17 Facts About Eugenie Paleologue

Eugenie Wickham, self-styled as Princess Eugenie Nicephorus Comnenus Palaeologus, was a Maltese pretender to the throne of Greece and the Byzantine Empire, active in the early 20th century.

For most of her life, at least from the early 1860s onwards, Paleologue lived in Great Britain, from the late 1860s onwards in London.

Eugenie Paleologue was noted for her great generosity, despite not being rich, as well as her repeated attempts at becoming a sovereign in Greece.

In 1913, Eugenie Paleologue managed to form an all-female committee of supporters who petitioned for her to be installed as "Empress of Constantinople" in the aftermath of the First Balkan War, which though unsuccessful garnered her some media attention.

Marie Ersilie Eugenie Orades Laurentia Vincenza Nicola Antonia Paleologue was born on Malta in about 1849.

Eugenie Paleologue was the daughter of the Maltese pretender Theodore Palaeologo, who lived in London and claimed the style "Prince Nicephorus Comnenus Palaeologus", and his wife Laura Attardo Testaferrata.

In 1869, Eugenie Paleologue married Colonel Edmund Hill Wickham, who served in the Royal Artillery, and thereafter settled in England.

Eugenie Paleologue was recorded in documentation of the marriage as "Eugeniue Attard".

In 1909, Eugenie Paleologue claimed the official style "Hereditary Princess of Mytilene, Enos, Chios and Lemnos".

Eugenie Paleologue claimed in that year to have been approached about the possibility of making her the "Queen of Samos", or in the event that she did not become queen to make one of her sons king.

Eugenie Paleologue further stated in an interview with the Daily Express that making her the ruler of Samos would only be a step towards her rightful position as a "direct descendant of Constantine the Great".

On 5 January 1913, during the First Balkan War, Eugenie Paleologue officially put forth a claim on "the throne of Constantinople".

Eugenie Paleologue was ill for most of the last several years of her life, being nursed by the wife of her grandson Christopher.

Eugenie Paleologue died on 27 August 1934, having outlived her husband and four of her five children.

Obituaries were printed in several newspapers, stating that while not rich, Eugenie Paleologue was extremely generous, which often led her to become a victim of fraudsters, such as in an incident in 1931 when a man who pretended to befriend her ended up stealing and selling some of her furniture.

Eugenie Paleologue was buried in West Norwood Cemetery in London, where her husband and two of their sons, as well as Paleologue's possible parents are buried.

Eugenie Paleologue's tombstone proclaims her to have been a "descendant of the Grecian Emperors of Byzantium".