Somewhere in the outskirts of Sofia there is a small street that bears the name of a great Bulgarian queen. She has been erased by the communists  and undeservedly forgotten today. During her lifetime, Eleanor of Bulgaria, was called the Crowned Angel of Bulgaria. When she married Tsar Ferdinand, her cousin, who was the  daughter-in-law of the Russian emperor,  said: “Tsar Ferdinand married Eleanor, and Eleanor married Bulgaria.”

The words were prophetic. From that moment until the end of her days, the queen gave everything she had to her new homeland. For the wedding the state gave her a gift of BGN 150,000 which, for the amazement of everyone, she  immediately donated for the construction of a children’s sanatorium for bone tuberculosis near Varna. She started selling her personal family jewelry and donating the  proceeds to various charities, such as to the Red Cross so they could  build boarding schools for the blind, deaf and  mute children as well as to various orphanages.

One of these family jewels saved the Boyana Church from destruction – the locals wanted to demolish it and build a bigger one in its place. Queen Eleanor bought a plot of land for a new church and organized the restoration of the old one. She founded a charity for that.  When reporters would ask her about her tireless work to help those in need, she would  reply: “Being a queen is a service like any other. And the queen is like that only in the Palace”.

Having  witnessed the pain and suffering of  war,  she became  a compassionate sister during the Russo-Japanese War. She organized and personally funded the training of compassionate nurses and  provided for the purchase of the most modern stretchers available at that time for the wounded. When the Balkan War  and later the Inter-Allied War began, the queen was at the front wearing her white uniform. She  treaded in the mud, took care of the wounded, read and wrote their letters to their relatives and held  the  hands of the dying.

When the Greeks approached Bulgaria, Prince Ferdinand sent an order for the Bulgarian soldiers to withdraw with the queen (who was in the hospital in the area) and 160 wounded to be left at the mercy of the enemy. For the first and only time in her life, she took advantage of her situation and gave a counterorder to the soldiers to build a barricade fire to ensure the withdrawal of all wounded. The queen was the first woman to be awarded the Order of Courage in Bulgaria. That was done not because of orders given by  the king, nor because she was a queen. It was done at the insistence of the soldiers and their commanders.

Her reputation reached countries beyond the borders of Bulgaria and even beyond the ocean. Not only was her nickname, “crowned angel”  found  all over Europe, but she was invited by President Woodrow Wilson to visit the United States. By that time, however, she was already incurably ill and her disease was at an advanced stage, and everyone advised her not to take the trip. She wrote to her sister: “I have a duty to do this for my Bulgaria. America is the new world power. And she is interested in us. Believe me, Zizi, one must live for what one can take with oneself to that world”.

Alas, this visit did  not take place, as during the trip her health deteriorated and she could not continue.

N.V. Queen Eleanor of Bulgaria bequeathed everything she had not already donated in her lifetime,  to charity. Following her will, she was burried in the yard of the Boyana church. Rumor has it that there  was not a woman from Sofia who did not go to her funeral, and soldiers who survived her care visited her grave every year.

During communism, her name was erased, and a gang of ignorant bandits desecrated and excavated her last monastery, looking for jewels – they did not know that this modest and exceptional lady left everything to the “homeland of my soul”, as she called Bulgaria.