Aikaterini Trikoupi

Wife of a prime minister (Spyridon Trikoupis), sister of a prime minister (Alexandros Mavrokordatos), mother of a prime minister (Charilaos Trikoupis), no other woman of the nineteenth-century was more closely connected to the political life of Greece.

Born at Constantinople in 1800, Aikaterini [Catherine] Mavrokordatou was the daughter of the scholar Nicholas Mavrokordatos (1744–1818) and Smaragda Karatza. Her brother Alexandros Mavrokordatos fought in the Greek Revolution of 1821 and later served as his country’s prime minister. During the revolution, Aikaterini fled Istanbul with the help of an English priest and was reunited with her brother at Nafplio.

In Nafplio on 7 January 1826 she married the politician Spyridon Trikoupis. The marriage produced four children: Aglaïa (1830–1842), Charilaos (1832–1896), Othon (1833–1844) and Sophia (1838–1916).

Following his brief service as Greek prime minister in 1833, Spyridon was three times the Greek ambassador to the Court of St James in London (1835–1838, 1841–1843 and 1850–1861). The family appear on the 1851 census living at 11 Park Square West, one of the elegant Nash houses on the south side of Regent’s Park. The family appear on the 1861 census living at 44 Bryanston Square in Marylebone. Also present on the night of the census were five English servants, including a cook, a valet and a footman.

The family subsequently settled in Patissia, a neighbourhood of central Athens. Aikaterini drowned at the Trikoupis villa on the island of Aegina on 15 July 1871. She was buried in the First Cemetery of Athens in the Trikoupis family tomb.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 12 February 1861.