 Princess Ileana of Romania (The Child With the Blue Eyes) February 2025
Princess Ileana, born "Her Royal Highness Princess Ileana of Romania"
was the youngest daughter of Queen Marie of Romania and King
Ferdinand I of Romania (at least that's what is inscribed on her 1909
birth certificate). That made her the great-granddaughter of
Queen Victoria. The name Ileana is the Romanian variation of Elena, and,
in the Romanian folk lore, "Ileana Cosânzeana" is the personification
of beauty. And Ileana of Romania lived up to both these
"predicaments" and then some. She was born a natural giver,
always inclined to help others, and with an innate wisdom beyond her
age. Like her mother, she loved the Sea, and if her mother, Queen
Marie, was at her best on a horse, Ileana was at her best at the wheel
of a sea-faring vessel. She owned and sailed her own yacht, the "ISPRAVA"
(that's "THE FEAT" in Romanian) and loved to happily bounce on the
waves off the coast of the Black Sea, in view of her mother who spent a
lot of time at her Balcic Palace, actually a large beach-front villa and garden on
the now Bulgarian coast. Her great love of the sea and
sailing made her acquire the full knowledge for, and to obtain, the
navigator's papers, a Captain's License for sea-faring vessels, the
only woman of her time to accomplish this - she could have sailed a
transatlantic if she wanted to, though she never did. Princess Ileana was Vice
Admiral of the Romanian Naval Forces.
 Princess Ileana of Romania At 22 she married an Austrian Archduke, moved to Vienna, and they had six children. During the second world war, she opened a hospital for wounded Romanian soldiers, on the premises of her family's Austrian castle. Later, they moved to Romania where they lived at the Bran Castle (German: Törzburg) a personal property of Queen Marie (not part of the Crown's estates) until the communist takeover of the country. In exile, Switzerland and Argentina followed, then the United States, where she bough a house in Newton, Massachusetts. For ten years there she worked with the Romanian Orthodox Church of America, wrote two books, and lectured against communism. She divorced the archduke in 1954, a second marriage ended also in divorce. In 1961, in France, she joined an Orthodox monastery. On her tonsuring as a monastic, Ileana was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the US where she founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration, in Elwood City, PA, the first English language Orthodox monastery in North America. She served there as abbess until 1981, and remained at the monastery until her death in 1991. Perhaps nobody wrote better about Ileana than her mother, Queen Marie, who knew her best, and with whom Ileana had an especially loving connection. I will include below a few excerpts from Marie's 1931 piece titled "The Child With the Blue Eyes" written on the occasion of Ileana's marriage and departure. Marie could write! (she could also paint, and decorate!) This piece she wrote, however, not as a writer, but as a mother. If you're interested to read the whole piece, I will add a link at the end of the excerpts, "The Child with the Blue Eyes" is at the bottom of that linked page. THE CHILD WITH THE BLUE EYES
by Marie, Queen of Romania (Excerpts) "Many kind words have been written about my child with the blue eyes. Everybody loved her, and yet today, moved by my great "dor" (longing NR) I want to speak about her as alone a mother can speak, the one who knew her best; who knew her quite small and helpless, the one who heard her first cry and was the first to see how large and how blue were the eyes she opened to the world." "The other four who had come earlier and received names according to royal exigencies, homage paid to family traditions, but this time I claimed my right to call her as I wished—a recompense for having been obedient so long. I was no longer the child of seventeen who had come from a far land, and who had eternally to listen and to submit, but I was a woman who had known joy and pain and also the weight of royal patience, and who today at least claimed one privilege, the right to give the right name to those blue eyes..." "Often when she sat silent beside me, those great blue eyes wide open, I would lay my hand on hers: Ileana, I know what you are thinking about, and I would tell her her thoughts and Ileana was not astonished that I knew her thoughts." "She believed in God, honored her elders, and politeness was a law of her being, nor did she ever allow her own desires to make her selfish or unfeeling. "Noblesse oblige" was her motto, as it had also been ours." "Often at Balcic, sitting on my balcony which overhangs the sea, I would watch my child cutting through the waves on her brave little boat "Isprava", her sails spread to the wind like the wings of a great bird and at times a pain would suddenly shoot through my heart at the thought of what it would mean to me if, instead of returning at sunset, those large wings were to carry her away out of my life, Ileana, my child, my companion, my love." To read the entire piece by Marie of Romania, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page that opens.
In 1961 the Romanian Episcopate in America published an illustrated book titled "ROMANIA, THE LAND - THE HISTORY - THE PEOPLE" dedicated to and intended for American Romanian Orthodox Youth whose interest in the country of their forefathers inspired its writing and illustrations. For this book, Princess Ileana wrote a beautiful foreword. You can read it below, sorry for the low grade image, its an old book, a link at the end will enable you to enlarge the photo for easier reading.  Foreword to the book ROMANIA by Bishop
Valerian D. Trifa
(For a larger photo click here, then click on the image that appears to toggle between sizes, use the back-arrow to return here) |