How Prince Philip’s brave mum Princess Alice was sent off for sick x-ray tests on ovaries to ‘cure sexual frustration’
A SWISS mental asylum is the last place you’d expect to find a member of the royal family, but the incredible – and often tragic - story of Princess Alice is far from one of gilded privilege.
Sectioned over schizophrenia, neutered by Sigmund Freud in twisted experiments and torn away from her family to live in exile as a nun, the mother of Prince Philip endured decades of horrific hardship that could break even the toughest soldier.
Yet as this week marked the 50th anniversary of her death, the brave Princess of Battenberg is also remembered as a hero who defiantly hid a family of Jews from the Nazis during World War Two.
As her story is movingly told in the new series of The Crown, we take a look at one of the royal family’s most remarkable - but forgotten - figures.
Ovaries x-rayed by Freud
Prince Philip had a famously turbulent childhood – forced to flee Greece in 1922 when his father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, feared he would be executed during a military coup.
For Alice, this marked the start of a descent into apparent madness, culminating in shocking forced treatments to cure her supposed ‘sexual frustration’ at the hands of Sigmund Freud.
After the family settled in Paris, she became deeply religious, but soon began to claim she was hearing divine messages from Jesus and Buddha – and had been gifted healing powers from God.
For her worried husband, the turning point soon came in 1930, when Alice - who was born in Windsor Castle - suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In haunting scenes depicted in The Crown’s fourth episode, Bubbikins, the princess was torn away from her five young children – including nine-year-old Philip – and hauled off to a clinic first in Berlin, then Switzerland.
It was here that Freud was brought in to assess her ‘madness’.
Declaring that her religious delusions were a result of 'sexual frustration', he told doctors to blast her ovaries with x-rays – a brutal treatment that is said to have induced early menopause.
The family broke up. My mother was ill. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does
Prince Philip
Broken and betrayed, Alice made several escape attempts, but by the time she was released two years later, she was alienated from her family and her children were scattered across Europe.
“It’s simply what happened,” Philip said later. “The family broke up. My mother was ill, my sisters were married, my father was in the South of France. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.”
Holocaust hero
Far from wallowing in self-pity, Alice’s bravery in the face of trauma has made her a hero to thousands in Israel and the Jewish community.
In particular, one family even owe her their lives.
After six years of wandering off-grid as a nomad across Europe, Alice settled back home in Greece.
The outbreak of World War Two brought her faith back into question as the Nazis slaughtered 80,000 Jews across the country.
When the Cohen family fled to Athens in search of shelter, she felt she had no choice but to hide them away.
“What Princess Alice did, she saved the whole family,” Evy Cohen, granddaughter of one of the women she hid, told the .
“Clearly I wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be born if it hadn’t been for her.”
Alice was further conflicted as she finally began to reconnect with her family.
While Philip had joined the British Royal Navy, two of her daughters had married German soldiers fighting for the SS.
What Princess Alice did, she saved the whole family. Clearly I wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for her
Evy Cohen
When they came to visit her home in Greece, Alice – who was born deaf – pretended to mishear their questions about who was living upstairs, claiming it was a nanny.
"I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special,” Philip said at a memorial following her death.
“She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress."
Sister act
A striking figure among the finery of Buckingham Palace, Alice is immediately recognisable in her humble nun’s robes.
Yet behind the modest façade was a battle-hardened mind who spent much of her adult life in the middle of war zones.
Following the death of her husband in 1944, Alice stayed in Athens as communists fought Britain for control of the city.
Here, she fearlessly sneaked out beyond curfews to feed rations to starving children – and one night was even reportedly struck by a stray bullet.
Her resulting quip was legendary: “They tell me that you don't hear the shot that kills you and in any case I am deaf. So, why worry about that?"
She began wearing her signature nun’s habit – their monasterial robes - when she formed the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary in 1949.
It became the fascination of paparazzi when she attended the Queen’s coronation four years later.
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Her relationship with Philip – who grew up never knowing his mother – had remained distant, but thawed when she was invited to live in the palace in 1967 as Athens became increasingly unstable.
At long last, she had returned to the country where she was born.
Two years later, Alice died – leaving no possessions as she had given them all away to the poor.
“By the end of her life the general public scarcely remembered that she was alive and were largely unaware that she was at Buckingham Palace,” writes biographer High Vickers.
Fifty years later, her astonishing kindness is finally getting the recognition it deserves.