In March 1945, the king was forced to accept a communist government headed by Petru Groza while the following year, the rigged general elections confirmed the hegemony of the PCR in the country.

The third child and eldest daughter of Crown Prince Constantine of Greece and Princess Sophia of Prussia,[1] Helen was born on 2 May 1896 in Athens during the reign of her grandfather, King George I.

Every summer, the princess and her family travelled to the Hellenic Mediterranean aboard the royal yacht Amphitrite or visited Sophia's mother, the Dowager Empress Victoria in Germany.

In Greece, public opinion was affected by the rumor, spread by Venizelists, that the king was not sick but that Queen Sophia in fact injured him in the course of an argument where she tried to force him to fight alongside the emperor.

[31][32][33] In exile, Helen's parents were soon followed by almost all members of the royal family, who left their country with the return of Venizelos as Prime Minister and the entry of Greece to the war alongside the Triple Entente.

[38] Homeless, penniless and without any real political value since his exclusion from the Greek throne in 1917, Helen's elder brother reiterated his request of marriage to Princess Elizabeth, who, despite her initial reticence, finally decided to accept.

Shortly after the coronation of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania in Alba Iulia on 15 October 1922, Helen left for Palermo, where she remained until the death of her father, on 11 January 1923.

However, for Carol, this time there was a serious bond, a fact that would soon worry not only Helen (always of a conciliatory and tolerant disposition with her husband's infidelities) but also the rest of the Romanian royal family, which feared that Lupescu could turn into a new Zizi Lambrino.

[84][85] On 4 January 1926, the Romanian Parliament ratified the acceptance of Carol's renunciation and a royal ordinance was issued giving Helen the title princess of Romania;[86] in addition, she was included in the Civil list, a privilege previously reserved to the sovereign and the heir to the throne.

[87] After King Ferdinand I was diagnosed with cancer, a Regency Council was also formed during Michael's minority with Prince Nicholas as the Head, assisted by Patriarch Miron and the magistrate Gheorghe Buzdugan, replaced after his death in 1929 by Constantine Sărățeanu.

[89][90] In June 1926, shortly before the death of her father-in-law, Helen went to Italy to attend the funeral of her paternal grandmother, Dowager Queen Olga of Greece, and moved with her mother to the Villa Bobolina in Fiesole.

Still, his supporters (as Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, leader of the National Peasants' Party) continued to demand his separation from Magda Lupescu and his reconciliation with Helen, which he refused.

[103][104] When he came to power, Carol II initially refused to see Helen though he expressed his desire to meet his son,[105] demoted to the rank of heir-apparent to the throne with the title of Grand Voivod of Alba Iulia by the Romanian Parliament (8 June 1930).

[106][107] In the following weeks, Helen suffered the combined pressures of politicians and the Romanian Orthodox Church, who were trying to persuade her to resume her conjugal life with Carol II and accept to be crowned along with him at a ceremony in Alba Iulia, scheduled on 21 September 1930.

[119][120][121] In this large house, that she renamed Villa Sparta, the princess received the visit of her sisters Irene and Katherine and her brother Paul, who remained with Helen on long stays.

[126] After only a month in the country, Carol II imposed a new separation agreement (1 November 1932), under which Helen was denied the right to return to Romania and the next day, finally forced her into permanent exile in Italy.

Unable to maintain the territorial integrity of his country and under pressure from the Iron Guard, a fascist party supported by Nazi Germany, Carol II became increasingly unpopular and finally was forced to abdicate on 6 September 1940.

[139][141][142] Indeed, in the years that followed, Antonescu systematically excluded the king and his mother from political responsibility[143] and didn't even bother to warn them of his decision to declare war on the Soviet Union in June 1941.

[145] Alerted by the Rabbi Alexandru Șafran about the anti-Jewish persecutions, Helen personally appealed to the German ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger and Antonescu to convince them to halt the deportations, being supported in her efforts by Patriarch Nicodim.

For his part, the king vigorously protested to the Conducător at the time of the Odessa massacre and notably obtained the release of Wilhelm Filderman, president of the Romanian Jewish community.

[148] The queen mother even met Hitler twice: firstly informally, with her sister Irene,[f] to discuss the fate of Greece[g] and Romania within the new Europe (December 1940)[150] and secondly formally with Michael I during a trip in Italy (winter of 1941).

[155] During an official speech on 1 January 1943, the sovereign publicly condemned the participation of Romania in the war against the Soviet Union, triggering the wrath of both Antonescu and the Nazi Germany, who accused Helen of being behind the royal initiative.

[175] With the increased instability in Romania, the queen mother was extremely concerned about the safety of her son, fearing that he could eventually be killed,[176] like Prince-Regent Kiril of Bulgaria, shot by the Communists on 1 February 1945.

[182] With the Soviet occupation, the staff of the Romanian Communist Party, which counted only a few thousand members during the coup of Michael I, exploded and demonstrations against the government of Constantin Sănătescu multiplied.

[183] Faced with the combined pressures of the representative of the Soviet Union, Andrey Vyshinsky, and the People's Democratic Front (offshoot of the Communist Party), the king needed to build a new government and named Nicolae Rădescu as the new Prime Minister (7 December 1944).

[204] As guests to the marriage of Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom with Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (Helen's first cousin) on 20 November 1947,[205] Michael I and his mother were provided with an opportunity to travel together abroad.

[210] Their plan did not work, so Prime Minister Petru Groza and General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej decided to compel the sovereign to abdicate.

After Prince René of Bourbon-Parma, father of the bride, failed in his negotiations with the Vatican, Helen decided to go to Rome with Princess Margaret of Denmark (Anne's mother) to meet Pope Pius XII.

Despite still being deprived of income by the Romanian authorities,[217] the queen mother economically supported her son,[237] and also helped him to find jobs, first as a pilot in Switzerland,[238] then as a broker on Wall Street.

[242] Eleven years after her death, in March 1993, the State of Israel gave Helen the title of Righteous Among the Nations in recognition for her actions during World War II towards Romanian Jews, several thousands of whom she managed to save from 1941 to 1944.