Here’s something I never expected to find in our family’s archives:

A letter from a princess.

The letter is undated, but I’d guess it was written toward the end of the 1980s.

Written on the back of the folded blue stationery, it clearly states: Important. Do not throw away.

I recognize that handwriting. Grandma Cassidy added the note to make sure this treasure wasn’t swept away and lost by someone with too little curiosity.

The letter from the princess was handwritten by Princess Ileana of Romania. It was a thank-you note sent to Grandma’s sibling, Sister Amabilis.

Dear Sister Amabilis,
Thank you in my own name and that of the children for the medals of our Lady. I just love them and we are so happy to have them and their blessing upon us.
Ileana
Princess of Romania Archduchess of Austria

From Grandma’s additional notes, it appears that Princess Ileana and Sister Amabilis became acquainted in the waiting room of a doctor’s office in New York. My great-aunt gave the princess a holy medal and later sent more for the children.

The children? Yes, there’s more to this story.

Princess Ileana was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. She was born in 1909.

Princess Ileana’s teen years into her 20s were like something out of a Netflix limited series. She was very popular, in part due to her work with the Romanian Girl Guide Movement, which she organized and led.

Apparently, her oldest brother, King Carol II, grew jealous of her popularity and wanted her out of the country.

King Carol urged her to marry the Archduke Anton of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, which she did. After the wedding, King Carol double-crossed his sister and announced the Romanian people would never allow the Archduke to live in their country, as he was a descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty.

Nazi Germany annexed her new homeland of Austria in 1938.

Princess Ileana returned to Romania (her husband was under house arrest there) in 1940 and helped nurse the wounded. Eight years later, the Communist Government exiled her family with threat of execution if they remained in Romania. Eventually, she and four of her six children settled in the United States. She remarried after divorcing Archduke Anton. The second marriage didn’t work out either, but a religious calling brought the princess peace, at last.

She became an Eastern Orthodox nun, started her own monastery, and spent her final 22 years of life as Mother Alexandra in Pennsylvania. For many of those years, she was abbess at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration.

If you’re a fan of The Crown on Netflix, you already know that Prince Phillip of England’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, also became a Mother Superior at a convent of her own founding. In all, three of Queen Victoria’s female descendants did this (Princess Elizabeth of Hesse was the third).

Mother Alexandra lived to see the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime in her homeland and made a return visit in 1990. In January of 1991, she passed away exactly a week after the death of her friend Sister Amabilis.

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