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The Duke of Cambridge will travel to Jordan and Israel as part of the tour which will feature walks in the footsteps of his curious royal relatives.
Princess Alice of Battenberg is the mother of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
She was Queen Victoria’s third child and was born deaf in Windsor Castle.
She married Prince Andrew of Greece, but was exiled after the Greek royal family was overthrown.
In 1930, aged 45, she was locked up in a sanatorium in Switzerland where she was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
She underwent a religious crisis and started an order of nuns against the wishes of her mother.
Queen Victoria, it emerged, even wrote to her second daughter asking: “What can you say of a nun who smokes and plays canasta?”
After King Constantine II of Greece was toppled and military rule was imposed in 1967, the Duke of Edinburgh brought Princess Alice to Buckingham Palace, and she died two years later.
But before her death, the princess requested for her body to be buried at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane, east Jerusalem, so she could be close to her aunt Ella, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who was brutally murdered after the Russian Revolution.
When her family said her preferred burial place was too far, she replied: “Nonsense. There’s a good bus service.”
Her body was placed in the royal vault at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, and only moved to Jerusalem in 1988.
According to Hugo Vicker’s biography of Alice, it was not easy to grant her burial wish.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Jerusalem refused to place Alice’s remains in the Jerusalem church, because her chosen burial location was a Russian church which headed by Archimandrite Anthony Grabbe, a man he claimed he did not have time for.
The archimandrite attempted attempted to get in touch with Prince Philip while he was on tour but was accidentally rebuffed.
In a second attempt, he wrote to Prince Philip, and was met with an apologetic reply.
Prince Philip was unable to attend the reburial, due to conflict between Israel and Palestine during the occupation of the West Bank.
But his grandson Prince William will visit the grave next week during his Middle East tour.
Prior to visiting his royal relative’s tomb, the Duke of Cambridge will be meeting Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for diplomatic talks in the country’s capital.
Just last week Mr Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was indicted for fraud after she allegedly paid for lavish family meals using public money.
Prince William is set to arrive in Amman, the capital of Jordan on 24 June, at the first stop of his Middle Eastern trip.
He will be meeting Jordan’s Crown Prince Al-Hussein Bin Abdullah II, who is expected to greet the Duke at the Marka airport.
William will then be travelling to Jerash city in Jordan the next day, before he sets off for Israel and then Palestine on the 26 and 27 June.
A Kensington Palace statement said: “The non-political nature of His Royal Highness’s role – in common with all Royal visits overseas –allows a spotlight to be brought to bear on the people of the region: their cultures, their young people, their aspirations, and their experiences.
“The Duke’s goal will be to meet as many people from as many walks of life as possible – and to use the spotlight that his visit will bring to celebrate their hopes for the future.”
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