Raised by her grand-uncle King Carol I of Romania and his wife Queen Elisabeth, she was an introvert and socially isolated. Married to Prince George, the heir to the Greek throne in 1921, she felt no passion for him and underwent the political turmoil in her adopted country after World War I. When her husband became king of Greece in 1922 as King George II, Elisabeth was involved in assisting refugees who arrived to Athens after the disaster of the Greco-Turkish War. The rise of the revolutionary climate, however, affected her health and with great relief she left the Kingdom of Greece with her husband in December 1923. The royal couple then settled in Bucharest, and King George was deposed on 25 March 1924.