16/05/2025
Portrait of Her Majesty, Queen Olga Konstantinovna of Greece (née Grand Duchess of Russia), and her sister-in-law, Alexandra, then Princess of Wales, c. 1885.
One of her last letters to King George V, Queen Olga sent her warmest, most loving wishes for her nephew's 61st birthday, telling him: "God bless you, my darling, beloved sunbeam, and let us meet soon again. What joy that would be! ### Give my best love to darling May [Queen Mary] & your children. Ever your devoted, faithful old owl, Aunt Olga." The letter was a touching reminder of the kind, selfless, down-to-earth woman who had been a Romanov Grand Duchess, became Queen of the Hellenes, and the mother and grandmother of Greece's Kings. Those words betrayed nothing of the terrible anguish Olga had endured in her lifetime: the murder of her husband, the vicious vilification of her sons, the premature deaths of two children and a grandson, the cruel murders of her Romanov relatives.
Added to this was the destruction of the Russia she knew under the Communists and the turmoil that engulfed Greece, all of which resulted in the violent deaths of countless Russians and Greeks. Yet through all the torments, Olga never wavered in her faith. She bowed to the inscrutable ways of Providence, in fact, she cleaved to her faith, knowing that she could not endure the pain without God's help Such was the message she wrote to a friend in 1923. "There is the holy God's will for everything Amidst the countless trials I have the unwavering belief that everything that God grants us is for the best. You can only believe in this, it is otherwise impossible to comprehend rationally."
To the end of her days, Olga always remembered her native land and its tragic fate. These sentiments were encapsulated in one of Queen Olga's letters: "My heart aches... Everything, everything is gone with no return... My brothers are gone. I am the only one remaining in my family like a miserable fragment of the past."
