Revealed: The bizarre way King Charles’ grandmother found out about his birth from a remote Greek island

King Charles’ grandmother was living on a remote Greek island when the future monarch was born and found out about his birth through a telegram, a royal biographer has revealed.

Princess Alice, the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, was reportedly thrilled when she finally received the news of her grandson’s birth.

As a member of the Greek Royal Family, Alice had spent the whole of Second World War in Athens but by 1948 she was living on Tinos – a tiny island in the Aegean sea where she had no access to a telephone.

According to Ingrid Seward, a royal biographer, she wrote back to Prince Philip immediately after she received the news of the royal birth.

In the telegram, she wrote: ‘I think of you so much with a sweet baby of your own, of your joy and the interest you will take in all his little doings.

‘How fascinating nature is, but how one has to pay for it in the anxious trying hours of confinement.’

Alice would remain in Greece for a further 20 years before she returned to the UK in 1967.

The princess’s life is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Royal Family. 

Prince Philip’s mother Princess Alice was reportedly thrilled when she finally received the news of her grandson’s birth

A future King Charles III when he was a baby. According to Ingrid Seward, a royal biographer, she wrote back to Prince Philip immediately after she received the news of the royal birth

The late Queen Elizabeth II with a baby King Charles in 1948

Princess Alice of Battenberg was born Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Mary on February 25, 1885, at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

She was born congenitally deaf but could speak clearly and lip read in several languages. 

While at the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, she met and fell in love with Prince Andrew, a younger son of the King of Greece – a year later the couple were wed.

Alice married into the Greek Royal Family at a tumultuous time with the family exiled from the country in 1921, the same year Prince Philip was born.

By 1930 she was hearing voices and believed she was having intimate relationships with Jesus and other religious figures. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic before being treated by Sigmund Freud at a clinic in Berlin.

When Charles’ grandmother was released from the the sanatorium in 1932, she drifted between modest German B&Bs before she eventually returned to Athens following the restoration of the Greek monarchy. 

Alice then found herself stranded in Nazi-occupied Greece throughout the Second World War. 

Due to her links to Germany, with her cousin serving as German ambassador to Greece until the start of the occupation, the Nazi soldiers wrongly assumed Alice was sympathetic to their cause.

Princess Alice with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957. The princess’s life is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Royal Family

Princess Alice with her husband Prince Andrew of Greece

Instead when a general asked Alice if there was anything he could do for her, she  bravely responded: ‘You can take your troops out of my country.’

During the war, she was instrumental in aiding the escape from Greece of several Jews. Alice even hid a Jewish family, the Cohen’s, on the top floor of her home, just yards away from Gestapo headquarters.

When the Gestapo became suspicious and questioned the Princess, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer their questions and prevented them from entering her property.

Following the war, diamonds were used from Alice’s tiara so Philip could present a ring to Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen.

Alice sold the rest of her jewels to create her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, in 1949, becoming a nun.

She went on to build a convent and orphanage in a poor suburb of Athens.

The royal remained in Greece until 1967, when there was a Greek military coup. Alice refused to leave the country until Prince Philip sent a plane and a special request from the Queen to bring her home.

She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law before she died in December 1969, aged 84.

Princess Alice with a young King Charles and Princes Anne. She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law before she died in December 1969, aged 84

Princess Alice remained in Greece until 1967, when there was a Greek military coup

Shortly before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking letter to her only son, that read: ‘Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you’

The last few months of her life were fictionalised in the third season of Netflix’s The Crown, played by Jane Lapotaire. The series incorrectly suggested she gave a tell-all interview with the Guardian, covering topics about her mental health condition. 

Shortly before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking letter to her only son, that read: ‘Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.’

In 1994, 25 years after Alice’s death, her son attended a ceremony in Jerusalem to honour his mother, who is buried in a crypt at Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives.

In honour of her courage during the war, when she saved her friends, the Cohen family, from certain death, she was given the title of Righteous Among The Nations.

Prince Philip said: ‘I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress.’

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