[June 10] Alexander III, king of Macedon

Surnamed: "The Great"
Parents: Philip II, king of Macedon, and Olympias of Epirus

Date of Birth: 20 July 356 BCE

House: Macedonian

Spouse: (1) Roxana, daughter of Osyartes of Bactria, (2) Stateira II, daughter of Darius III, shahanshah of Persia, and Stateira I, and (3) Parysatis II, daughter of Artaxerxes III, shahanshah of Persia

Predecessor: Philip II

Reign: 336 – 323 BCE

Summary: Alexander was born in Pella, the capital of Macedon located somewhere in northern Greece or Macedonia. Alexander was tutored be Leonidas and Lysimachus in the manner of a Macedonian noble. When he was ten, he received his first horse, which he named Bucephalas. Alexander kept this horse until the end of his days. In 343 BCE, King Philip chose the philosopher Aristotle to tutor his son, and the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza was the appointed classroom. Alexander fell in love with the epics of Homer while also learning every known science. When Philip left for war, Alexander remained in Pella as the regent and heir apparent. He was given his first chance to rule when Thrace rebelled and Alexander leveled it and founded a new settlement there populated by Greeks called Alexandropolis. It would not be the last city Alexander named after himself. Philip continued to give his son powers and increased the size of his army. In 338 BCE, the two marched together to Thermoplyae and then continued marching south to subdue Greek city-states that were rebelling against Macedonian rule. Once in the far south of Greece, Philip established the League of Corinth between almost all the city-states in Greece and declared war against the Persian Empire. Upon his return to Pella, Philip fell in love with a local lady and Alexander was forced to flee to Illyria. Six months later, the two parties were reunited. In 336 BCE, Philip was assassinated by the captain of his bodyguards. Alexander was proclaimed king at the age of 20.

The new king quickly killed his rival family members. Much of Greece rebelled soon after and Alexander spent the first months of his reign consolidating power in the south. Once secured, he moved north and secured his northern borders. The south rebelled again, and Alexander was forced to raze Thebes to the ground and split it between other rival cities. Once all his rebellions were ended, he moved on toward Persia leaving a lieutenant, Antipater, behind as regent. In twelve years, Alexander conquered all of Persia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Afghanistan. He marched his army directly toward the Tigris River, sacking or conquering everything he passed. One-by-one, he took Syria, the Levant, Tyre, and Egypt. Jerusalem saw Alexander as a savior against the autocratic rule of the later Persian overlords. In Egypt, he founded Alexandria, a city that would soon become the wealthy center of Ptolemaic Egypt. Alexander then moved north to Mesopotamia and conquered it all before continuing into the Persian heartland. Darius III, emperor of Persia, continued to flee, abandoning the old Persian capital at Susa and the new one at Persepolis. Darius was finally stabbed by Bactrian captors and a pretender arose and fled into the mountains. Alexander eventually defeated the usurper and took the title King of Kings (Shahanshah) and adopted some Persian dress. India became the next target of Alexander's desire, but it would overstretch him. He crossed the Indus at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BCE and subdued the local lord, making him the new satrap of India. His horse, Bucephalas, died during the engagement. Near the Gnages River, Alexander's army finally mutinied. He never passed into the Indian heartland but was forced to turn for home. In Persia, Alexander began to centralize his rule and established well-defined satrapies throughout his realm. He returned to Babylon and died there after a short fever in 323 BCE. His tomb became a pilgrimage site for many centuries to come. Alexander's empire became the stuff of legend but was divided between his posthumous son, Alexander IV, and a half-brother, Philip III. Within months, though, a civil war broke out that saw the rise of four separate kingdoms formed from former satrapies. In Egypt, the Ptolemys took control. In Persia and Mesopotamia, the Seleucids. In Asia Minor, Pergamon briefly took control, and in Macedon, Alexander and Philip were soon murdered and replaced by upstart generals.

Date of Death: 10 June 323 BCE

Successor: Alexander IV and Philip III

Other Monarch Deaths:

Ernest, margrave of Austria (1075)

Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (1190)

Ernest, duke of Austria (1424)

Hsinyushin, king of Burma (1776)

From Oldenburg with Love (Oldenburgs, Part 3)

The House of Oldenburg has mostly certainly proved to be a grand and expansive house, ruling Denmark and Norway even today, and Russia in not yet a century ago. But Oldenburg was a very wide house, as demonstrated in my dynastic tree below (see notes below). In a relatively short time—700 years or so—it went from ruling a small county in northern Germany to the largest single country ever created. Yet in that time, the House of Oldenburg also managed to pick up some smaller entities, that are no less important.

The House of Oldenburg Dynasty Tree

Perhaps the most important and oft-overlooked of the Oldenburg possessions is the County of Oldenburg itself. The county was created in 1180 and eventually became a duchy and then grand duchy. At first they were a vassal state of the Duchy of Saxony, the largest German power in the area. However, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa dismembered the duchy and Oldenburg branched off on its own. A second portion of the county, Delmenhorst, was generally held by a member of a cadet branch, although it often found its way back to the main line. Oldenburg finally fell under the control of a cadet line when Christian I became king of Denmark in 1440. With titles in Norway, Sweden and Schleswig-Holstein following soon after, Christian simply didn't have time for the relatively simple Oldenburg. Over the years, Oldenburg chipped away at portions of Frisia and other neighbors, enlarging its territory bit by bit. During the disastrous Thirty Years War, Oldenburg was one of the lucky few states to remain neutral, and thereby not desolated, in the war.

The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg

In 1776, the county broke off on its own, completely removing itself from Danish politics. It was elevated to a duchy the next year and gained a number of nearby lands through the mediation of the French. The country was soon after occupied by Napoleon's empire from 1810 to 1814 but avoided most of the fighting. Its occupation angered the Oldenburgs in Russia, the Romanov, so much that the neutrality between France and Russia ended, leading to the eventual defeat of Napoleon's army. Meanwhile, Oldenburg gained new lands in the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and was elevated to a grand duchy in 1829. It mostly voluntarily joined the German Empire in 1871, and thus was able to retain its monarch, only to be dissolved at the end of World War I during the German Revolutions. The territories of Oldenburg became a part of the province of Lower Saxony following World War II. Today, the line of the grand dukes of Oldenburg continues with the current claimant, Anton Günther.

Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden

Sweden was mentioned before but it did fall back into the periphery of Oldenburg control for a brief time, albeit through a cadet branch of the family. In fact, the Swedish branch of the family begat the final Oldenburg branch (above). Now the thing to remember with Sweden is that it never actually likes its monarchs. Adolf Frederick was elected to the throne in 1751 by the parliament and was treated as a parliamentary pawn all his life. The only reason he was even elected to the throne was because he was related to the Russian Oldenburgs whom Sweden wanted to be on better terms with. Adolf ate too much and died, leaving little of a legacy behind.  His son, Gustav III, got uppity at parliament, declared himself absolute leader of Sweden, and was assassinated. Gustav IV, his son, was very dissatisfied with a lot of political and financial things, which allowed his uncle, Charles, to force Gustav to abdicate. Charles XIII succeeded him and was first seen as a more liberal king, but failed to do anything worthwhile. He died childless, leaving the country in the hands of the Napoleon-supported Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, whose family rules Sweden to this day.

The Kingdom of Greece, showcasing the expansion of the state during the late 1800s and early 1900s

George I, King of the Hellenes (Greece)

Another rather forgotten kingdom in many peoples' minds was the Kingdom of the Hellenes, better known as Greece, which the House of Oldenburg ruled from 1862 until 1973. The dynasty took over after the previous dynasty, the Wittelsbach, disappointing the easily angered peoples of Greece. The family was a scion of the Danish Oldenburg house and helped bring Greece into the European sphere of politics after centuries under Turkish occupation. The first king, George I, ruled for 50 years and helped expand the meager borders of Greece outward in all directions. His son, Constantine, took Greece into the Balkan Wars of the early 1910s, but indecision during World War I led to his abdication in favor of his son, George II. George, though, wasn't in any better position to rule. A troubled government in 1923 asked the king to leave and the following year they formally deposed him. A decade later, in 1935, George II was reinstated but forced to acknowledge the fascist dictatorship of General Georgios Kondylis. Further indecision in the lead-in to World War II (George was pro-British, Kondylis was pro-Axis) caused the subsequent conquest of Greece by Italy and Germany in 1941. When George returned in 1946, his country was in ruin, corpses buried in shallow graves outside the raided royal palace. He died the next year and was succeeded by his brother, Paul. Paul ruled Greece during the decades of post-war rebuilding but the dynasty came under increasing threat by republicans. By the reign of his son, Constantine II, Greece was downright anti-royal. A coup against the monarchy forced Constantine to flee in 1967 and, although it took until 1973 to do so formally, the Greek monarchy came to an end at last. Constantine still is alive today and lives in numerous countries, including his former country of Greece.

 As an interesting aside, the House of Mountbatten, which will begin ruling the United Kingdom upon the death of Elizabeth II, is a cadet branch of the Greek Oldenburgs. Andrew married Princess Alice of Battenberg but the two became estranged after years of Andrew serving in the Greek army during World War I. Their only son, Philip, took the name Mountbatten due to anti-German sentiment in World War II and later married Princess Elizabeth prior to her elevation as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

As you can see, the Oldenburg family is quite vast. This and the previous two weeks have established the breadth of the family, and I in no way covered everything. The family ruled over many different lands throughout their rather short existence, and the future seems quite bright for them. Denmark and Norway still retain Oldenburg monarchs while Britain will soon have one of its own. Meanwhile, Russia and Greece both have rather large pro-royal movements that have gained momentum in recent years. The future for the Oldenburgs seems bright indeed.