Queen Marie of Romania — royal and writer with roots in the Russian Empire
Marie of Edinburgh was born at Eastwell Park in Kent on 29 October 1875, the eldest daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria's second son, and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. She was a granddaughter of two sovereigns at once, Queen Victoria and Emperor Alexander II, and a first cousin of both George V and Nicholas II.
Her mother had been born at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo in 1853, the only surviving daughter of Alexander II. Her marriage to Prince Alfred in 1874 made her the only Romanov ever to marry into the British royal family. She never settled at the British court, insisted on precedence as the daughter of an emperor, kept her Orthodox faith and returned to Russia often; the family's ties to her homeland were part of Marie's childhood. In 1893 her husband succeeded his uncle as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and the family moved between England, Malta, where he commanded the fleet, and Germany.
In 1893, at seventeen, Marie married Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania. She learned the language, adopted the country as her own and, after Ferdinand became king in 1914, was Queen of Romania until his death in 1927. During the First World War she worked as a nurse in military hospitals and in cholera wards, and became the most visible public figure of a country that was largely occupied. In 1919 she went to the Paris Peace Conference to argue Romania's case, and the treaties of the following years enlarged the kingdom to include Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia, the last of which had been part of the Russian Empire since 1812.
She was also a writer. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, published in three volumes in 1934–35, and her diaries are among the most vivid records of the royal courts of Europe before and after the First World War, including the Russian court of her mother's family, much of which was destroyed in the revolution. Her sister Victoria Melita married Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich.
She died at Pelișor Castle in Sinaia on 18 July 1938, aged sixty-two. Her son became King Carol II and her grandson King Michael I, the last king of Romania, so the Romanian royal line descends from Alexander II through her mother.
Tracing the roots — Tsarskoye Selo (mother)
Her mother, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, was born at Tsarskoye Selo, the only surviving daughter of Emperor Alexander II. Marie was thus a granddaughter of both Queen Victoria and Alexander II, and a first cousin of Nicholas II.
Daughter of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna (1853–1920), born at the Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, the only surviving daughter of Alexander II and the only Romanov to marry into the British royal family.
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Tsarskoye Selo (mother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.