page_title: Marie of Romania
section_title: Upbringing
hierarchical_section_title: Marie of Romania / Early life (1875–1893) / Upbringing
caption_attribution_description: English: Princess Marie of Edinburgh, later Queen of Romania
context_page_description: Marie of Romania, also known as Marie of Edinburgh, was the last Queen of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I.
  Born into the British royal family, she was titled Princess Marie of Edinburgh at birth. Her parents were Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia. Marie's early years were spent in Kent, Malta and Coburg. After refusing a proposal from her cousin, the future King George V, she was chosen as the future wife of Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania, the heir apparent of King Carol I, in 1892. Marie was Crown Princess between 1893 and 1914, and became immediately popular with the Romanian people.
  After the outbreak of World War I, Marie urged Ferdinand to ally himself with the Triple Entente and declare war on Germany, which he eventually did in 1916. During the early stages of fighting, Bucharest was occupied by the Central Powers and Marie, Ferdinand and their five children took refuge in Moldavia. There, she and her three daughters acted as nurses in military hospitals, caring for soldiers who were wounded or afflicted by cholera.
context_section_description: Marie and her siblings, Prince Alfred (b. 1874, known as "Young Affie"), and Princesses Victoria Melita (b. 1876, known as "Ducky"), Alexandra (b. 1878, known as "Sandra") and Beatrice (b. 1884, known as "Baby Bee"), spent much of their early life at Eastwell Park, which their mother preferred instead of Clarence House, their official residence. In her memoirs, Marie would remember Eastwell fondly. The Duke of Edinburgh was largely absent from his children's lives, due to his position in the British Royal Navy, and their life was governed by their mother. Marie would later state that she did not even know the colour of her father's hair until she looked at later portraits of him, believing it to be much darker than it actually was. When he was at home, the Duke would often play with his children, inventing many games for them. Of all her siblings, Marie was closest to her sister Victoria Melita, who was one year younger, but whom everyone believed to be the older girl because of her stature, much to the princesses' dismay. The Edinburgh children were all baptised and raised in the Anglican faith; this upset their Russian Orthodox mother.
  The Duchess of Edinburgh was a supporter of the idea of separating generations and Marie deeply regretted the fact that her mother never allowed chatting between the two "as if [they] were equals". Nonetheless, the Duchess was independent-minded, cultured and "the most important person" in her children's lives. At the behest of their mother, Marie and her sisters were taught French, which they detested and rarely ever spoke. Overall, the Duchess neglected her daughters' education, considering them not very bright or gifted. They were permitted to read aloud, but in the fields of painting and drawing, areas in which they had inherited Queen Victoria's talent, the girls received only a "pedestrian instruction". The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh frequently received members of the royal family at Eastwell Park, inviting them for breakfast nearly daily and in 1885, Marie and Victoria Melita served as bridesmaids at the wedding of their aunt Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg. Among Marie's playmates were her maternal cousins, Grand Dukes Nicholas (called "Nicky") and George (called "Georgie") and Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia, the other two Russian cousins, Grand Duke Michael (called "Misha") and Grand Duchess Olga being too young for the Edinburgh girls. Other playmates included the children of their maternal uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia.
  In 1886, when Marie was eleven years old, the Duke of Edinburgh was named commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and the family took up residence at San Antonio Palace in Malta. Marie would remember her time in Malta as "the happiest memory of my existence". It was in Malta that Marie found her first love, Maurice Bourke, the captain of the Duke's ship, whom Marie called "Captain Dear". Marie was prone to fits of jealousy when Bourke would pay more attention to one of her sisters than to her. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were greatly loved in Malta and San Antonio Palace was frequently full of guests. Marie and Victoria Melita received white horses from their mother and went to the local hippodrome nearly daily, apart from Saturday. During their first year in Malta, a French governess oversaw the princesses' education, but, due to her failing health, she was replaced the following year by a much younger German woman. At San Antonio, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh always maintained a room ready for Prince George of Wales, the second son of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, who was in the Royal Navy. George called the three elder Edinburgh girls "the three dearests", but favoured Marie the most.
  Meanwhile, the Duke of Edinburgh became heir presumptive to his childless paternal uncle, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, upon the Prince of Wales's renunciation of his rights to the duchy. Consequently, the family relocated to Coburg in 1889. Marie later came to view this moment as "truly the end of a life
caption: 1882 portrait by John Everett Millais commissioned by Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Royal Academy.[8]
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