Freud’s Experiments, Exile Life: The Story of Elizabeth II’s Mother-in-Law, Deemed Mad
Dancing in Silence
You might think you know the British royal family well, but have you heard of Princess Alice? She was Philip’s mother, Elizabeth II’s mother-in-law, Anne’s beloved grandmother, and William’s admired figure. The few notes about her online are filled with sensational headlines like “The Queen’s Mad Relative” and “The First Sexually Obsessed in Buckingham Palace.” Yes, she wasn’t a saint, although The Guardian’s journalists called her that. In 1967, she gave them an interview that began with: “I was born in Windsor Castle. Queen Victoria was present at my birth. But everyone thought I was mentally disabled and sent me to an asylum. A psychiatric one. Sigmund Freud himself treated me there. He was not a kind man.” Imagine the sensation that echoed from the front page of the most important newspaper of the time! Indeed, this fantastic woman spiced up the lives of the boring residents of Buckingham and did so until her last breath on December 5, 1969—literally, as she smoked heavily until the end.
Dancing in Silence
Alice Battenberg was born on February 25, 1885. As we know, Queen Victoria, her great-grandmother, was present at her birth. The 66-year-old ruler adored her tiny great-granddaughter and was one of the first to notice her “strangeness.” The girl responded poorly to the words of those around her and spoke late and so indistinctly that she was immediately sent to the court doctor. The diagnosis was disappointing—hard of hearing, almost deaf.
They didn’t mourn but took action. Thanks to the persistence of her relatives, Alice learned to read lips and speak quite clearly in German, English, French, and later Greek. It’s a shame that Russian wasn’t on that list, as in her childhood, the princess often visited Russia to see her beloved relatives—the famous Romanov family. She had particularly close relationships with her aunts Ella (Elizabeth Feodorovna, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich) and Alix (Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Emperor Nicholas II).
“Beloved Babikins”
She actively entered society—suitors were plentiful. In 1902, she was invited to the coronation of Edward VII (Elizabeth II’s great-grandfather), where she met Greek Prince Andrew. He was one of the most eligible bachelors at the event—a tall, handsome man with light hair and gray-green eyes.
Our heroine was his match—also of blue blood, beautiful, cheerful, polite, and loved to dance (though she was hard of hearing). It was love at first sight. They didn’t delay the wedding and married on October 6, 1903. She was 18, he was 21.
Ordinary Family Life
An ordinary family life began—boring as much as it could be in a monarch’s family. Breakfasts at the common table, walks in the park, lunches on schedule, evening balls, and scandals behind closed doors. Prince Andrew, though he loved his young wife, didn’t miss any skirts. He wasn’t deterred even by the presence of children, of which the couple had five—daughters Margarita, Theodora, Cecilia, Sophia, and son Philip. The only boy—”beloved Babikins.”
Black Streak
Not long before the birth of Elizabeth II’s future husband, a black streak began in the family’s life. In 1918, Alice’s brother-in-law, Greek King Constantine I, was forced to abdicate, and the couple emigrated to Switzerland. There, Alice learned the terrible news of the deaths of her two beloved aunts in Russia: Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna in the suburbs of the Urals city of Alapaevsk and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna—in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. Misfortune never comes alone. Money problems began, there was nowhere to live and no means to do so, they had to leave the country. And then there was her husband, who, instead of hugging his wife, preferred the company of other ladies. He was arrested: blamed for Greece’s territorial losses in the Greco-Turkish War.
Andrew was a hair’s breadth from execution. He had to flee—flee without looking back.
A secret agent helped, buying the prince’s family tickets on a military ship bound for Great Britain. No first class and crystal at the dining table—the future husband of the British queen spent the entire journey in an orange box…
In England
They didn’t stay in England: the residents of the provincial Dover, where the family settled, somehow took a dislike to the uninvited guests. They had to pack their suitcases again and set off. This time, they headed to France, where Marie Bonaparte awaited them.
“Uterine Madness”
This madam deserved a separate article (and we will definitely write it)—she was an unusual person. Take, for example, the fact that in search of “sacred ecstasy,” she slept with… her own son.
The frigid relative of Napoleon Bonaparte (that’s how the press wrote about her) sheltered her husband’s brother’s family, allocating them a guest house on the territory of her mansion. She didn’t introduce them to society but invited them to the main living room in the evenings, where her friends gathered. One of them was the great and terrible Sigmund Freud.
Together with Marie, he was engaged in researching the problem of female sexuality and sexual satisfaction. For her, this issue became a lifelong matter—she experienced her first orgasm only at the age of 48.
Bonaparte and Freud saw sexual dissatisfaction in everything, and therefore immediately decided that it was this ailment that Princess Alice suffered from. The woman was too nervous, often subject to fits of hysteria, and generally behaved inadequately. Well, after everything she had to endure.
Sigmund Freud Prince Andrew, who had long since stopped showing any interest in his wife, agreed with the professor: yes, Alice was ill and should be immediately hospitalized.
For him, this was a great chance to get rid of his annoying wife and dive headfirst into amorous affairs.
Action had to be taken immediately. The arriving orderlies took the maddened Alice to one of the psychiatric clinics under Switzerland. There she was in a special position—in a particularly harsh one: “treated” with electroshock, irradiated her ovaries with X-rays, and kept her in ice-cold water for hours. All to induce menopause and reduce libido. Sigmund Freud, who took the blue-blooded patient under his personal control, wrote in her medical history in his narrow and angular handwriting, “Uterine Madness.”
“He was cruel, very cruel,” Alice later recalled. She tried to escape several times, but the doctors managed to keep her in “prison” for two and a half years. Her fellow prisoner was the famous Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.
Meeting of the Century
The family fell apart. Her husband (by then already former) went to Monte Carlo, where he went on a spree. The daughters married German aristocrats one after another, and Philip was sent to relatives in England.
It was there, in 1934, that he first saw Lilibet, the future Queen Elizabeth II. She was eight, he was thirteen.
Three years later, their second meeting took place. Two years later, butterflies would flutter in the stomach of the future ruler when she, along with her parents and sister Margaret, arrived on a visit to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. The 18-year-old cadet Philip Mountbatten would accompany them during the tour of the building and conquer the 13-year-old Elizabeth with his blue eyes, tall stature, and extraordinary sense of humor. So, the fourth cousins fell in love with each other to become husband and wife eight years later.
By that time, the mother of the future Duke of Edinburgh had managed to escape…
