Queen and Prince Philip had ‘choreographed routine’ says insider

Prince Philip was only nine when his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was forcibly placed into a sanatorium away from her family in Switzerland. The Duke of Edinburgh later reconnected with Princess Alice of Battenberg and ensured she attended his wedding to the Queen in 1947, and later her coronation in 1953. Historian Anna Whitelock told Channel 5 documentary ‘Prince Philip: The Bachelor Years,’: “Philip’s mother was clearly born into a state of mental decline.”

Princess Alice had been diagnosed with congenital deafness as a child and had been pushed to learn how to lip-read and speak English and German.

Despite the health struggles she faced, the royal struck a successful match with Prince Andrew of Denmark and Greece in 1903 and went on to have five children with him between 1905 and 1921.

But her mental health would come to suffer further once her husband’s family was exiled from Greece in 1922 and she had to flee to Paris to avoid execution.

Only the intervention of Princess Alice’s cousin, King George V, managed to help Prince Philip’s family survive the coup that ultimately overthrew the Greek Royal Family.

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Alice’s struggles however continued as she and husband Andrew were forced to wander across Europe in search of a new home to settle down in after losing everything they had.

Dr Whitelock continued: “From a position of royalty, they are now looking for refuge.”

Commentator Jennie Bond added: “This was quite a nomadic existence for Prince Philip. They settled in the home of one of his aunt and uncles in St Cloud, in Paris.”

But after years of getting by, the pressure of uncertainty resulted in Princess Alice claiming she had received a series of divine messages and had healing abilities.

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Two doctors diagnosed her paranoid schizophrenia and Princess Alice was taken to Switzerland despite the royal insisting she was perfectly sane.

Following treatment with Sigmund Freud, the royal was released from the sanatorium and broke off all contacts with all her family bar her mother, Princess Victoria of Hesse and Rhine.

Alice would only reunite with Prince Philip in 1938 when she attended the funeral of her daughter, Princess Cecilie, and her family after they died in a car crash while travelling to the UK.

The royal spent the war years in Greece, where she founded the nun order of the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.

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Her efforts in rescuing and sheltering Jewish families during the Italian and German invasions had Princess Alice recognised as a “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.

Alice remained in Greece until 1967 when she moved into Buckingham Palace as a result of the Colonels’ Coup in Greece in April that year.

She remained to live with the Queen and Prince Philip until her death two years later when she caused a small rift in the family as she pushed to be buried in Jerusalem next to her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.

India Hicks, Princess Alice’s grand-niece, said earlier this year: “Not long before she died, Princess Alice had given verbal instructions that she wished to be buried near Aunt Ella in Jerusalem.

“When the family protested this was a long way away, and that it would be hard to visit her, she retorted, ‘Nonsense. There is a perfectly good bus service’.”

Because of opposition from the Duke of Edinburgh and his sister, Princess George of Hanover, Princess Alice’s remains were originally placed in the crypt of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.

In 1988, Princess Alice was finally laid to rest at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

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