Alexander (, <small>romanized</small>: Aléxandros; 1 August 189325 October 1920) was King of Greece from 11 June 1917 until his death on 25 October 1920.

The second son of King Constantine&nbsp;I, Alexander was born in the summer palace of Tatoi on the outskirts of Athens. He succeeded his father in 1917, during World War I, after the Entente Powers and the followers of Eleftherios Venizelos pushed King Constantine and his eldest son, Crown Prince George, into exile. Having no real political experience, the new king was stripped of his powers by the Venizelists and effectively imprisoned in his own palace. Venizelos, as prime minister, was the effective ruler with the support of the Entente. Though reduced to the status of a puppet king, Alexander supported Greek troops during their war against the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Under his reign, the territorial extent of Greece considerably increased, following the victory of the Entente and their Allies in the First World War and the early stages of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922.

Alexander controversially married the commoner Aspasia Manos in 1919, provoking a major scandal that forced the couple to leave Greece for several months. Soon after returning to Greece with his wife, Alexander was bitten by a domestic Barbary macaque and died aged 27 of sepsis. The sudden death of the sovereign led to questions over the monarchy's survival and contributed to the fall of the Venizelist regime. After a general election and a referendum, Constantine I was restored to the throne.

Early life

thumb|Alexander with four of his siblings in 1905. Clockwise from far left: [[Helen of Greece and Denmark|Helen, George, Alexander, Paul and Irene.]]

Alexander was born at Tatoi Palace on 1 August 1893 (20 July in the Julian calendar), the second son of Crown Prince Constantine of Greece and Princess Sophia of Prussia. He was related to royalty throughout Europe. His father was the eldest son of King George I of Greece by his wife, Olga Constantinovna of Russia; his mother was the daughter of Frederick III, German Emperor, and Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom. His parents' cousins included King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. Wilhelm II, German Emperor, was his maternal uncle.

Alexander's early life alternated between the Royal Palace in Athens, and Tatoi Palace in the city's suburbs. With his parents he undertook several trips abroad and regularly visited Schloss Friedrichshof, the home of his maternal grandmother, who had a particular affection for her Greek grandson.

Though he was very close to his younger sister Helen, Alexander was less warm towards his elder brother, George, with whom he had little in common. While George was a serious and thoughtful child, Alexander was mischievous and extroverted; he smoked cigarettes made from blotting paper, set fire to the games room in the palace, and recklessly lost control of a toy cart in which he and his younger brother Paul were rolling down a hill, tipping his toddler brother a distance of into brambles. Alexander was educated in Greece. He joined the prestigious Hellenic Military Academy, where several of his uncles had previously studied and where he made himself known more for his mechanical skills than for his intellectual capacity.

Alexander distinguished himself in combat during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. King George I was assassinated in Thessaloniki soon afterwards on 18 March 1913, and Alexander's father ascended the throne as Constantine I.

Courtship of Aspasia Manos

In 1915, at a party held in Athens by court marshal Theodore Ypsilantis, Alexander became re-acquainted with one of his childhood friends, Aspasia Manos. She had just returned from education in France and Switzerland, and was reckoned as very beautiful by her acquaintances.

She was the daughter of Constantine's Master of the Horse, Colonel Petros Manos, and his wife Maria Argyropoulos. The 21-year-old Alexander was smitten,

World War I

thumb|left|Alexander's father, [[Constantine I of Greece|Constantine I, in the uniform of a German field marshal, ]]

During World War I, Constantine I followed a formal policy of neutrality, yet he was openly benevolent towards Germany, which was fighting alongside Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire against the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain. Constantine was the brother-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and had also become something of a Germanophile following his military training in Prussia. His pro-German attitude provoked a split between the monarch and the prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who wanted to support the Entente in the hope of expanding Greek territory to incorporate the Greek minorities in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. Protected by the countries of the Entente, particularly France, in 1916 Venizelos formed a parallel government to that of the king.

Parts of Greece were occupied by the Allied Entente forces, but Constantine I refused to modify his policy and faced increasingly open opposition from the Entente and the Venizelists. In July 1916, an arson attack ravaged Tatoi Palace and the royal family barely escaped the flames; Alexander was not injured but his mother narrowly saved Princess Katherine by carrying her through the woods for more than . Among the palace personnel and firefighters who arrived to deal with the blaze, sixteen people were killed.

thumb|right|From left to right: Lieutenant General [[George Milne, 1st Baron Milne|George Milne (commander of the British Salonika Force) with King Alexander I of Greece and Lieutenant General Charles Briggs, GOC XVI Corps of the BSF, 1917.]]

Finally on 10 June 1917, Charles Jonnart, the Entente's High Commissioner in Greece, ordered King Constantine to give up his power. On the threat of Entente forces landing in Piraeus, the king conceded and agreed to go into self-exile, though without officially abdicating his crown. The Allies, while determined to be rid of Constantine, did not wish to create a Greek republic, and sought to replace the king with another member of the royal family. Crown Prince George, who was the natural heir, was ruled out by the Allies because they thought him too pro-German, like his father. Instead, they considered installing Constantine's brother (and Alexander's uncle), Prince George, but he had tired of public life during his difficult tenure as High Commissioner of Crete between 1901 and 1905; above all, he sought to remain loyal to his brother, and categorically refused to take the throne. As a result, Constantine's second son, Prince Alexander, was chosen to become the new monarch. Petrograd demanded that Alexander should not receive the title of king but only that of regent, so as to preserve the rights of the deposed sovereign and the Crown Prince. Russia's protests were brushed aside, and Alexander ascended the Greek throne.

thumb|[[Eleftherios Venizelos, Greek revolutionary and prime minister, ]]

Alexander swore the oath of loyalty to the Greek constitution on the afternoon of 11 June 1917 in the ballroom of the Royal Palace. Apart from the Archbishop of Athens, Theocletus I, who administered the oath, only King Constantine I, Crown Prince George and the king's prime minister, Alexandros Zaimis, attended. There were no festivities. At Tatoi, Constantine again impressed upon Alexander that he held the crown in trust only. It was the last time that Alexander would be in direct contact with his family.

Puppet king

With his parents and siblings in exile, Alexander found himself isolated. The royals remained unpopular with the Venizelists, and Entente representatives advised the king's aunts and uncles, particularly Prince Nicholas, to leave. Eventually, they all followed Constantine into exile. Royal household staff were gradually replaced by enemies of the former king, and Alexander's allies were either imprisoned or distanced from him. Portraits of the royal family were removed from public buildings, and Alexander's new ministers openly called him the "son of a traitor".

thumb|Alexander (centre) shaking hands with prince-regent [[Alexander I of Yugoslavia|Alexander of Serbia on the Macedonian Front, May 1918]]

On 26 June 1917, the king was forced to name Eleftherios Venizelos as head of the government. Despite promises given by the Entente on Constantine's departure, the previous prime minister, Zaimis, was effectively forced to resign as Venizelos returned to Athens. Spied on day and night by the prime minister's supporters, the monarch quickly became a prisoner in his own palace, and his orders went ignored. His functions were limited, and amounted to visiting the Macedonian front to support the morale of the Greek and Allied troops. Since Venizelos's return to power, Athens was at war with the Central Powers, and Greek soldiers battled those of Bulgaria in the north.

Greek expansion

thumb|Territorial expansion of Greece between 1832 and 1947

By the end of World War I, Greece had grown beyond its 1914 borders, and the treaties of Neuilly (1919) and Sèvres (1920) confirmed the Greek territorial conquests. The majority of Thrace (previously split between Bulgaria and Turkey) and several Aegean Islands (such as Imbros and Tenedos) became part of Greece, and the region of Smyrna, in Ionia, was placed under Greek mandate. Alexander's kingdom increased in size by around a third. In Paris, Venizelos took part in the peace negotiations with the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Upon his return to Greece in August 1920, Venizelos received a laurel crown from the king for his work in support of panhellenism.

Despite their territorial gains following the Paris Peace Conference, the Greeks still hoped to achieve the Megali Idea and annex Constantinople and larger areas of Ottoman Asia Minor; they invaded Anatolia beyond Smyrna and sought to take Ankara, with the aim of destroying the Turkish resistance led by Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk). Thus began the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Although Alexander's reign saw success after success for the Greek armies, it was eventually Atatürk's revolutionary forces that obtained victory in 1922, negating the gains made under Alexander.

Marriage

Controversy

On 12 June 1917, the day after his accession, Alexander revealed his liaison with Aspasia Manos to his father and asked for his permission to marry her. Constantine was reluctant to let his son marry a non-royal, and demanded that Alexander wait until the end of the war before considering the engagement, to which Alexander agreed. In the intervening months, Alexander increasingly resented his separation from his family. His regular letters to his parents were intercepted by the government and confiscated. Although Venizelos was a friend of Petros Manos,

When Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, visited Athens in March 1918, to confer the Order of the Bath upon the king, Alexander feared that a marriage between him and Princess Mary of the United Kingdom would be discussed as part of an attempt to consolidate the relationship between Greece and Britain. To Alexander's relief, Arthur asked to meet Aspasia, and declared that, if he were younger, he would have sought to marry her himself. According to the Greek constitution, members of the royal family had to obtain permission to marry from both the sovereign and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church. By marrying Aspasia without the permission of the Archbishop, Alexander caused a major scandal. while Aspasia, who had trained as a nurse during World War I, rendered first aid. The count was seriously injured and died shortly afterward, after having both legs amputated.

The government allowed the couple to return to Greece in mid-1920. Although their marriage was legalized, Aspasia was not recognized as queen, but was instead known as "Madame Manos". and it was during this period that she became pregnant with Alexander's child. On 7 September, Venizelos, counting on a surge of support in the wake of the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres and the expansion of Greek territory, announced a general election for early November.

Death

thumb|Alexander's mother, [[Queen Sophia of Greece, by Georgios Jakobides, 1915]]

On 2 October 1920, Alexander was injured while walking through the grounds of the Tatoi estate. A domestic Barbary macaque belonging to the steward of the palace's grapevines attacked or was attacked by the king's German Shepherd dog, Fritz, his descendants were not in the line of succession. The Hellenic Parliament demanded that Constantine I and Crown Prince George be excluded from the succession but sought to preserve the monarchy by selecting another member of the royal house as the new sovereign. On 29 October 1920, the Greek minister in Berne, acting under the direction of the Greek authorities, offered the throne to Alexander's younger brother, Prince Paul. Paul, however, refused to become king while his father and elder brother were alive, insisting that neither of them had renounced their rights to the throne and that he therefore could never legitimately wear the crown.

The throne remained vacant and the legislative elections of 1920 turned into an open conflict between the Venizelists, who favored republicanism, and the supporters of the ex-King Constantine. On 14 November 1920, with the war with Turkey dragging on, the monarchists won, and Dimitrios Rallis became prime minister; Venizelos (who lost his own parliamentary seat) chose to leave Greece in self-exile. Rallis asked Queen Olga to become regent until Constantine's return.

Under the restored King Constantine I, whose return was endorsed overwhelmingly in a referendum, Greece went on to lose the Greco–Turkish War with heavy military and civilian casualties. The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander's reign was lost. Alexander's death in the midst of an election campaign helped destabilize the Venizelos regime, and the resultant loss of Allied support contributed to the failure of Greece's territorial ambitions. Winston Churchill wrote, "it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."

Issue

Alexander's daughter by Aspasia Manos, Alexandra (1921–1993), was born five months after his death. Initially, the government took the line that since Alexander had married Aspasia without the permission of his father or the church, his marriage was illegal and his posthumous daughter was illegitimate. However, in July 1922, Parliament passed a law which allowed the King to recognize royal marriages retroactively on a non-dynastic basis. That September, Her daughter (Constantine I's granddaughter) was legitimized as a princess of Greece and Denmark, and later married King Peter II of Yugoslavia in London in 1944. They had one child: Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia.

Ancestry

Footnotes and references

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Film of King Alexander's funeral, British Pathé

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