Royal Pearls and Diamonds to Remember Prince Michael of Greece

At the end of July, the royal world lost one of its most colorful figures: Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark, the writer and historian who occupied a unique place at the intersection of several European royal families. Today, we’ve got a look at the way that his royal relatives remembered him at his funeral in Athens, including the lovely pearls and diamonds they wore to pay tribute to their husband, father, and cousin.

Prince Michael, son of Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark and Princess Françoise of Orleans, was born in Rome in January 1939. He passed away in Athens on July 28 at the age of 85. An obituary published by the Telegraph noted: “In his early life he was an integral member of the Greek royal family; later he was a historian and novelist. A man of great charm and sympathy, he acquired an eclectic group of friends and admirers spread across the globe.”

A funeral to celebrate the life of the late prince was held on August 1 at the Church of Saint Theodore on the grounds of the First Cemetery of Athens. Later, he was buried near his parents and his grandparents, King George I and Queen Olga of the Hellenes, in the royal cemetery at Tatoi Palace.

Leading the mourners at the service were Michael’s wife, the artist Marina Karella, and their daughters, Princess Alexandra of Greece and Princess Olga, Duchess of Aosta. Marina wore a pair of emerald drop earrings with her white trouser suit, while Alexandra and Olga were elegant in pearls.

Prince Michael was a cousin of numerous royals, including the late King Constantine II, who also served as best man at Michael and Marina’s wedding in 1965. His widow and children were all present for the service. Above, Queen Anne-Marie is flanked by Crown Prince Pavlos and Crown Princess Marie-Chantal, with Princess Alexia and Princess Theodora walking just behind them.

Queen Anne-Marie was also elegant in pearls for the service, worn with a pair of simple diamond stud earrings.

Prince Nikolaos and Prince Philippos were also present for the funeral service of their late cousin. They’re pictured here standing with the Duke of Aosta behind Crown Prince Pavlos, Crown Princess Marie-Chantal, Queen Anne-Marie, Princess Olga, and Princess Alexandra.

Prince Michael’s younger daughter, Princess Olga, is married to Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, one of the pretenders to the Italian throne. (He’s pictured here on the left.) Here, Aimone escorts two more of the late prince’s cousins, Queen Sofia of Spain and her sister, Princess Irene of Greece and Denmark, as they attend the funeral service. Irene’s jewelry included a brooch in the shape of an olive branch, a lovely symbolic nod to Greece.

Prince Michael was an enthusiastic biographer who loved to share stories from the history of his fascinating family. The marriage of his parents brought together two royal families that had a precarious hold on power during the past two centuries. His father, Prince Christopher (1888-1940), was the youngest son of King George I of the Hellenes (who was born Prince William of Denmark and was a brother of both Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom and Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia) and Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia (a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I). Born in Russia, Christopher was the youngest of eight children. He lived through the reigns (and exiles, and reigns again) of four Greek monarchs: King George I (his father), King Constantine I (his brother), King Alexander (a nephew), and King George II (another nephew).

Michael’s mother also experienced royal life in exile. Princess Françoise (1902-1953) was born in Paris, the second daughter of Prince Jean of Orleans, who used the title of “Duke of Guise” and his wife (and first cousin), Princess Isabelle of Orleans. Jean and Isabelle were both descendants of King Louis Philippe I, who reigned in France from 1830 until 1848. Prince Jean’s siblings included Princess Marie, who married Prince Valdemar of Denmark (one of Prince Christopher’s uncles), while Princess Isabelle was a sister of, among others, Queen Amelie of Portugal and Princess Helene, Duchess of Aosta (great-grandmother of the present Duke of Aosta, Princess Olga’s husband, mentioned above).

During Prince Christopher’s life, the Greek monarchy went through a dynastic roller coaster. His father was assassinated in 1913, and his eldest brother, King Constantine I, reigned through periods of war and intermittent exile. Christopher joined the Greek navy, but his family’s precarious grip on power meant that he was often caught in the cycle of splendor, exile, and poverty. He was briefly engaged to one of his British royal cousins, Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife, but that relationship was ended by their parents. A few years later, he met and fell in love with a wealthy American widow, Nancy Leeds, who was ten years his senior. Their marriage in 1920 added valuable resources to the royal family, though Christopher maintained that he had married her for love, not for money.

Nancy, known as Princess Anastasia after their royal wedding, passed away three years after the couple were married. The photograph of the Greek royal family featured above was taken around the time of her illness and death in 1923. In the picture, Prince Christopher (wearing glasses) is surrounded by the other members of his family. In the top row, he is second from the left, flanked by his niece, Princess Irene, Duchess of Aosta (grandmother of the present Duke of Aosta), and his brother-in-law, Admiral Perikles Ioannidis. Beside the admiral is another of Christopher’s nephews, Prince Paul, who would later become King of the Hellenes. In the bottom row are Christopher’s sister, Princess Marie (who had married Ioannidis a year earlier), with King George II of the Hellenes (another of Christopher’s nephews) and Crown Princess Helen of Romania (another of his nieces).

In 1929, Prince Christopher married for a second time. This time his bride was royal–but from another exiled family. Princess Françoise had been forced with her parents and siblings to leave France when her father became the Orleanist pretender on the death of a cousin in 1926. A decades-old law forbade the heads of former royal dynasties to live in France, so the family settled instead in properties they owned in Belgium and Morocco. This group portrait dates from that era. In the front row are Françoise’s brother, the Count of Paris, with their parents, the Duke and Duchess of Guise. Standing behind them are Count Bruno d’Harcourt (Françoise’s brother-in-law, married to her sister Isabelle), Princess Françoise, and Françoise’s two sisters, Princess Anne and Princess Isabelle.

The marriage of Prince Christopher and Princess Françoise was celebrated in Palermo in 1929. Ten years later, in 1939, their only son, Prince Michael, was born in Rome. By that time, 50-year-old Christopher was already in poor health. He died in Athens in January 1940, just days after Michael’s first birthday. Françoise took her son back to live with her family in Morocco, but her father too passed away just a few months later. Little Michael and his mother spent time living in Africa and Spain during his meandering childhood. After France repealed the law that had banished the former royals, they returned more permanently to Paris, where Michael was educated. Another blow was on the horizon, however: Princess Françoise passed away in 1953, when Michael was just fourteen.

The teenaged prince, still without a firm home, was taken in by his maternal uncle, the Count of Paris, who already had eleven children of his own. In 1960, after he turned 21, Michael decided that it was time to return to his father’s homeland. He moved to Greece, where his first cousin, King Paul, was on the throne, and joined the coast guard. King Paul and Queen Friederike welcomed Michael warmly to Athens, and he became close to their three children, Sofia (later Queen of Spain), Constantine (later King of the Hellenes), and Irene. When King Constantine married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark in 1964, Michael served as one of the crown-bearers during the wedding.

At the time of that royal wedding, Prince Michael was third in line to the Greek throne, after Sofia and Irene. But he was in the middle of a quiet romance with a commoner, the artist Marina Karella, whose father was a prominent Greek businessman. To secure Constantine’s permission for the marriage, Michael had to renounce his succession rights. It ended up being the correct decision. Michael married Marina in 1965, and they welcomed two daughters, Alexandra and Olga, in 1968 and 1971. By then, Constantine and his wife and children had been driven into exile in Italy, and the monarchy was abolished in 1973. Michael, though, was able to divide his time between Paris, New York, and Patmos, content with his own small family and focused on his writing career.

There has been some thawing of the relationship between the former royal family and Greece in recent decades. Royal weddings have been held in Greece, as have royal funerals. Many members of the former royal family have moved back to their former homeland. Michael continued to reside in Greece for the rest of his life, living with Marina in a home on the island of Patmos. While other members of the family were bound by dynastic rules and traditions, his choice to give up his status to marry a commoner had offered him personal freedom. Marina, he would say, was the “key to [his] independence.” Their marriage lasted almost sixty years, until his death in July.

Michael and Marina were also able to watch their daughters marry and begin families of their own. The elder of the pair, Princess Alexandra, married a businessman, Nicolas Mirzayantz, in 1998. They have two grown sons, Tigran and Darius. Michael’s younger daughter, Princess Olga, renewed the family’s links to their royal heritage when she married Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta in 2008. Aimone and Olga are related on multiple branches of their family trees. They’re second cousins through their mutual descent from Prince Jean, Duke of Guise, and second cousins once removed as descendants of King George I of the Hellenes. The Aostas have three children: Umberto, Amedeo, and Isabella.

Along with his family, Michael leaves behind a successful legacy as a writer of more than 25 books. He penned both histories and novels during his lifetime, writing about figures including Alexander the Great, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. He was also the author of books about royal jewelry, including The Crown Jewels of Europe (1983) and Jewels of the Tsars (2006), and a contributor to royal documentaries like A Royal Family. He was extensively interviewed, along with many of his cousins, during the series, and featured particularly prominently in an episode about the Greek royals.