Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark

Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark (Πέτρος; 3 December 1908 – 15 October 1980) was a Greek prince, soldier and anthropologist specialising in Tibetan culture and polyandry.

Born in Paris and high in the line of succession to the Greek throne, Prince Peter was deemed to have forfeited his succession rights by marrying a twice-divorced Russian commoner, Irina Aleksandrovna Ovtchinnikova.

Following his first scientific voyage to Asia, Peter served as an officer of the Greek army during the Second World War.

The Prince returned to Asia several more times for his research of Tibetan culture.

He strongly protested against the royal family's treatment of his wife.

Peter was born in Paris and spent his childhood in France, and did not set foot in Greece between 1912 and 1935 due to the First World War and the later proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic.

During that time, he came to know Denmark, the kingdom from which the Greek royal family originated.

In the 1930s, a possible marriage between Prince Peter and Princess Frederica of Hanover may have been discussed, but she eventually married Prince Paul.

Peter attended Lycée Janson de Sailly and received the degree of Doctor of Law from the University of Paris.

In Kagil he visited the tomb of the Danish traveler Polycarpus Lindqvist that died there in 1930 by adding an inscription.

Wishing to avoid the Himalayan winter, they moved to South India and spent time with the Toda people.

They visited the Nilgiris district, Madras, Kalimpong and finally Ceylon.

Throughout the entire journey, Peter focused his attention on the study of polyandry – an interest that may have resulted from the Oedipus complex.

While in Madras, Peter decided to officialise his relationship with Ovtchinnikova.

He joined the Royal Guards of Denmark in 1932 for basic military service, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1934.

He spent summers at Bernstorff Palace, then owned by his paternal granduncle, Prince Valdemar of Denmark.

Due to their father's long-lasting sexual and emotional relationship with his uncle Valdemar, Peter and his sister Eugénie referred to Valdemar as "Papa Two".

As customary, Princess George took no part in her son's upbringing, and when he reached adolescence, only the counsels of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud helped them suppress their incestuous feelings for each other.

Following the restoration of his cousin, King George II, Prince Peter travelled to the Kingdom to take part in the ceremonial reinterment of the remains of his uncle, King Constantine I, and those of the queens Olga and Sophia, his grandmother and aunt respectively.

He was then third in the line of succession, preceded only by his unmarried cousin Paul and his own father, and thus an important member of the royal family.

He studied anthropology from 1935 until 1936 at the London School of Economics under the Polish-born anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski and the New Zealander ethnologist Sir Raymond Firth.

In 1935, Prince Peter met and started a relationship with Irina Aleksandrovna Ovtchinnikova, a four years older married Russian woman with an ex-husband.

The next year, she obtained her second divorce, and her influence over Peter steadily increased.

His family strongly disapproved of his relationship with "the Russian", as they dubbed Ovtchinnikova.

Peter himself did not want to gain a reputation as bad as that of King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, who abdicated the same year to marry his own twice divorced foreign lover, the American Wallis Simpson.

Peter joined the 3/40 Evzone Regiment in 1936, becoming an officer.

He proceeded to travel through Greece with his parents and visited Crete in April 1937.

Accompanied by Ovtchinnikova and a student of Malinowski, Prince Peter embarked on a voyage to Asia in September 1937.

The party passed through Syria and Persia before reaching British India, in search of a tribe that Peter could study.

They arrived in what is now Pakistan in early 1938, and Peter conducted research in the regions of Lahore, Kulu, Leh, and Srinagar.

The pair were married in a Danish consulate in September 1939.

Aware of his family's disapproval of the relationship, but also possibly wishing to take advantage of the turmoil created by the recently declared Second World War, the Prince did not bother to inform either the Greek royal court or his parents about the marriage.

The royal family learned of the mesalliance through the press a few weeks later.

Prince George, affronted by his son's decision not to ask him or the King for permission to marry, disowned Peter and henceforward refused contact with him.

Despite her own disappointment, however, Princess George remained in touch with her son and continued to regularly send him money.

However, not all members of the royal family were dissatisfied with Peter's mesalliance and subsequent loss of dynastic rights.

After King Paul's death, he declared himself heir presumptive to the Greek throne, on the pretext that female dynasts had been unlawfully granted succession rights in 1952.

Peter eventually separated from his wife and died childless in London.

A member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Prince Peter was the elder child and only son of Prince George of Greece and Denmark and the wealthy author and psychoanalyst Princess George (née Marie Bonaparte).

His father was the second son of King George I of Greece and his mother the only daughter of the French botanist Prince Roland Bonaparte and Marie-Félix Blanc.