When Prince Philip’s third sister Princess Cecile, then eight months pregnant with her fourth child, was killed in a plane crash in 1937 alongside her family, relatives donned distinctive Nazi uniforms for the funeral. When there was a Greek military coup in 1967, Alice refused to budge from Athens until Prince Philip sent a plane, along with a special request from the Queen, to bring her home. Pictured, in 1957. none of Prince Philip’s sisters were invited to the Queen’s wedding in 1947. Shortly before Alice died in 1969, she wrote to her only son, whose childhood had been so scarred by her absence, ‘Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. Shortly after Prince Philip’s arrival, the royal family were exiled and, aged just 18 months, the future Duke of Edinburgh was bundled into a makeshift cot – an orange crate – as the family escaped on a British warship. In a diary she wrote of a private lunch with Hitler and how she thought he was a ‘charming and seemingly modest man’. She didn't see her family again until 1937, when her daughter Cecile was killed in a plane crash (three of Alice's daughters all married German soldiers who fought for Hitler's army). Here are a few basic facts about the real Princess Alice. Princess Alice gave shelter to the wife, daughter and son of the late Haimaki Cohen, a late Jewish member of Greek Parliament and friend of Alice's. Alice eventually channeled her religious fervor and longtime mission of caring for the ill into founding the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary. Episode four, “Bubbikins”, includes a scene which depicts Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice (played by Jane Lapotaire), being interviewed by a Guardian journalist named John Armstrong. Princess Alice of Battenberg was the mother of Britain’s Prince Philip. When the Gestapo became suspicious, Alice made her deafness an excuse for not answering their questions. Also killed were her mother, her husband, their sons aged six and four, a lady-in-waiting and the best man. Cecilie was buried with her husband and three of her children, including her stillborn son, in Darmstadt at the Rosenhöhe, the traditional burial place of the Hesse family. Her brother, Lord Mountbatten, sent food parcels – which she gave to the needy. She is featured in season 3 of Netflix’s series, The Crown. The Duke of Edinburgh’s mother was born Princess Alice of Battenberg in 1885 at Windsor Castle, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and raised as an English princess, although both her parents – Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine and Prince Louis of Battenberg – were German. Wedding day: Princess Alice of Battenberg (fifth from left) with her son and daughter-in-law on their wedding day in 1947. How Princess Alice of Battenberg, Prince Philip's Mother, Became the Royal Family's Black Sheep. There, Princess Alice was briefly a patient of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who's considered the founder of psychoanalysis. Gottfried was a son of Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her second son, Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and his wife, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, a daughter of Alexander II of Russia. When Nazi soldiers became suspicious, Princess Alice leveraged her deafness to deflect their questions. Born a Prince of Greece and Denmark, Philip – who passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle this morning aged 99 – was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who welcomed her son on the dining table of a villa in Corfu. In 1931, she married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, her first cousin once removed. She would die there two years later at the age of 84. They arrived in Paris as refugees, living on handouts from relatives. After a military coup d'etat forced her to leave her home in … Years later he wrote: ‘I have the very clearest recollection of the profound shock with which I heard the news of the crash and the death of my sister and her family.’. Alice de Battenberg (en allemand : Alice von Battenberg et en grec moderne : Αλίκη του Μπάττενμπεργκ / Alíki toi Mpáttenmpergk), princesse de Battenberg puis, par son mariage, princesse de Grèce et de Danemark, est née le 25 février 1885 au château de Windsor, au Royaume-Uni, et morte le 5 décembre 1969 au palais de Buckingham, dans ce même pays. Her mother, Princess Alice, died five weeks later. Indeed his youngest sister Sophie and her husband Prince Christoph of Hesse were so well regarded they joined Hitler for private lunches and even named their first son in his honour. In 1913, her work assisting in operations and establishing field hospitals earned her the Royal Red Cross military decoration. Pictured right, with her sons Alexander and Ludwig, who also died in the crash, and daughter Johanna, In The Crown: Cecile’s death features in the penultimate episode of– entitled Paterfamilias – of the second series of The Crown which explores Prince Charles’s unhappy school days at Gordonstoun, interwoven with flashbacks to his father’s time there. Born a Prince of Greece and Denmark, Philip – who passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle this morning aged 99 – was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who welcomed her son on the dining table of a villa in Corfu. Her plane crashed after hitting a factory chimney in fog near Ostend. In reality, such an interview never happened, however, and Princess Alice was not revered to the extent The Crown implies. Prințesa Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie de Battenberg s-a născut la Castelul Windsor în Berkshire în prezența străbunicii sale, regina Victoria. After his stay of execution, Alice and her family fled Greece once more (Philip was just an infant at the time), heading to Paris. Pictured, mother and son in 1957. Princess Alice of Battenberg was famed for saving a Jewish family from the Holocaust during the Second World War by sheltering them in her Athens home. When Alice was eventually released from the sanatorium in 1932, she became a lonely drifter, staying in modest German B&Bs. Speaking from a German airport, she tells him she agrees with the head’s decision and says she is now ‘obliged’ to fly to the wedding. They had three children together: Princess Margarita, who later married Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia; Prince Maximillian, who married Archduchess Valerie of Austria; and Prince Ludwig, who married Princess Anna Maria Henrietta Eleonora Gobertina of Auersperg-Breunner. Princess Alice moved back to England. Mother and son were not to meet again until tragic circumstances forced them together, reuniting in 1937 at the funeral of Philip’s sister Cécilie, who’d died in a plane crash at the age of 26. Get him out of here.’. Alice de Battenberg, la mère du prince Philip, est au cœur de l'épisode 4, saison 3, de la série The Crown, disponible sur Netflix depuis le 17 novembre. It is suggested – wrongly – that in November 1937, Philip, then 16, was due to spend half-term with 26-year-old Cecile, married to Grand Duke George Donatus of Hesse. Prince Christoph was killed in October 1943 in a plane accident over Italy. In episode 4, "Bubbikins," the Netflix series also provides a brief glimpse of Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg. She has visions of Christ and is told she will soon have a message to deliver to the world," Alice's mother wrote in a letter that year, according to the 2012 documentary. He survived his sisters: Philip’s opposition to the Nazis has never been in doubt. Alice was finally free on her own accord by 1932, and lived a nomadic existence alone in Germany for the next five years. "My poor Alice is in a quite abnormal state. Also pictured: Lord Mountbatten (left), Andrew Elphinstone, a cousin of the Queen, Alice Countess von Athlone and the Queen Mother, Prince Philip pictured (2nd right in the first full row), in a funeral procession in 1937. You’re the reason we’re all here burying my favourite child. Photos from their funeral shows Prince Philip flanked by grieving relatives, all wearing distinctive Nazi uniforms. This was all fictionalised, although Princess Alice did live at Buckingham Palace from 1967 until her death in December 1969. Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark (Greek: Σοφία; 26 June 1914 – 24 November 2001) was the fourth child and youngest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. With the advent of the Balkan Wars, Prince Andrew was reinstated in the army, and Princess Alice, assisting at operations and setting up field hospitals, work for which King George V – the current Queen’s grandfather – awarded her the Royal Red Cross in 1913. Princess Margarita remained in contact with her brother and visited the UK shortly after the birth of Princess Anne. Princess Alice in 1912. Alice was congenitally deaf but she could speak clearly. "She was there in the front for months on end, often working through the night in very primitive conditions, dealing with people who were being shot up all around her losing limbs," royal biographer Gyles Brandreth says in The Queen's Mother in Law. In 1950 Gottfried succeeded his father as Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Aged 18 months, the future Duke of Edinburgh was bundled into a makeshift cot – an orange crate – as the family escaped on a British warship. Philip broke a 60-year public silence about his family’s Nazi ties in 2006, saying that, like many Germans, they found Hitler’s early attempts to restore Germany’s power and prestige ‘attractive’ but stressed he was never ‘conscious of anybody in the family actually expressing anti-Semitic views’. So who was Queen Elizabeth II's mother-in-law, and how did she come to live at Buckingham Palace in her final years? Pictured, Sophie with Philip and her second husband in 1960. But he turned against the Fuhrer, and was among the aristocratic officers implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944 – which led to Prince Gottfried’s dismissal from the army. Rachel Cohen and her kids, Tilde and Michael, took refuge in Princess Alice's apartment in Athens. One is clad in the uniform of the Brownshirts; another wears full SS regalia. The strain took its toll on Alice, and her impassioned religious beliefs became steadily more eccentric. Sa mère, elle, est la fille de Louis de Battenberg et Victoria de Hesse-Darmstadt. Here, Femail reveals the extraordinary and tragic lives of Prince Philip's family, including his mother Princess Alice of Battenberg and four older sisters, following his death at 99. In a testament to her resourcefulness, Princess Alice could speak three languages—English, German, and French, and reportedly learned to read lips in multiple languages as well. A few months later in November Cecile, eight months pregnant with her third child, was killed in a plane crash while flying from Germany to London for a wedding. Photographs show how beautiful she was, with her upswept hair and lace gowns. She remained a prisoner there for two and a half years. Prince Philip, then 16, was particularly close to Cecile and being called into his headmaster’s study at Gordonstoun to be told of her death was one of the worst moments of his life. Princess Alice (Prince Philip’s Mother) with her children. John Armstrong was the fictional journalist from The Guardian who interviewed Princess Alice in a … The girls are pictured ahead of the 1922 wedding of Louis Mountbatten and Edwina Ashley, where they were bridesmaids, Royal ties: Princess Alice was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Below, the real-life details surrounding the last years of Princess Alice of Battenberg, who died at Buckingham Palace at the age of 84 on … Prince Philip was by then homeless, spending boarding school holidays with various relatives, including his uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten. 1885_Alice.jpg ‎ (337 × 492 pixels, file size: 16 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons . 1945, Absent but loving: Alice was a loving mother but enforced separation from her young son helped to forge Prince Philip’s self-reliant, independent spirit.