Olga Constantinovna of Russia - Second Exile and Death

Second Exile and Death

Constantine I returned to the throne 18 months into the Greco-Turkish War, launched in May 1919. In September 1921, the Greek defeat at the battle of Sakarya marked the beginning of the Greek retreat from Turkey. Resentment among the allies for Constantine's policy during World War I prevented Athens from receiving outside support. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the new leader of Turkey, regained Smyrna and Eastern Thrace, annexed by Athens at the end of World War I.

Following a coup by disgruntled military officers, Constantine I abdicated for a second time on 27 September 1922. With several other members of his family, including Queen Olga, he went into exile in Italy while his eldest son succeeded him for a few months on the throne as George II. Within months, Constantine died in Italy. One of Olga's sons, Prince Andrew, was among those arrested by the new regime. Many defendants in the treason trials that followed the coup were shot, including senior politicians and generals. Foreign diplomats assumed that Andrew was also in mortal danger, and George V of the United Kingdom, Alphonso XIII of Spain, the French president Raymond Poincaré and Pope Pius XI sent representatives to Athens to intercede on his behalf. Andrew, though spared, was banished for life and his family fled into exile aboard a British cruiser, HMS Calypso.

Unlike her children and grandchildren, Olga was given a pension by the government of the Second Hellenic Republic, but she maintained so many of the faithful old servants who had fled Greece with her that she was usually left with no more than 20 pounds sterling per month (worth about £800 in 2010 prices) to meet her own expenses. She could, however, count on the support of her family, scattered throughout Western Europe. In the United Kingdom, she shared her time between Spencer House, London, the residence of her youngest son, Prince Christopher; Regent's Park, where her daughter, Grand Duchess Marie, rented a mansion; Sandringham House, the home of her sister-in-law, Queen Alexandra; and Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, where her nephew, King George V, lent apartments.

Olga's final years were marked by ill health. Lameness restricted her to a wheelchair, and she stayed in Paris several times to undergo treatment for her eyes. Her poor eyesight caused George V much laughter when she mistook a statue of a naked Lady Godiva for one of Queen Victoria. Increasingly dependent, Olga finally settled with her youngest son, Prince Christopher, shortly after the death of his first wife, Princess Anastasia, in 1923. Olga died on 18 June 1926 either at Christopher's Villa Anastasia in Rome, or at Pau, France.

Despite republicanism in Greece, Olga was still held in high esteem and the republican government in Athens offered to pay for her funeral and repatriate her remains to Greece. Nonetheless, her children declined the offer, preferring to bury her in Italy beside her son, Constantine I, whose body Greece had refused to accept. Her funeral was held on 22 June 1926 at the Orthodox Church in Rome and the next day she was laid to rest in the crypt of the Russian church in Florence. After the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935 she was re-interred at Tatoi on 17 November 1936.

As much of her property had been confiscated by the Soviet Union and the Greek republican government, most of her estate comprised jewelry reported in The Times to be worth £100,000 (equivalent to more than £4,300,000 today). This was shared between her children and the children of Constantine I. Traumatized by the events of the Russian Revolution, Olga wished to sever all ties with the country in which her family had been massacred. Before dying, she made her grandson, King George II, swear to repatriate the ashes of her daughter Princess Alexandra, buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. Her wish was fulfilled in 1940 after his restoration to the Greek throne.