Marie of Romania

Last Queen consort of Romania (1875-1938; r. 1914-1927)

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Lived 1875–1938, aged 63United Kingdom

United Kingdom ArtistsArtist

Wikipedia
41 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1875–1938
Aged 63
Awards
4
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

A British princess who became Romania's wartime queen, nursing cholera patients in military hospitals while her capital fell, then persuading the world's powers at Versailles to recognize the tripled borders of a country that wasn't hers by birth.

Biography

About

Marie was born Princess Marie of Edinburgh on 29 October 1875, daughter of a British duke and a Russian grand duchess, raised between Kent, Malta and Coburg. She turned down a marriage proposal from her cousin, the future George V, and in 1893 wed Ferdinand, crown prince of Romania, becoming immediately popular with the Romanian people. When World War I began, she pushed Ferdinand to join the Triple Entente and declare war on Germany in 1916; after Bucharest fell to the Central Powers, she fled to Western Moldavia with her family and worked as a nurse alongside her three daughters, tending sol…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Marie of Romania

Marie of Romania

said1926

I have always had the joy of life, uncrushably, a sort of inner sunshine that cannot be put out.

— 'Queen's Counsel, The Joy of Life', The Birmingham News 1926.

Marie of Romania

saidundated

I have met [a proselytizer from a religious group]. I did not like him. He seemed to me to be a snob. He spoke of God as if He were the oldest title in the Almanach de Gotha.

— qtd. in Beverely Nichols, All I Could Never Be (1952)

Marie of Romania

saidundated