As a child, she shared a bedroom with her elder sisters, Alexandra and Dagmar, and was taught how to sew and knit her own clothes and socks.

Her family had been relatively obscure but happy until her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the great powers to succeed his childless distant cousin, Frederick VII, to the Danish throne.

Earlier the same year, her brother Vilhelm had been elected King of Greece, and her sister Alexandra had married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.

Princess Thyra was confirmed on 27 May 1870 by the Bishop of Zealand, Hans Lassen Martensen in the chapel of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen.

[2] In 1871, at 18 years of age, Thyra had an affair with Vilhelm Frimann Marcher, a lieutenant in the cavalry, which resulted in a pregnancy.

Ernest Augustus was the eldest child and only son of the exiled King George V of Hanover and his wife, Princess Marie of Saxe-Altenburg.

[4] After the wedding, the couple took up residence in Gmunden, Upper Austria, where Thyra lived for the rest of her life at the large Schloss Cumberland.