King Michael and Prince Philip as children

Marlene A Eilers Koenig Collection

Looking through several of my photo albums (for another photo) and I found this image.

This photo was taken circa 1927 when Philip and his two eldest sisters, Margarita and Theodora, went to Romania to stay with Queen Helen and young King Michael.

During this visit, Philip and his sisters spent time at the "dilapidated Cotroceni palace" in Bucharest, before "repairing in the heat of high summer" either to Peles Castle in Sinaia, high in the Carpathian Mountains or to "the newly built Mamaia Palace at the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea," according to Philip Eade's excellent biography Prince Philip.  

Michael was not even six years old when he succeeded his grandfather, King Ferdinand, in 1927.   This photo may have been taken at Mamaia in the summer of 1927.  Michael's "new status" as king made no real difference to the children's play, although, according to another of their playmates, their cousin, Princess Alexandra of Greece, the only child of the late King Alexander,  who was Queen Helen's brother, who noticed that "there were always more people about."

In 1927,  Prince Philip started at the Elms, a "progressive American kindergarten," in Paris, where his classmates included his cousins, Prince Jacques and Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma.  Their mother was Princess Margarethe of Denmark.     In June 1948,  Princess Anne married King Michael of Romania.

In December 1936,  Philip spent a part of his Christmas holiday with Michael, who had become the Crown Prince, after his wayward father, Carol, took the throne in 1930, and Helen at her home, Villa Sparta in Florence.

http://royalbooknews.blogspot.com/2017/12/books-about-king-michael.html