Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark, (; born 7 January 1939) is a Greek prince, historian, and author. He has written several historical books and biographies of Greek and other European figures, in addition to working as a contributing writer to Architectural Digest. He is a first cousin of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, consort of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Birth and family He was born in Rome to Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark (youngest son of King George I of Greece) and his second wife Princess Françoise d'Orléans of France (daughter of the Orleanist claimant to the defunct French throne, Prince Jean d'Orléans, Duke of Guise). His godparents were his two first cousins Queen Helen, Queen Mother of Romania and King George II of Greece (eldest children of his paternal uncle King Constantine I). His father died when he was a year old, leaving Michael an only child, and his mother died in 1953 when he was 14, leaving him an orphan. Although a Greek prince, like many members of his dynasty he grew up largely abroad, sometimes in exile. As Europe marched into World War II, the infant Michael's family scattered: his mother's father, the Duke of Guise, left his residence of exile in Brussels, the Manoir d'Anjou, for their property at Larache, Morocco in March 1939 where he died on 24 August, the Manoir having become the Belgian headquarters for Germany's invading Wehrmacht. Less than six months after her father's death, Françoise was widowed by the death of Prince Christopher, following an abscess of the lung, in Athens in January. She took Michael to join her mother's household in Larache where her elder sister, Princess Isabelle Murat and her family, had also taken refuge from Europe. Their brother, Henri, Count of Paris, who succeeded his own father as head of the Orleanist monarchist movement, sent for his wife and children to come from their relatives in Brazil, and by the spring of 1941 they too were settled in Spanish Morocco (still being banned from the French sector), near Casablanca, in a small house without electricity that was named Oued Akreech in the town of Rabat. Michael lived his early childhood years on the African continent in the midst of his mother's family. Later, they also spent time in Spain. By the time Michael's mother died in Paris in early 1953, France