Editing Alexander of Greece (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Laszlo - Queen Olga of Greece.jpg|thumb|Alexander's paternal grandmother, [[Olga Constantinovna of Russia|Queen Olga of Greece]], by [[Philip Alexius de László]], 1914. She acted as regent between his death and the restoration of his father.]]
Alexander's death raised questions about the succession to the throne as well as the nature of the Greek regime. As the king had contracted an unequal marriage,{{efn|name=marriage|Here "unequal marriage" refers to the union between a person of royal rank with an individual of a "lower" social status. This is similar to the [[morganatic marriage]]s of other European countries, though this concept did not exist in Greece.<ref>Van der Kiste, p. 120.</ref>}} his descendants were not in the line of succession.{{efn|name=succession|The restored King Constantine did not recognize Alexander's only child, [[Alexandra of Yugoslavia|Alexandra]], as a member of the House of Greece until July 1922. However, as the Greek succession was governed by [[Salic law]] until the beginning of the reign of [[Constantine II of Greece|Constantine II]], she would not have been eligible as a female anyway.<ref>Sáinz de Medrano, pp. 180, 238, 402.</ref>}} The [[Hellenic Parliament]] demanded that Constantine I and Crown Prince George be excluded from the succession but sought to preserve the monarchy by selecting another member of the royal house as the new sovereign. On 29 October 1920, the Greek minister in Berne, acting under the direction of the Greek authorities, offered the throne to Alexander's younger brother, Prince Paul.<ref>Van der Kiste, pp. 125–126.</ref> Paul, however, refused to become king while his father and elder brother were alive, insisting that neither of them had renounced their rights to the throne and that he therefore could never legitimately wear the crown.<ref>Llewellyn Smith, p. 139; Van der Kiste, p. 126.</ref>

The throne remained vacant and the [[1920 Greek legislative election|legislative elections of 1920]] turned into an open conflict between the Venizelists, who favored republicanism, and the supporters of the ex-King Constantine.<ref>Llewellyn Smith, pp. 144–148; Van der Kiste, p. 126.</ref> On 14 November 1920, with the war with Turkey dragging on, the monarchists won, and [[Dimitrios Rallis]] became prime minister; Venizelos (who lost his own parliamentary seat) chose to leave Greece in self-exile. Rallis asked Queen Olga to become regent until Constantine's return.<ref>Van der Kiste, p. 126.</ref>

Under the restored King Constantine I, whose return was endorsed overwhelmingly in a [[1920 Greek referendum|referendum]], Greece went on to lose the Greco–Turkish War with heavy military and civilian casualties. The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander's reign was lost. Alexander's death in the midst of an election campaign helped destabilize the Venizelos regime, and the resultant loss of Allied support contributed to the failure of Greece's territorial ambitions.<ref>Fry, Goldstein and Langhorne, p. 201; Goldstein, p. 49.</ref> [[Winston Churchill]] wrote, "it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."<ref>Churchill, p. 409, quoted (for example) in Pentzopoulos, p. 39.</ref>

===Issue===
Alexander's daughter by Aspasia Manos, [[Alexandra of Yugoslavia|Alexandra]] (1921–1993), was born five months after his death. Initially, the government took the line that since Alexander had married Aspasia without the permission of his father or the church, his marriage was illegal and his posthumous daughter was illegitimate. However, in July 1922, Parliament passed a law which allowed the King to recognize royal marriages retroactively on a non-dynastic basis.<ref>[[Ghislain de Diesbach|Diesbach]], p. 225.</ref> That September,<ref name="Montgomery-Massingberd, p. 327"/> Constantine—at Sophia's insistence—recognized his son's marriage to Aspasia and granted her the style of "Princess Alexander".<ref>Van der Kiste, p. 132.</ref> Her daughter (Constantine I's granddaughter) was legitimized as a princess of Greece and Denmark, and later married King [[Peter II of Yugoslavia]] in London in 1944. They had one child: [[Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia]].<ref>Montgomery-Massingberd, pp. 327, 536, 544.</ref>