{"id":13606,"date":"2018-11-19T13:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T18:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/?p=13606"},"modified":"2018-11-19T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T18:15:08","slug":"english-romanias-wartime-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sfioanevanghelistul.ca\/wordpress\/en\/2018\/11\/19\/english-romanias-wartime-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania\u2019s Wartime Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the First World War, while politicians prevaricated, Romania\u2019s British queen lobbied for entry on the side of the Allies and courted the international press, becoming the glamorous face of her adopted country\u2019s war effort. <\/p>\n

Queen Marie of Romania, 20th century.<\/p>\n

Returning from a whirlwind visit to France and England during the first months of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Queen Marie of Romania proudly proclaimed she had successfully given her country a \u2018face\u2019. Romania\u2019s uncompromising prime minister Ion Br\u0103tianu \u2013 derided as desperate, \u2018beetle-browed\u2019 and byzantine by Western politicians \u2013 had the nous to realise that, in their eyes, his English-born, thoroughbred monarch was the perfect antidote to his perfidious Balkan traits, hence Marie\u2019s invitation to Paris. In the summer of 1918 Marie had been described by the New York Times <\/em>as \u2018one of the vivid and unforgettable personalities of the war\u2019.<\/p>\n

That Romania\u2019s queen should hog the limelight at the biggest political gathering the world had ever seen was not something anyone would have predicted in 1914. While Serbia had little option but to plunge into war that August, Romania, along with Bulgaria and Greece, initially remained neutral. Two Balkan conflicts in the two preceding years had left those countries wary of premature commitment to the wrong side and with competing land claims that precluded a Balkan alliance. The bloody deadlock that defined so much of the conflict made neither the prospect of entry enticing nor the ultimate victor predictable. By the end of 1915, Bulgaria had sided with the Central Powers and Serbia had been routed. Romania continued to prevaricate.<\/p>\n

Crown prince Carol II, King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania, 1922.<\/p>\n

When war broke out, the Danubian state was a relatively new country, having emerged from Ottoman and Russian suzerainty in the latter half of the 19th century. The two principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia united in 1859, although in an era when the hallmarks of Great Power support and imported European royalty conferred both stability and legitimacy, it wasn\u2019t until 1881 \u2013 in the wake of the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 \u2013 that the Romanian Kingdom was officially born. Carol I, a member of the Hohenzollern Dynasty, became the country\u2019s first monarch and throughout his long reign he remained loyal to his roots, committing Romania to a secret alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary.<\/p>\n

The events of 1914 put him at odds with his government. Carol wanted to honour his commitment to the Triple Alliance, while many among Romania\u2019s elite saw the war as an opportunity to fulfil the nation\u2019s irredentist ambitions of acquiring Transylvania \u2013 long considered the cradle of their nation \u2013 from the Habsburg Empire. Perhaps the decision to remain neutral contributed to Carol\u2019s death in October that year; by then an old man, he was wracked with the failure to fulfil his word. The king\u2019s passing saw his unremarkable nephew Ferdinand (also a Hohenzollern, German-born and Prussian-trained) accede to the throne. Here was an unprepossessing man who the prime minister, Ion Br\u0103tianu, could easily dominate. Even better, Ferdinand was accompanied by a considerable asset \u2013 his ambitious, popular, handsome wife, Marie, who boasted good relations with first cousins \u2018Nicky\u2019, Tsar of Russia, and Britain\u2019s George V.<\/p>\n

Rumour has it that George once had romantic inclinations towards the young princess; certainly as members of an expansive club \u2013 British-born royalty who claimed Queen Victoria as their grandmother \u2013 the pair had fond memories of each other from childhood and their letters were peppered with affectionate terms. The same was true of Marie\u2019s missives to Nicholas II. Her mother was Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, daughter of Tsar Alexander II. This link to the Orthodox East partially explains why Marie, the prettiest of the Duke of Edinburgh\u2019s children, was married off at just 17 in 1893 to a plain German prince in a country Victoria considered both \u2018insecure\u2019 and \u2018immoral\u2019.<\/p>\n

Panorama of Bucharest, probably from a German zeppelin, 1916.<\/p>\n

Initially the entitled English princess found her apprenticeship in an Eastern European backwater a challenge. Beyond the occasional mention in society magazines she rarely featured on the international stage. By 1914, however, Marie had grown fond of her adopted country and was well placed to assume a formal role in determining Romania\u2019s wartime direction. Her lover, Prince Barbu \u015etirbey, an adroit backroom courtier and the prime minister\u2019s brother-in-law, provided Marie with intimate access to the country\u2019s political scene, while her weak husband left the queen plenty of room to manoeuvre in favour of the Entente.<\/p>\n

Stuck with the purgatory of indecision for two years during which double-dealings, foreign suitors and black market money became the hallmarks of Romania\u2019s wartime hesitation, Marie admitted she hated neutrality, likening it to walking on eggshells. She underestimated her rising stock both in Romania and among diplomats desperate to woo the bell-weather state into battle. Ambassadors on both sides quickly recognised Marie\u2019s leverage at court, while her direct appeals to both Russian and British royalty were utilised by a Romanian government wracked with a small-state fear of being overlooked and misunderstood.<\/p>\n

On 27 August 1916 the queen wrote in her diary: \u2018I awake this morning knowing what is going to be \u2013 I have known for many weeks \u2013 one of the only ones who have known it \u2013 I know it is going to be war. War!\u2019 Under pressure from France and Britain, Romania had finally committed to the side of the Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary. Initially Marie was concerned about her own role: \u2018What can a woman do in a modern war? It is no more the time of Joan of Arc.\u2019<\/p>\n

British propaganda poster welcoming Romania’s decision to join the Entente.<\/p>\n

Despite a brief hiatus, which saw Romania\u2019s f\u00eated \u2018peasant-soldiers\u2019 successfully invade Transylvania, the army soon collapsed and with it the conviction of both the prime minister and the king. German Field Marshal August von Mackensen caught Romania in a lethal pincer movement and duly occupied Bucharest in December 1916. It was a terrible result not only for beleaguered Romania but for Entente morale generally. Only three months earlier the British and French press had gleefully described Romania\u2019s entry into the war as the \u2018beginning of the end\u2019. Few anticipated the rapid and ignominious retreat that followed. The Spectator<\/em> predicted that Romania would now disappear off the news agenda; they didn\u2019t anticipate the tour-de-force that would be delivered by Marie.<\/p>\n

Marie\u2019s predecessor was Carol\u2019s wife, German-born Queen Elizabeth, better known by the nom-de-plume Carmen Sylva. Renowned for her writing, in particular folkloric stories inspired by the superstitions and beauty of her adopted land, Elizabeth was a promoter of the arts and her writing had given Romania a fairytale sheen that was absent among its Balkan neighbours.<\/p>\n

Romania\u2019s entry into the war provided Marie with a fresh opportunity to showcase the little-known country (with herself as its supreme custodian) in front of a Western audience. Her book My Country<\/em> was published in Britain, France and later the US. It positioned Romania as a spiritual, rustic land and appealed to an Edwardian nostalgia much in demand during the quagmire of war. In late 1916, sections of My Country<\/em> were serialised in The Times<\/em>. It was a period of extraordinary personal adversity for the queen. In the space of a couple of months, her youngest son died of typhoid fever, bombs targeted her palace and she was forced to abandon Bucharest and retreat north. But the Entente had found a much needed, sympathetic heroine who was more than willing to play the part.<\/p>\n

In the wake of Edith Cavell\u2019s execution in 1915, the stock of the wartime nurse had never been higher. Marie quickly capitalised on this; rarely seen out of pressed whites, the Red Cross on her forehead, she lead an entourage of women around hospital wards and Romania\u2019s stricken soldiers on the front line. Foreign legations were startled by Marie\u2019s work ethic among the injured and dying holed up in Romania\u2019s last unoccupied area of land, where by early 1917, typhus was rampant. The French ambassador marvelled at Marie\u2019s apparent invincibility; she worked all hours and refused to take precautions when tending the infected troops. \u2018Don\u2019t you think it gives them more pleasure to kiss my uncovered hand?\u2019 she queried, rejecting the offer of protective gloves.<\/p>\n

The queen had an unrivalled ability to cultivate the emerging mass media. Frequently in her diaries she referred to foreign cinematographers and photographers who visited her at work. A British Path\u00e9 newsreel shows a sanitised version of plucky Romania holding out against the odds, with Marie the embodiment of her nation in startling white, distributing trinkets, flowers and good will among her desperate compatriots. 
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