Family and Early Life
Alexander was born on 1 August 1893 (20 July in the Julian calendar), the second son of Crown Prince Constantine of Greece (1868–1923) and his wife Princess Sophia of Prussia (1870–1932). His father was the eldest son and heir-apparent of King George I of Greece (1845–1913) and his wife Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia (1851–1926); his mother was the daughter of Emperor Frederick III of Germany (1831–1888) and his wife Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom (1840–1901).
Alexander therefore had the genealogical peculiarity of being a great-grandson of both King Christian IX of Denmark, nicknamed the grandfather of Europe, and of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, nicknamed the grandmother of Europe. He was also the nephew of Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and a cousin of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and King George V of the United Kingdom.
Read more about this topic: Alexander Of Greece
Famous quotes containing the words family and, family, early and/or life:
“O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food—”
—Gregory Corso (b. 1930)
“Every family has bad memories.”
—Mario Puzo, U.S. author, screenwriter, and Francis Ford Coppola, U.S. director, screenwriter. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being, as if he had drunk some powerful drug. He had been feeling weak and done before. Now the life came back into him, he felt delivered from his own fretted, daily self.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)