Marie Alexandra Victoria (1875–1938)

Romanian ruler of English origin. She married Ferdinand von Hohenzollern, king of Romania 1914–27, in 1893. Between the death of her husband and the return of her son Carol II, she (with the three regents of the country) ruled Romania as the Dowager-Queen.

She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria by her father, the Duke of Edinburgh, who married the Grand Duchess Marie, only daughter of Tsar Alexander II. She was also an author, the most ambitious of her books being the three-volume The Story of my Life (1934–35). In My Country (1916), and again in The Country that I Love (1925), she described Romania as seen through the eyes of an artist and a poet. Other than Carol II she had five children.