After King Paul's death, he declared himself heir presumptive to the Greek throne, on the pretext that female dynasts had been unlawfully granted succession rights in 1952.

His father was the second son of King George I of Greece and his mother the only daughter of the French botanist Prince Roland Bonaparte and Marie-Félix Blanc.

[1] Peter was born in Paris and spent his childhood in France, and did not set foot in Greece between 1912 and 1935 due to the First World War and the later proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic.

[1] As customary, Princess George took no part in her son's upbringing, and when he reached adolescence, only the counsels of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud helped them suppress their incestuous feelings for each other.

He was then third in the line of succession, preceded only by his unmarried cousin Paul and his own father, and thus an important member of the royal family.

[1] Peter attended Lycée Janson de Sailly and received the degree of Doctor of Law from the University of Paris.

He studied anthropology from 1935 until 1936 at the London School of Economics under the Polish-born anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski and the New Zealander ethnologist Sir Raymond Firth.

[1] In 1935, Prince Peter met and started a relationship with Irina Aleksandrovna Ovtchinnikova, a four years older married Russian woman with an ex-husband.

Peter himself did not want to gain a reputation as bad as that of King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, who abdicated the same year to marry his own twice divorced foreign lover, the American Wallis Simpson.

[1] They arrived in what is now Pakistan in early 1938, and Peter conducted research in the regions of Lahore, Kulu, Leh, and Srinagar.

Wishing to avoid the Himalayan winter, they moved to South India and spent time with the Toda people.

Aware of his family's disapproval of the relationship, but also possibly wishing to take advantage of the turmoil created by the recently declared Second World War, the Prince did not bother to inform either the Greek royal court or his parents about the marriage.

Prince George, affronted by his son's decision not to ask him or the King for permission to marry, disowned Peter and henceforward refused contact with him.

King George and Prince Paul therefore moved to London, while the majority of the family found refuge in South Africa.

This shocked the King, who did not hesitate to inform the diplomatic corps that their marriage was not recognised as dynastic and that Ovtchinnikova was not entitled to the princely dignity.

[4] Prince Peter's chief task in the Middle East was to reorganise the remnants of the Greek army and prepare them to participate in the war alongside the Allies.

[6] Prince Peter and Ovtchinnikova left the United States in January 1949, travelling from California to Colombo, the capital of Ceylon.

[6] Peter gathered anthropometric data on 3,284 persons, analysed 198 blood samples, bought clothes, jewellery, books (such as the Tengyur and Kangyur), and various other objects now found at the National Museum of Denmark and the Royal Library.

[6] Having registered their songs, sagas, everyday conversations, oracle prophecies and religious ceremonies, Peter took more than 3,000 photographs of Tibetans.

[6] When he asked them if they had body hair (an important piece of information in anthropology), the relatively hairless Tibetans roared with laughter.

[1] The more Peter studied the Tibetans, the less he hesitated to criticise the Chinese government and occupying army, who, in turn, suspected him to be a Western spy.

The government of India, on the other hand, feared the wrath of its powerful neighbour and thus proceeded to harass the Prince and Ovtchinnikova to push them out of the country.

Princess George also tried to intercede on behalf of her son and daughter-in-law, but failed to meet Nehru during his visit to London in June 1956.

He prepared a thesis on polyandry under the mentorship of the ethnologist Sir Raymond Firth, Malinowski's successor, and received a doctorate of philosophy in 1959.

[9] Shortly after the King's marriage to their cousin, Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, the uninvited Prince Peter called a press conference in Athens and openly questioned the legality of the constitutional amendment.

Above all, he attacked his cousin Paul's widow, the tremendously unpopular Queen Frederika, and accused her of having a bad influence on her son.

[4][9] King Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie's first child, Princess Alexia, was born in 1965 and designated as the new heir presumptive, but Peter refused to recognise that either.

However, the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Third Hellenic Republic in 1974 did not allow Peter to fulfill his dream of ascending the Greek throne.

[4] After the monarchy was abolished, Prince Peter decided to liquidate his possessions in Greece, most notably his residence in Glyfada.

He compromised by agreeing that the tomb inscription would describe her as "Irina, spouse of Prince Peter, née Alexandrovna Ovtchinnikova" rather than as a Greek princess.