St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
The dress was made from duchesse satin, ordered from the firm of Wintherthur, near Dunfermline in Scotland.
The day after the wedding the bouquet was sent back to Westminster Abbey, where it was laid on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior – another Royal tradition.
The wedding favors were individual posies of myrtle and white Balmoral heather.
Princess Alice of Greece, was not about to miss her son’s wedding.
Now, she was back under the roof of the British Royal family, but the mother-in-law to the future Queen , but she wasn’t satisfied to just slip into a life of royal luxury.
As a wedding gift for her new daughter-in-law, Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, she gave her diamond Meander Tiara (now worn by the Princess Royal).
As soon as the wedding was over, Alice disappeared.
The war Greece was far from over; the British were now fighting Communist guerrillas for control of the country.
She continued to aid those in need while the British fought the Communists and although she supported the British.
They were distressed at her dangerous acts of charity.
She would walk down the streets after curfew giving rations to policeman and children in face of the danger of being shot. To this, she said:
“They tell me: You don’t hear the shot that kills you and in any case I am deaf. So, why worry about that?”
Eventually, the British and their supporters won out on October 16, 1949 and the Communists were driven out of the country.
The Queen succeeded to the Throne on the 6 February, 1952 on the death of her father, King George VI.
She was in Kenya at the time and became the first Sovereign in over 200 years to accede while abroad.
Westminster Abbey has been the setting for every Coronation since 1066.
Before the Abbey was built, Coronations were carried out wherever was convenient, taking place in Bath, Oxford and Canterbury.
The Coronation service used for Queen Elizabeth II descends directly from that of King Edgar at Bath in 973. The original 14th century order of service was written in Latin and was used until the Coronation of Elizabeth I.
The Duke of Edinburgh wore full-dress Naval uniform for the journey to and from the Abbey.
The Queen’s Coronation dress, designed by British Fashion designer Norman Hartnell, was made of white satin and embroidered with the emblems of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in gold and silver thread.
Since the Coronation, The Queen has worn the Coronation dress six times including the Opening of Parliament in New Zealand and Australia in 1954.
Buckingham Palace housemaids, chefs and gardeners gathered inside the Grand Hall at Buckingham Palace to see The Queen leave for Westminster Abbey.
On her way to the Coronation, Her Majesty wore the George IV State Diadem – the crown depicted on stamps.
Made in 1820, the Diadem features roses, shamrocks and thistles with 1,333 diamonds and 169 pearls.
The Sovereign’s procession was made up of 250 people including Church leaders, Commonwealth Prime Ministers, members of the Royal Household, civil and military leaders and the Yeoman of the Guard.
The Coronation service fell into 6 parts: the recognition, the oath, the anointing, the investiture (which includes the crowning), the enthronement and the homage.
The recipe for the Anointing Oil contains oils of orange, roses, cinnamon, musk and ambergris. Usually a batch is made to last a few Coronations, but in May 1941 a bomb hit the Deanery destroying the phial, so a new batch was made.
Prince Charles was the first child to witness his mother’s coronation as Sovereign. Princess Anne did not attend the ceremony as she was considered too young.
Prince Charles received a special hand-painted children’s invitation to his mother’s Coronation.
A total of 8,251 guests attended The Queen’s Coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey.
129 nations and territories were officially represented at the Coronation service.
The Queen was crowned in St Edward’s Chair, made in 1300 for Edward I and used at every Coronation since that time. It is permanently kept in Westminster Abbey.
The St. Edward’s Crown, made in 1661, was placed on the head of The Queen during the Coronation service. It weighs 4 pounds and 12 ounces and is made of solid gold.
After the crown, the orb, also made in 1661, was the most important piece of regalia. It is a globe of gold surrounded by a cross girdled by a band of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphire and pearls with a large amethyst at the summit.
The Crown Jewels have been kept in their present top security vault on the ground floor of the Waterloo Barracks since 1994.
Besides the breathtaking coronation regalia there are many other marvels to see, including the Coronation Robes (1953), last worn by Queen Elizabeth II, huge maces, trumpets, and many golden treasures, including the Grand Punch Bowl, or Giant Wine Cistern, which can hold the contents of 144 bottles of wine!
The Coronation ring, known as ‘The Wedding Ring of England’ was placed on The Queen’s fourth finger of her right hand in accordance with tradition.
Made for the Coronation of King William IV in 1831, the ring has been worn at every coronation since then, except of Queen Victoria, whose fingers were so small that the ring could not be reduced far enough in size and an alternative was created.
There were more than 2,000 journalists and 500 photographers from 92 nations on the Coronation route.
Among the many foreign journalists was Jacqueline Bouvier (later the First Lady of the United States of America, Jackie Kennedy), who was working for the Washington Times-Herald at the time.
The return route was designed so that the procession could be seen by as many people in London as possible. The 7.2 km route took the 16,000 participants 2hr to complete.
Just under 30,000 men took part in the procession – 3,600 from the Royal Navy, 16,100 from the Army and 7,000 from the RAF, 2,000 from the Commonwealth and 500 from the ‘Colonies’.
There were 6,700 reserve and administrative troops, while 1,000 officers and men of the Royal military police were bought in to assist the Metropolitan police. A further 7,000 police were drawn from 75 provincial forces.
Numerous official photographs were taken in Buckingham Palace after the Coronation, but the most memorable are those taken by Cecil Beaton.
For his defining image he posed The Queen in front of a backdrop depicting Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
BBC coverage of the Coronation was a breakthrough for the history of broadcasting.
It was the first service to be televised and for most people, it was the first time they had watched an event on television.
27 million people in the UK (out of the 36 million population) watched the ceremony on television and 11 million listened on the radio.
In June 1953, the eyes of the world were on London heads of state and Royals from
around the world had gathered for the most glittering state occasion in living memory, to see Queen Elizabeth crowned with Prince Philip at her side.
But among the ermine, the jewels, and the gold braid there was one figure who stood out from the rest watch the coronation and the camera of course concentrates on the royal party the behind comes another solitary figure a nun in grey walking through the Abbey. Who is it?
Believe it or not, it’s Princess Alice the Duke of Edinburgh’s mom!
While the royal family had been preparing for the coronation Princess Alice had been hard at work founding her very own religious order called The Sisterhood of Martha
and Mary. In the poor suburb of Athens where she built a convent and an orphanage, still in use as a community center today, Alice is still remembered.
Alice’s latest incarnation was no sudden whim. Ever since her front line nursing
experience in the Balkan wars, she’d been drawn to a life of service. 25 years after being locked up for her unorthodox religious ideas. Alice finally found her calling.
Alice sold off the last of her royal jewelry collection, much to the dismay of family members.
Her religious fervor continued to battle, but if some of the royal family
found it hard to take Alice’s faith seriously to the poor of Athens she was a godsend.
History repeated itself the Greek royal family was expelled from Athens by a military coup and Prince Philip’s fiercely independent mother refused to budge.
It took an airplane sent by Philip and a special request from the Queen herself, to bring her home to the land of her birth.
Alice moved into a small room in Buckingham palace after a lifetime separated by the madness war and family politics, Philip and his mother were together at last.
One relative remembers a strange granny rattling around the palace who insisted
on calling the Prince by her pet name for him as a Child. Two years later, Alice died at Buckingham Palace on the 5th of December 1969 her only worldly possessions were 3 dressing gowns.
Shortly before her death Alice wrote a farewell to her son.
Dearest Philip,
Be brave and remember I will never leave you , and you will always find me when you need me most.
All my devoted love,
Your old mama
But Prince Philip’s mother had one final surprise in store.
Not long before her death Princess Alice expressed the wish to be buried in Jerusalem, next to her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who, like Princess Alice, had become a nun and had founded a convent.
The Grand Duchess Fyodorovna was killed during the Russian revolution and her remains were buried in the Church of Maria Magdalene in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. In 1988, After years of negotiations between church authorities and 19 years Princess Alice’s coffin was transferred to the crypt in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
It was the first time any member of the royal family has been to the State of
Israel. Her grave is still visited by the princes of Britain, in honor of her.
Shortly afterwards her son made a pilgrimage to her grave and accepted the
highest possible honor on her behalf, from the Jewish nation for her courageous actions during WWII.
In 1993 Yad Vashem bestowed the title of Righteous Among the Nations on Princess Alice. A year later, her children, Prince Philip – the Duke of Edinburgh – and Princess George of Hanover traveled to Yad Vashem and planted the tree in her honor. During the ceremony, Prince Philip said:
“I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress.”
In a sense , it teaches us all the key of bravery is to never be ashamed.
Romans 1:16-17
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.