The young and first King of Greece of the new Danish dynasty set 
          out to Russia to find himself a bride, one acceptable to Russia. He 
          chose the sixteen-year-old Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna and they 
          were married in the Winter Palace in St.Petersburg, 15 October 1867. 
          Soon afterwards they left for Greece accompanied by a trunk full of 
          dolls. This child-bride became one of Greece's best loved Queens, even 
          though for her life-time she still longed for Russia and her family. 
          The ballroom of the Palace in Athens was used by their growing number 
          of children to practise roller-skating and bicycling. After a long and 
          happy family life, she found herself a widow in 1913 after the 
          assassination of her husband. 
             Shortly before the Russian Revolution in 1917, Olga was asked to     
          open a military hospital, once a palace near Tsarskoe Selo. She 
          thought herself safe in her own country but, when the danger to 
          royalty became obvious, it was only through the intervention of the 
          Danish embassy in St.Petersburg that she was able to return to her 
          family, then living in exile in Switzerland. She had by now suffered a 
          great deal from anxiety over events in Greece and, half starved as 
          well, it took a long time before she regained her health. 
             In 1913 their son, Constantine I, became the next king; however, 
          political disagreement with the Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, 
          forced him to abdicate in favour of his own second son, the 
          23-year-old Alexander. But death soon came to Alexander when he tried 
          to protect the pet monkey of one of the gardeners at Tatoi which had 
          attacked his Alsatian dog. The monkey's bite caused blood-poisoning 
          from which he died in great agony, 25 October 1920. Alexander's 
          mother, Queen Sophie, begged to be allowed to come to Greece to be 
          with her son when it became obvious that he was dying, but Venizelos, 
          fearing the popularity of the exiled monarchs, would allow only the 
          grandmother, Olga, to come. However, she arrived twelve hours after 
          Alexander had died. 
             Alexander's grandmother, the Dowager-Queen Olga, became Regent of 
          Greece from October till December 1920, from when the previous      
          elections had forced Venizelos to leave the country and until Olga's 
          son, Constantine, returned once more as king of Greece. 
             In exile once more in Rome in a wing of the villa of her son 
          Christoph, Olga died, 18 June 1926. After a funeral service, her 
          coffin was placed in the crypt of the Russian Church in Florence next 
          to that of her eldest son, King Constantine I, who had died in exile 
          in 1923. When the monarchy was once more restored in Greece, Olga, 
          Constantine and his wife Sophie, were granted a State funeral in 
          Athens, after which they were interred privately at Tatoi. 
 

Source: Leo van de Pas