This is not a biography of Queen Marie of Romania, it would really take a life for such writing, and I'm not even qualified.  Instead, this is a mentioning of some facts about her, simplified at best, most of them rather unusual, that lead to a photograph.

Sometime in 1893, at the young age of 18, Princess Marie of Edinburgh, granddaughter of England's Queen Victoria and of Emperor Alexander II of Russia, tied her fate to that of German Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern and to that of Romania, the country on whose throne Ferdinand ascended in 1914 making Marie, already a mother of six, Queen Marie of Romania.  

Marie had the kind of influence on her weak-willed husband Ferdinand that few, if any Queen-consorts ever had.  Let's say, in modern terms, that, in their family, while King Ferdinand was wearing the crown, Marie was the one wearing the pants.  This led historian A.L. Easterman to later write that "it was not Ferdinand, but Marie who ruled Romania".  Due to her beauty and wit she was such "influencer" that Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia concluded that "by her charm, beauty and ready wit, Marie could obtain anything she desired".  

Marie of Edinburgh – Queen of Romania

That remark was made after Marie came back from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference where, as special envoy of King Ferdinand, she successfully negotiated, obtaining the international recognition of the "Greater Romania" thus doubling the country's territory and increasing its population by 10 million!  She also returned loaded with supplies for Romania's war relief.  Her contribution was well recognized and appreciated by the whole country, so much so that, for her instrumental contribution to this historic achievement - the reunification of all Romanian lands - the city of Braşov, at the southern entrance of Transylvania, gave her, as a personal gift, the Bran Castle, built in the 1300's by the Saxons of Kronstadt (today's Braşov) and most likely the best preserved  medieval castle in Romania.  The castle is now (back) in the possession of Marie's descendants.

The Bran Castle - Bran (German Name: Törzburg) Is a Commune in Braşov County, Romania

She loved the castle, immediately started restoration work on it that lasted seven years, but, albeit impressive and full of history, the Bran Castle wasn't Marie's favorite place.  There was another place that was closest to her heart, a small beach-front "palace" she had built in a place she fell in love with at the first sight, in the town of Balcic (pronounced Bahlchick) on the Black Sea shore, then on Romanian territory, now part of Bulgaria.  The name Balcic comes from a Turkish word meaning clay or argil, the dominant brownish-yellow soil of the hills and ravines surrounding the town, a favorite subject of many Romanian painters and some foreign ones too. 

Two Italian architects worked with Marie to build this place to be exactly how she wanted it, and a full-time Swiss gardener/botanist supervised the planting of the extensive garden (6.5 Ha or 16 Acres) itself a work of art, and so well done that today it was renamed and re-purposed as the University of Sofia Botanical Garden. She loved the place so much that in her will she directed that, while her body was to be interred at the royal cemetery, her heart was to be separated and kept in the small Orthodox chapel, Stella Maris, she had built, in Byzantine style, near her beloved Balcic palace. The Summer before last I finally had the time to trek to Balcic, and the opportunity to see the "palace", actually a slightly larger than usual villa, but one that speaks at length about Marie.  

This was Marie's place.  Her personal space.  King Ferdinand had already passed when she had her Quiet Nest" as she called, built, and none of his successors were ever invited there!  Because she knew the local populace to include many or mostly Moslems, to be "inclusive" she even had a minaret-like structure built attached to the villa.  There are servants quarters and visitors suites nearby, and, in the palace itself, some service and utilities rooms and even a small chapel, but there's only one large livingroom-bedroom in the whole palace, and only one bed, and a single bed at that - Marie's bed.  While the room itself is large, her simple, single bed is set in the corner of a small alcove, two steps higher than the rest of the room, looking more like a nun's cell, complete with a crucifix on the wall.

But on the wall opposite the alcove, dominating the 3-d story room, some 14 meters above the sea level, is the "raison d'être" of the whole thing. A set of three, large, double-hung windows, paned like the windows of a great old sailing ship, opening towards the sea, and nothing but the sea and the sky!  I stood in the middle of the room, camera at eye level, pointing straight towards the window and the sea beyond it, and, because of the long parallax, the sea horizon line was, surprisingly, at eye level too!  In fact, the horizon line was hidden by the window sash, which is also, turns out, at (my) eye level, but that didn't lessen the experience.  And the Black Sea isn't, of course "black" it is an absolutely beautiful blue-green.  Open the photo linked here, splash it on your full screen (press "F11") take a long look, and see what Queen Marie of Romania was seeing through the window of her Quiet Nest!  (to get out of the "full screen" mode, press "F11" again).  I have it  displayed on my 55 inch HDTV - it looks great!

The Black Sea, Seen Through the Queen's Room Windows

And one more thing, for the record.  In 1926 Queen Marie of Romania had the opportunity to journey to, and through parts of the US.  Here's what this woman of extraordinary exception, who knew a good thing when she saw one, wrote in her diary about the US, after arriving back home:

"...both my children and I have but one dream: to return! To return to that stupendous New World, which makes you almost guiddy [sic] because of its immencity, [sic] its noise, its striving, its fearful impetuous [sic] to get on, to do always more, always bigger, quicker, more astonishingly a restless, flaring great world, where I think everything can be realized ... I know, as long as I live, breathe and think, the love for America will beautify my life and thoughts ... Perhaps Fate will allow me one day to go back to America."

Well, unfortunately, Fate didn't.  But at the time of her visit she was already well regarded in the US, such as by the American suffragettes, that were thinking of her as  "a woman whose wits had devised many a coup d'état, whose brains had thought out many a difficult problem for her people, who had used the gifts given her to further every good purpose".