Princess Alice of Battenberg - Marriage

Marriage

Princess Alice met and fell in love with Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (known as Andrea within the family), the fourth son of King George I of the Hellenes and Queen Olga, at King Edward VII's coronation in 1902. They married in a civil ceremony on 6 October 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies; one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and one Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe. She adopted the style of her husband, becoming "Princess Andrew". The bride and groom were closely related to the ruling houses of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Greece; their wedding was one of the great gatherings of the descendants of Queen Victoria and Christian IX of Denmark held before World War I.

Prince and Princess Andrew had five children:

• Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark (18 April 1905 – 24 April 1981), who married Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (24 March 1897 – 11 May 1960);
• Princess Theodora of Greece and Denmark (30 May 1906 – 16 October 1969), who married Prince Berthold, Margrave of Baden (24 February 1906 – 27 October 1963);
• Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark (22 June 1911 – 16 November 1937), who married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse (8 November 1906 – 16 November 1937);
• Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark (26 June 1914 – 24 November 2001), who married firstly Prince Christoph of Hesse (14 May 1901 – 7 October 1943) and secondly Prince George William of Hanover (25 March 1915 – 8 January 2006); and
• Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (born 10 June 1921), who married Elizabeth II.

All of Prince and Princess Andrew's children later had children of their own.

After their marriage, Prince Andrew continued his career in the military and Princess Andrew became involved in charity work. In 1908, she visited Russia for the wedding of Grand Duchess Marie of Russia and Prince William of Sweden. While there, she talked with her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who was formulating plans for the foundation of a religious order of nurses. Princess Andrew attended the laying of the foundation stone for her aunt's new church. Later in the year, the Grand Duchess began giving away all her possessions in preparation for a more spiritual life. On their return to Greece, Prince and Princess Andrew found the political situation worsening, as the Athens government had refused to support the Cretan parliament, which had called for the union of Crete (still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire) with the Greek mainland. A group of dissatisfied officers formed a Greek nationalist Military League that eventually led to Prince Andrew's resignation from the army and the rise to power of Eleftherios Venizelos.