Cecilie spent a happy childhood within a united household that was already made up of two daughters, Margarita (1905–1981) and Theodora (1906–1969), and was further expanded with the arrival of Sophie (1914–2001).
1911
Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark (Καικιλία; 22 June 1911 – 16 November 1937) was by birth a Greek and Danish princess who became titular Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine through her marriage to Prince Georg Donatus, pretender to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse.
She was also the third-eldest sister to Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (later Duke of Edinburgh).
The third of five children of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Cecilie spent a happy childhood.
The third daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Cecilie was born at Tatoi Palace, near Athens, on 22 June 1911.
Baptized on 10 July, her godparents were King George V of the United Kingdom, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and Grand Duchess Vera Konstantinovna of Russia.
In 1911 and 1913, Cecilie thus went to the United Kingdom and Germany, where she was introduced to her mother's relatives.
Cecilie's early years were marked by the instability that the Kingdom of Greece experienced at the start of the twentieth century.
1912
In her early years, however, she witnessed the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), followed by the First World War (1914–1918) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922).
Between 1912 and 1913, Greece engaged in the Balkan Wars, during which Prince Andrew served under Crown Prince Constantine while Princess Alice worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers.
They were, however, especially affected by the First World War, which created division between different branches of their family as Greece set aside its neutrality due to the Triple Entente.
1913
The favorite child of her father, she grew up in Athens, Tatoi and Corfu, where her father inherited Mon Repos after King George I's assassination in 1913.
Coming from a cosmopolitan dynasty, Cecilie and her sisters communicated in English with their mother, but they also used French, German, and Greek with their relatives and their governesses.
The girls also traveled abroad with their family at a very young age.
1916
Cecilie and her sisters were in the royal palace of Athens when it was bombarded by the French Navy during the battle in the capital on 1 December 1916.
1917
For the young princess and her relatives, these conflicts had dramatic consequences and led to their exile in Switzerland (between 1917 and 1920), and then in France (from 1922 to 1936).
During their exile, Cecilie and her family depended on the generosity of their foreign relatives, in particular Marie Bonaparte (who offered them accommodation in Saint-Cloud) and Lady Louis Mountbatten (who supported them financially).
In June 1917, King Constantine I was finally deposed and driven out of Greece by the Allies, who replaced him on the throne by his second son, the young Alexander.
Fifteen days later, Cecilie's family was in turn forced into exile in order to remove the possibility of the new monarch being influenced by those close to him.
Forced to reside in German-speaking Switzerland, the small group first stayed in a hotel in St. Moritz, before settling in Lucerne, where they lived with uncertainty about their future.
Exile was not the only source of concern for the family, however.
Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, some of Cecilie's Romanov relatives were murdered in Russia.
1918
Shortly after these events, the Grand Ducal family of Hesse, to which Cecilie was closely related through her mother, was overthrown along with all the other German dynasties during the winter of 1918–1919.
1919
At the beginning of 1919, Cecilie reunited with her paternal grandmother, the Dowager Queen Olga, spared by the Bolsheviks thanks to the diplomatic intervention of the Danes.
In the months that followed, Cecilie attended a family reunion with her maternal grandparents, and met her aunt Louise and uncle Louis Mountbatten.
For Cecilie, who now formed a duo with her younger sister Sophie, exile was not only synonymous with sadness; it was also an opportunity for long family reunions and walks in the mountains.
Already stuck, since 1919, in a new war against Turkey, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos lost the 1920 Greek legislative election.
1920
Finally, the family went through some health problems, with Cecilie contracting the flu and scarlet fever in 1920.
On 2 October 1920, King Alexander, cousin of Cecilie, was bitten by a domestic monkey during a walk in Tatoi.
Poorly cared for, he contracted sepsis, which prevailed on 25 October, without any member of his family being allowed to come to his bedside.
The death of the sovereign caused a violent institutional crisis in Greece.
1929
The year 1929 was a turning point in Cecilie's life.
She formed a relationship with her maternal cousin, Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse.
1931
After marrying Georg Donatus in 1931, Cecilie moved to Darmstadt.
There she gave birth to their three children, Ludwig (1931–1937), Alexander (1933–1937) and Johanna (1936–1939), before becoming pregnant with her fourth child in 1937.
1933
Around the same time, her mother was struck by a mental health crisis which led to her confinement in a Swiss psychiatric hospital until 1933.
1937
Initially distant from the Nazi movement, she joined the Nazi Party at the same time as her husband in May 1937.
Soon after, the princess and her family embarked on a trip to the United Kingdom, where they were to attend the wedding of her brother-in-law Louis, Prince of Hesse and by Rhine to Margaret Campbell Geddes.
However, the aircraft in which they were travelling crashed in flames near Ostend, instantly killing all the passengers.
Repatriated to Darmstadt, their remains were buried in the Grand Ducal mausoleum of Rosenhöhe on 23 November 1937.
