Life and career
Princess Marie of Edinburgh grew up in a family that linked the British and Russian royal houses. In 1893 she married Ferdinand, heir to the Romanian throne, and moved to a country whose language and court customs she had to learn. When Ferdinand became king in 1914, the outbreak of war had made Romania’s relationship with its European neighbours an immediate personal and political question.
During the First World War Marie visited hospitals and worked for relief as the Romanian court retreated to Iași. In 1919 she travelled to Paris and spoke with political leaders while the peace settlement was being negotiated. Her public visibility gave her an audience beyond Romania. She later put her own account of childhood, marriage and court life into the autobiographical volumes The Story of My Life.
Work and ideas
Marie also wrote fairy tales. The Dreamer of Dreams follows Eric, a painter whose search for the face he needs to complete a picture separates him from the security of a royal court. The author, herself a patron of decorative art, gave the artist’s longing for a particular image the force of an adventure. It is a different voice from the queen addressing statesmen or recording a campaign.
The English-language volume of 1915 credits its author as the Queen of Roumania, using a spelling then familiar to British readers. Edmund Dulac supplied the colour plates. His full-page paintings gave a visible form to the dream landscapes of a book about the difficulty of realising an image in paint. A surviving National Trust copy records these two distinct contributions.
