Wife of King Michael mostly avoided spotlight
Anne of Romania, the loyal and modest wife of Romania’s last monarch, King Michael, has died, Romania’s royal house said. She was 92.
Anne died Aug. 1 at a hospital in Morges, Switzerland, surrounded by family including four of her daughters, a statement said.
Michael, 94, who has cancer, visited her every day, the statement said.
Born Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, she met Michael in November 1947 when they had both come for the wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth II and Philip Mountbatten in London.
In a 2013 documentary with Romanian public broadcaster TVR, Anne said she was formally introduced to Michael, who was in uniform, at a reception at Claridge’s Hotel in London and she responded by clicking her heels and standing to attention. She said he proposed to her soon afterward, while driving.
Michael returned to Romania, and was forced to abdicate by the communists on Dec. 30, 1947, and moved into exile. He returned after communism ended and Anne’s first visit to Romania was in Easter 1992.
“Michael lost a country but won an exceptional woman,” commentator Stelian Tanase, an acquaintance of the royal couple, told The Associated Press. President Klaus Iohannis called her one of the “most important symbols of wisdom, dignity and a beacon of moral conduit.”
Anne largely avoided the spotlight but is known for her wit and devotion to Michael.
The couple got married in an Orthodox ceremony in Athens in 1948 after Pope Pius XII refused to give Anne dispensation to marry a non-Catholic. In 1966, they had another ceremony in a Catholic Church in Monaco.
When she was younger, Anne studied painting in New York and later volunteered for the French Army during the Second World War.
She had the most lavish royal funeral in Romania since the death in 1938 of Queen Marie.
Anne is survived by Michael and their five daughters.