Shared from https://facebook/groups/260713314096465/ British Royal Family Fan Page On a Day Like Today ~ January 21, 1991. Princess Ileana of Romania, Great Granddaughter of HM Queen Victoria, died at the age of 82 as a result of two heart attacks in Youngstown, Ohio, USA. She was born in Bucharest, Romania as the youngest daughter of Queen Marie of Romania and King Ferdinand I of Romania. Although it was rumored that Ileanas true father was her mothers lover, Prince Barbu Ştirbey, the King admitted paternity. She married Archduke Anton of Austria, Prince of Tuscany in 1931. marriage was encouraged by Ileanas brother, King Carol II, who was jealous of Ileanas popularity in Romania and wanted to get her out of the country. After the wedding, Carol claimed that the Romanian people would never tolerate a Habsburg living on Romanian soil, and on these grounds refused Ileana and Anton permission to live in Romania. She established a hospital for wounded Romanian soldiers at their castle, Sonneburg, outside Vienna, Austria. She was assisted in this task by her friend Sheila Kaul. In 1944, she and the children moved back to Romania, where they lived at Bran Castle, near Brasov. Her husband joined them but was placed under house arrest by the Red Army. Princess Ileana established and worked in another hospital in Bran village, which she named the Hospital of the Queens Heart in memory of her beloved mother Queen Maria of Romania. After Michael I of Romania abdicated, Ileana and her family were exiled from the newly Communist Romania and escaped by train to the Russian sector of Vienna. After that they settled in Switzerland, then moved to Argentina and in 1950, she and the children moved to the United States, where she bought a house in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. The years from 1950 to 1961 were spent lecturing against communism, working with the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States, writing two books: I Live Again, a memoir of her last years in Romania, and Hospital of the Queens Heart, describing the establishment and running of the hospital. In 1954 she divorced Archduke Anton of Austria, Prince of Tuscany and a month later married Dr. Stefan Nikolas Issarescu. In 1961, Princess Ileana entered the Orthodox Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God, in Bussy-en-Othe, France. Her second marriage ended in divorce in 1965. Upon becoming a nun she was given the name of was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the United States and founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, the first English language Orthodox monastery in North America. She was the third female descendant of Queen Victoria to become a Mother Superior in a convent of her own foundation. She served as abbess until her retirement in 1981 and remaining at the monastery until her death. Her family sequence goes as follows: HM Queen Victoria (Great Grandmother) Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Grandfather) Marie of Edinburgh (Mother)
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 18:14:09 +0000
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