Covered with the Greek flag, the coffin bearing the body of Princess Irene, the sister of former Queen Sofia, who passed away at the age of 83, arrived shortly before 8 a.m. at the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral.

Her body has been placed in public viewing until 10:30 a.m. in the chapel of the Metropolitan Cathedral, after which the funeral service will follow at 12 noon.

Among those attending the funeral will be the King of Spain, Felipe VI, with his wife Letizia and their daughters, the heir to the throne, Princess Leonor, and Infanta Sofia. The British royal family will be represented by Sir Timothy Laurence, husband of Princess Anne, and Lady Gabriella Kingston.

Absent, on the other hand, will be the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, who is facing serious health problems and whose doctors advised him not to travel to Athens from Abu Dhabi, where he resides, as well as the wife of Pavlos De Grece, Marie-Chantal, due to a recent surgical operation undergone by her mother in New York.

A few minutes after the arrival of Princess Irene’s body, citizens began to bid farewell to the 83-year-old.

The eccentric revolutionary

As she herself readily admitted, she was the odd one out, different from every other member of the Greek royal dynasty. She was always fully reconciled with her eccentricity, even with the nickname “Tia Pecu” (from the Spanish peculiar), the “odd aunt,” as her nieces and nephews had dubbed her—primarily the children of Queen Sofia, one of whom is the current King of Spain, Felipe VI.

Nevertheless, one might say that Princess Irene’s greatest peculiarity was that, however ill-suited she was to the stern and rigid etiquette and affectation of the Palace, she was just as consistent in her effort not to estrange herself from her family—from her crowned siblings and earlier from Queen Frederica, an extremely exuberant and domineering personality.

Irene never became the black sheep of the royal house, nor was she treated as a revolutionary (as the title of her official biography suggests), as a wayward princess who shamed her illustrious lineage. On the contrary, she lived her life entirely sui generis, yet as if she focused on the essence, on what mattered to her as a human being—on bonds of blood and love—rejecting the gilded and pompous trappings along with all the quaint accessories of royal status.

Consequently, Irene was clearly a peculiar and highly interesting case of nobility—first and foremost because she consciously and persistently abstained from the fundamental duty and supreme mission of every female member of a royal lineage of hereditary monarchy: to perpetuate the blue blood by reproducing with as many offspring as possible, if feasible, as is deemed fitting for an authentic princess.

Thus, perhaps one of the most remarkable paradoxes in her case is not her aversion to relationships and motherhood, nor her turn toward Hinduism or the study of paranormal phenomena, UFOs, and the like. What is curious, then, is how Irene combined the unconventional choices she made in her life—so strikingly incompatible with the traditional stereotype of a princess—while at the same time remaining tied, indeed almost attached, first to her mother and later to her two siblings, above all to Sofia.

The funeral at Tatoi

Only with her death might one be tempted to observe that Princess Irene played a divisive role within her family: she passed away almost at the same time as the memorial service at Tatoi for her brother—although her own death, on Thursday, January 15, 2026, occurred exactly 3 years and 5 days after the ceremony for former King Constantine II.

As Queen Sofia sensed that her younger sister was nearing her final hours, she canceled every other scheduled obligation in order to be by her side until her last breath; thus Irene forced Sofia to choose between her and their brother. From another perspective, however, the way Princess Irene departed this world could not have been more in keeping with the way she lived.

As far removed as possible from a courtly mentality, yet deeply within it, since for more than half a century she was permanently installed in the apartments at the Zarzuela Palace—her own small realm, as it had been granted to her by former King of Spain Juan Carlos and his wife, Queen Sofia.

Moreover, as a woman devoted to good works and to genuine, practical concern for the poor and the vulnerable of this planet—while never failing to keep an eye on what might be happening on other planets and in the wider universe—at her final bow she weighed down the already melancholic mood of her beloved relatives.

To the mourning of the royal family occasioned by the memorial service for Constantine, Princess Irene added the sorrow of her own burial. And Sofia, now 87 years old, was left alone, without her most trusted and beloved companion, her sister and alter ego, on whom she relied to endure the humiliation and contempt caused by Juan Carlos’s repeated infidelities.

The ceremony prior to the final farewell to Princess Irene took place on Saturday, 17/1, in Madrid, at the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Andrew and Demetrios.

Inseparable from Sofia

Princess Irene could have become a distinguished piano soloist had she continued her engagement with classical music at the highest level. She certainly possessed the necessary talent—otherwise her teacher and mentor, the legendary Gina Bachauer, would not have risked publicly praising her pianistic abilities merely because she was a princess or due to the close friendship that connected Bachauer with Frederica and Paul.

Born in 1942 in Cape Town, South Africa, while her family was in exile from Greece, Irene grew up moving and wandering across the globe, a fact that decisively shaped her outlook on life and the freedom of her spirit.

At the same time, however, it seems that within her took root the conviction that, no matter how far her need for independence might lead her, her family would always be the fixed point of reference. Hence she never broke with any of her relatives, and her particular weakness was clearly her sister Sofia, four years her senior.

“You are my copy,” the future Queen of Spain is said to have teased her, since Irene sought to imitate Sofia in everything she did. Thus she attended the same school in Germany, Salem Schloss, as a boarder as well; thus the two of them collaborated on archaeological research around Tatoi, in ancient Decelea.

India and the cows

At a later stage, it was the mysticism of the East that monopolized Irene’s interest. She studied in depth and on site, under the guidance of Professor-guru Mahadevan, Indian philosophy.

On this intellectual path she was accompanied by her mother, who was equally fascinated by India. Irene even settled in Madras for a period, taking on the role of vice president of the foundation in honor of Dr. Mahadevan, overseeing the publication of the complete works of her great teacher, and so on.

At the same time, Princess Irene sought to put into practice, by adopting in her own life, everything she had learned from the Indian worldview—above all humility, renunciation of material wealth, the search for inner peace, and certainly solidarity.

In this way, Irene not only did not appear in princely attire, but systematically avoided luxury, never wore jewelry, and devoted all her money—mainly the €900,000 awarded to her as compensation beneficiary for the confiscation of the royal property in Greece—to the humanitarian organization World in Harmony/Mundo en Armonía, based in Madrid.

From its founding in 1986 until 2024, when Irene decided to cease its operation, Mundo en Armonía assisted underprivileged and socially marginalized people around the world—including in Greece—and also carried out dynamic, perhaps romantically daring, interventions in favor of animal protection, such as the air transport of cows from Europe to India in the mid-1980s, when overproduction of milk and the epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy made mass slaughter of cows seem the only appropriate solution. A solution which, of course, Irene opposed and tried to resist with all her strength.

Cancer and UFOs

In 2002, Irene de Grecia underwent chemotherapy for six months, battling breast cancer. However, beyond what was happening in her body from a physical and biological perspective, she experienced something like a new mystical, parapsychological revelation. “I wish every woman, every cancer patient in general, could be cured the way I was cured,” she told her biographer, Spanish journalist Eva Celada, emphasizing that “during the period of illness, I taught myself how to banish fear… We must be prepared for everything.

Knowing that our life in this world is not everything. There is life beyond here, beyond what we know.” Princess Irene came to believe that cancer was a gateway to other dimensions, the threshold she had to cross in order to attain higher knowledge—in occultism, palmistry, even Unidentified Flying Objects, the Beyond.

In her autobiography, with the curious title Measure of Understanding, Queen Frederica refers to Irene with affection, almost with adoration: “I like to believe that spiritual greatness will always be the most exceptional gift of my youngest daughter.”

Certainly, however, more important than Frederica’s idealization is what Irene herself said about herself, specifically about how she arrived at the decision never to marry and not to create her own family—despite clearly adoring her parents and siblings.

“I am a revolutionary”

From time to time, whispers and gossip portrayed Irene as being involved with this or that nobleman. She herself, however, held a different view, firmly believing that “kings and princes do not have to marry only among themselves. Whether you love someone or not has nothing to do with whether they are blue-blooded or not. In any case, my own life was full, even though I never had a husband or children. What man could endure me, after all? I am a revolutionary; my interests are many and strange. Many people are lucky and blessed to have a family. Let’s say that I was lucky not to have a family.”