Princess Elisabeth of Romania, considered the most beautiful of Queen Marie’s daughters, lived a life that seemed drawn from a tragic novel. She was blessed with grace and intelligence, but not with the happiness she longed for. Born on October 12, 1894, in Sinaia, Elisabeth was the second child of Queen Marie and King Ferdinand. Her mother was only nineteen at the time, too young and too caught up in her own turbulent life to give her daughter the attention she needed.

A beautiful but lonely child

Thus, the young princess was raised by Queen Elisabeth, the wife of King Carol I, from whom she also received her name. She was a special child, beautiful, mysterious, and reserved. Queen Marie wrote in her diary that Elisabeth had “milk-white skin and large, astonished green eyes.” 

She loved flowers and claimed to talk to them; she imagined colorful worlds and said she could communicate with her guardian angel. “She was the most mysterious of my children,” her mother confessed, fascinated by her daughter’s dreamy nature.

Her education was refined yet solitary. Elisabeth never attended a public school, being the only royal child to receive her education at home. She studied piano and violin with the great George Enescu, learned painting, and mastered four foreign languages. 

Though talented and refined, she was a complicated soul. Queen Marie described her as “selfish and difficult to please.” Despite having everything she could possibly want, Elisabeth never found inner peace.

A young woman caught between illusion and the search for love

Beautiful and fully aware of her charm, Elisabeth often drew attention wherever she went. She enjoyed flirtations and sometimes overstepped the bounds of propriety. 

It was even rumored that she flirted with her sister’s husband, King Alexander of Yugoslavia. One of her most talked-about romances was with the conductor George Georgescu—a cultivated and gifted man, captivated by her delicate beauty.

When Queen Marie discovered the affair, she decided to end it at any cost. Her dream was for Elisabeth to marry a sovereign, not an artist. She wrote Georgescu a letter full of tact but firm resolve, urging him to break off the relationship: “The destiny of my children is to be kings and queens… it is better for her to suffer now than for us to destroy something that might one day benefit both Greece and Romania.” The conductor kept his word and withdrew, leaving Elisabeth heartbroken and disillusioned.

At twenty-six, an age when a princess risked remaining unmarried, Elisabeth accepted the arranged marriage with Crown Prince George of Greece. In her diary, she wrote with melancholy: “I am twenty-six and I feel almost old, weary of hopes and of waiting for an illusion that never comes.”

A queen without happiness

The marriage between Elisabeth of Romania and George of Greece took place on February 27, 1921. Soon after, the couple left the country, and a year later, when George ascended the throne, Elisabeth became Queen of Greece. Yet instead of finding fulfillment in her new royal life, she felt increasingly lonely and out of place.

Queen Elisabeth of Greece never adapted to the Greek court or to her role as a wife. She frequently refused to attend official dinners and ceremonies, preferring solitude, books, and music. She traveled often, stayed away from her husband, and even refused to provide him with heirs.

When King George abdicated in 1924, the two went into exile, and their already strained relationship completely disintegrated. George attempted reconciliation several times, but Elisabeth remained unmoved. 

Queen Marie recorded in her diary: “He might as well have spoken to a wall! Elisabeth replied with verses—sometimes from Petrarch in Italian, sometimes from Ronsard in French. Who could understand her?”

The divorce became inevitable. Elisabeth renounced the Greek crown without hesitation. She did not wish to be a queen, she wanted to be free, though that freedom would lead her into ever-deeper isolation.

Exile and a life in solitude

After the divorce, the princess returned to Romania and settled first in Sinaia, then at her residence in Bucharest, the Elisabeta Palace. She lived a secluded life, far from public life, and was in constant conflict with her brother, King Carol II, largely because of his mistress, Elena Lupescu, whom Elisabeth deeply disapproved of. Rumors about her eccentricity and reclusive behavior spread widely, feeding the aura of mystery that surrounded her.

Later, Elisabeth bought an estate at Banloc, in the Banat region, where she withdrew from society, accompanied only by two maids. The manor, elegant and austere, became her refuge and, for many years, her only link to the outside world. From there, she followed at a distance the political turmoil shaking Romania and the decline of her own royal family.

In 1947, when King Michael I was forced by the communists to abdicate, Elisabeth left the country with the other members of the royal family. She spent some time at Sigmaringen Castle in Germany before settling permanently in Cannes, France.

There, far from her homeland and her royal past, the former Queen of Greece lived a modest but dignified life. She earned her living by giving piano lessons—a craft she had loved since childhood and which became her only faithful companion. She lived quietly in a rented apartment, avoiding social gatherings and public appearances.

Her final years and the legacy of a sad life

Elisabeth died in Cannes on November 15, 1962, at the age of 62. She left this world as she had lived, silently, far from luxury, but with the inner nobility that neither disappointment nor exile could take from her.

Her life, though blessed with privilege, was a long search for meaning. She was a dreamy and lonely child, a beautiful yet unhappy woman, a queen without a throne, an artist defeated by fate. She never knew true love but cherished art and music. She was rarely understood by her family, yet she carried herself with royal dignity until the end.

Today, Princess Elisabeth remains one of the most enigmatic figures of Romania’s royal history. Behind her aristocratic smile lay deep sadness and suffocating solitude. Perhaps that is why her story still moves hearts, it is the story of a woman who had everything, yet nothing that truly mattered.

Princess Elisabeth, the isolated child of Queen Marie, stands as a symbol of an unfair destiny: born to be a queen, she lived as an exiled artist. And in the quiet notes of the piano she taught in faraway Cannes, one could still hear the last echoes of a life filled with unfulfilled dreams.

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