On October 25, 1920, Greece’s King Alexander dies from wounds he received after a monkey attacked him earlier in the month. He was 27 years old.
The incident leading to King Alexander’s death occurred while he was walking on the grounds of the castle outside of Athens. A Barbary macaque that belonged to a resident of the palace attacked his dog. When the king stepped in to separate the animals, he suffered several monkey bites that would soon get infected and turn septic. Some three weeks later, the king was dead, having served only a brief few years on the throne.
King Alexander was born in 1893 to Greece’s King Constantine I and Queen Sophia, the sister of the last German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1917, Prince Alexander became king after his father had been pushed to abdicate. With World War I nearing its end, the Allied forces of Great Britain, France and Russia demanded Constantine, a German sympathizer, step down or his family would lose the right to the throne. Greece’s powerful prime minister, Eleuthérios Venizélos, who sided with the Allies, organized an armed insurrection to force the matter.
As the second son to the exiled king, Alexander was not the heir apparent to the throne. But the Allied forces believed he was less sympathetic to the Germans than his older brother, Prince George, Duke of Sparta. Once installed as king, the young and inexperienced Alexander followed the lead of Venizélos, soon declaring war against Germany and the other Central Powers. After the war, Venizélos cannily negotiated for Greece to gain territory.
Trouble brewed for King Alexander when he sought to marry Aspasia Manos, the daughter of a Greek colonel. News of the unconventional pairing of a royal to someone of a lower social rank met with disapproval among Greek society and Alexander’s family. The Archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church refused to give his consent to the marriage and therefore their union was not civilly binding. Plagued by gossip about her standing with Alexander, Manos fled to Paris and the couple temporarily lived there in exile. Alexander returned to Greece several months later, but he passed away before the couple’s marriage could be officially recognized. Their only daughter, Alexandra, was born several months after his passing.