- Season 3 of The Crown introduced us to Prince Phillip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, in episode 4.
- Spoiler: But after we get a glimpse into Alice's intriguing life, we rarely hear more about her until her death is depicted later in the season.
- Below, the real-life details surrounding the last years of Princess Alice of Battenberg, who died at Buckingham Palace at the age of 84 on December 5, 1969.
Netflix introduced us to a host of new royals and actors for season 3 of The Crown. But along with Helena Bonham Carter's tortured Princess Margaret, the firecracker that is Princess Anne (Erin Doherty), and the tortured future king that is Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor), one of season 3's most intriguing characters is only shown briefly.
During episode 4, "Bubbikins," we meet Princess Alice of Battenberg—also known as Princess Andrew of Greece—played by Jane Lapotaire. As Prince Philip's mother and Queen Elizabeth II's mother-in-law, the latter invited the elderly princess to live in London to be closer to the family after she struggled in Greece. But it's soon made clear that the relationship between mother and son isn't the most solid, as Alice was absent for most of Philip's childhood and adult life following her diagnosis with schizophrenia in 1930 and her admission into a sanitarium.
In the fourth episode, Princess Alice unknowingly boosts the family's public perception by opening up about her tumultuous life for a Guardian profile (which didn't happen in real life)—earning sympathy from private citizens who were beginning to lose faith in the necessity of the royals. Despite this, we don't hear much else about her until it's revealed by Philip (Tobias Menzies) in episode 7's "Moondust" that she's died.
So since The Crown didn't go into much detail on that front, we've done a little research ourselves about Prince Alice's death—and the incredible honor she received more than 20 years later.
When did Princess Alice of Battenberg die?
As it's depicted on The Crown season 3, in 1967 Princess Alice left her longtime home in Greece—where she founded an order of nuns called the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary—to live at London's Buckingham Palace at the request of her son and Queen Elizabeth II. The move was due to her old age and declining health (she'd been deaf since childhood) in addition to a military dictatorship that overtook Greece that same year. She died two years later at the age of 84 on December 5, 1969.
Where was the princess buried?
She was initially laid to rest on the grounds of Windsor Castle in 1969, despite it being her dying wish that she be laid to rest in a Jerusalem crypt on the Mount of Olives next to her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who was killed in the Russian Revolution.
However, nearly 20 years after Alice's death, she was finally buried alongside her aunt on August 4, 1988 with a commemoration service held by the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem. According to The New York Times, the delay was due to a religious dispute that arose from the princess identifying as Greek Orthodox, while the grand duchess's grave was located in the Russian Orthodox Church of St Mary Magdalene.
In 1993 she was posthumously given the "Righteous Gentile" award by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum. According to their site, they were specifically recognizing her efforts during World War II to hide a Jewish woman and her children at her home in a German-occupied Athens. Alice's actions stopped the family from being captured by Nazis. Prince Philip, along with his sister, Princess George of Hanover, accepted the award on her behalf in 1994. It was Philip's first time seeing his mother's crypt, as a longstanding political rift between the crown and Israel had prevented him from visiting the country.
"I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special," he said. "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."
Prince William even visited her grave in June 2018 and, according to Sky News, called her story "a matter of great pride for my whole family."
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McKenzie Jean-Philippe is the editorial assistant at OprahMag.com covering pop culture, TV, movies, celebrity, and lifestyle. She loves a great Oprah viral moment and all things Netflix—but come summertime, Big Brother has her heart. On a day off you'll find her curled up with a new juicy romance novel.
