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It has been close to 90 years since the late Duke of Edinburgh’s beloved sister, Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark, was killed while eight months pregnant in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of six others. The accident in November 1937 marked a tragic end to the life of Prince Philip’s ‘favourite sister’, affectionately known as ‘Cecile’, whose demise was portrayed in traumatic scenes in Season 2. Born in June 1911, Cecilie was the third of Princess Alice of Battenberg and Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark’s five children.

She had a happy childhood but also witnessed the Balkan Wars and the First World War, which had dramatic consequences and led to her family’s exile in Switzerland, and then in France. In 1931, she married Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse, her first cousin once removed. Initially distant from the Nazi movement, she joined the Nazi Party at the same time as her husband in May 1937.



She welcomed three children, Prince Ludwig, Prince Alexander and Princess Johanna. In November 1937, Cecile and her family embarked on a trip to the UK, where they were to attend the wedding of her brother-in-law Louis, Prince of Hesse to Margaret Campbell Geddes. However, the aircraft in which they were travelling crashed after hitting a factory chimney fog near Ostend.

Also killed were her mother-in-law, her husband, their sons aged six and four, a lady-in-waiting and the best man. Firemen found the remains of an infant, prematurely de.

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