Maria of Edinburgh – Saxa – Coburg – Gotha, was born on October 29, 1875, at Eastwel Park, in the county of Kent – Great Britain, daughter of Duke Alfred of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Grand Duchess Maria, only daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and Princess Maria of Hessen.

Princess Maria’s upbringing is truly royal. An eyewitness to her adolescence, quoted by Nicolae Iorga, characterized her as “believing in kings and their missions, but also in their rights. She was not haughty, nor humble, but regal from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet, imperious, fiery, active, a girl full of the joy of life and faith in her race’.

Married to Crown Prince Ferdinand in December 1891, Maria had to fight a permanent battle with King Carol, who isolated her completely at Peles and forbade her any contact with Romanian political or cultural figures. “Throughout my youth, the word ‘minister’ was synonymous with ‘head of mischief’,” Regina later wrote. But in just a few years, after giving birth to Charles (1893), Elisabeth (1894) and Maria (1899), Princess Maria would be one of the most splendid women in Europe. Maria’s last child, Prince Mircea, born in 1913, tragically died of typhoid fever at the age of three during the First World War. His tomb is at Bran Castle in Sinaia, Romania. Intelligent and full of vitality, Maria also embodied the romantic ideal of any man of the time, being healthy, noble in her attitudes and very much a woman. In her years of isolation she suffered terribly from the belief that she had been lured into a ‘trap’, that she had been given the ‘mission’ to produce an heir to the throne of Charles I, that she would destroy her youth and beauty in a cold castle, spied on by maids and governesses.

In October 1917, on the Moldavian front, Regina, wearing the uniform of an officer, fell in the Cireșoaia front sector in front of the 443rd quota, on the front line, in the first trench, 200 meters from the enemy. She was the most determined voice for resistance and the offensive on the Moldovan front and, if we study her memoirs carefully, the personality who ultimately decided Romania’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente.

In the biography of this prominent woman there is also a gesture that completes her unique personality: on March 26, 1926, on Annunciation Day, Queen Marie converted to Orthodoxy. In a ceremony held at the Palace, she confessed her confession, was disbaptized by Patriarch Miron Cristea and was received into the Romanian Orthodox Church.

A lover of beauty, Maria had another way of expressing herself – the artistic. Her literary works include stories, evocations, novels, memoirs, including: “My Country”, “The Dreamer of Dreams”, “A Legend from Mount Athos”, “The Story of a Disobedient Lady”, “Thoughts and Icons from the Time of War”, “Unbidden Longing”, “The Story of a Heart”, “Crowned Queens”, “Fantastic Birds in the Blue Sky”, “The Voice from the Mountain”, “Masks”, “The Story of My Life”. The literary works were written in English and translated into Romanian, some of the translations belonging to Nicolae Iorga.

Elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, acclaimed from the very first words as one of the great personalities of her age, the Queen won over a world whose reserve capitulates so easily both to situations and to talent. On every occasion she made a point of affirming that Romania, without pretending, does not beg. It only demands what it deserves. “We are not”, she said, “the poor relation”.

In recognition of her outstanding merits in the making of Greater Romania, on December 1, 1920, the Branului Town Council decided: “to present Her Majesty Queen Marie of Greater Romania with the ancient castle of Branului. The donation should be, above all, an expression of the sincere veneration that the people of our town feel for the great Queen who dries the tears of widows and orphans, comforts the helpless, offers help and comfort to those who are in pain and spreads blessings wherever she goes, and through all this she conquers the hearts of the people of the whole country with irresistible enthusiasm”.

The Queen’s health began to deteriorate and in 1938 she went to a clinic in Dresden for treatment. When the doctors told her that the end was near, she decided to return to her homeland and, on July 18, 1938, she passed into eternity in the Golden Chamber of Pelieresor Castle, decorated by herself with the symbols she loved: symbols of faith, light and eternal life. In her moral testament – “Letter to my Country and my People” – Queen Marie bade a touching farewell to the people with whom she identified: “From now on I will not be able to send you any more messages; but above all, remember my People that I have loved you and that I bless you with my last breath”.

In his will, he requested that his body be buried in the Episcopal church of Curtea de Argeș and his heart to be kept in a reliquary in the Stella Maris chapel of the residence in Balcic. After the cession of Cadrilater in 1940, the Queen’s heart was moved to Bran.

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On March 27, 2025? on the 107th anniversary of the Unification of Bessarabia with Romania, the monument dedicated to the famous Queen was unveiled in the square of the Gheorghe Asachi High School in Chisinau.

The initiative to erect the statue belongs to lawyer Iulian Rusanovschi and was launched on March 27, 2018, at the celebration of the Centennial of the Great Union.

The monument, more than six meters high, depicts Queen Mary of Romania on the day of her coronation in Alba Iulia, holding the Christian Bible in her left hand.

The sculptor Veaceslav Jiglițchi sculpted the bronze face of Queen Maria and an international commission of experts supervised the artistic execution.