A gem of a memoir, with so much left unsaid

Ileana’s mother Queen Marie of Romania, taken in 1908 when she would have been in her early thirties.

I LIVE AGAIN is the memoir of Princess Ileana of Romania (1909-1991), daughter of Marie of Edinburgh (1875-1938) who was Queen of Romania due to her marriage to Ferdinand I of Romania.

In 1931, Ileana married Archduke Anton of Austria (1901-1987), becoming an Austrian Archduchess.

The bulk of I LIVE AGAIN deals with Ileana’s war work as a nurse at various hospitals in Vienna, Brasov and Bran, the village where Dracula’s castle is located. (Ileana inherited Bran Castle when her mother died in 1938.) It is a fascinating and grimly realistic account of working with people who had unspeakable injuries, during a time of great hardship when medical supplies and food became scarcer and scarcer. To make matters worse, the Soviet Union tightened its grip on Romania, finally taking over in December 1947. As a result of the forced abdication of King Michael of Romania (1921-2017) the entire Royal Family had to leave Romania. And so Ileana and her family fled to Switzerland, then Argentina, before finally making a life in the United States. (I LIVE AGAIN is written in Newton Massachusetts and was published in 1951.)

Princess Ileana as a young woman

Yet so much is left unsaid. We know little of her husband Archduke Anton. She doesn’t describe how they met, what she thought of him, why they decided to marry or their early married life in Austria, when they had six children in eleven years.

We know hardly anything about other family members. She doesn’t talk much about sisters Elisabeth or Marie or brother Nicholas. Eldest brother Carol (1893-1953) who ruled as King of Romania from the death of his father in 1930 to his forced abdication in 1940 doesn’t exist as far as these pages are concerned. Perhaps because he was a poisonous character who hated his youngest sister? According to Wikipedia, he was responsible for her marriage to Archduke Anton, because he wanted to get her out of the country as she was so popular with the Romanian people. Once married, she and her husband were refused permission to even visit Romania.

Prince Barbu Stirbey (1872-1946), Ileana’s father. He was a Romanian nobleman, from a long line of boyars in Wallachia.

So why would Carol II of Romania hate his youngest sister? Perhaps because she was her mother’s favorite child? (Mother and daughter seem to have been unusually close, at least according to these memoirs, with none of the misunderstandings, hurtful comments and hurt feelings that characterize typical mother-daughter relationships.) Or could it be that Ileana was illegitimate? Could it be that she was not actually the daughter of Ferdinand I of Romania, but of Prince Barbu Stirbey (1872-1946)? Certainly most believe that younger brother Mircea (1912-1916) was Stirbey’s son, so it is quite possible that Ileana was Stirbey’s daughter. 

If so, was this widely known? And if widely known, how come she was married off to an Austrian Archduke? Wouldn’t he have balked at having an illegitimate wife? Wouldn’t he have worried that his gloriously beautiful wife might behave exactly like her mother and have illegitimate children of her own?

But this memoir is silent about such matters. Nevertheless, this volume is well-worth reading. Five Stars. 

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