There had been rumours that Ileana may have been illegitimate, that her biological father may have been her mother's lover, Prince Barbu Stirbey. Maybe these rumours, true or not, were a factor in King Boris's decision not to marry her?
I can't see why that should have been a large factor, given that hers could hardly have been the only case in European royal history of a prince(ess) whose biological legitimacy was in doubt. Look at Princess Anna of Saxony (born in 1903) -- a prime example of a royal who was legally acknowledged by her mother's husband as his own child, despite the fact that he most certainly was not likely her biological father. All Europe knew it; but that didn't stop her from marrying an Habsburg archduke (Archduke Joseph Francis of Austria-Hungary) later on: she was officially a daughter of King Friedrich Augustus III. What his parents (Archduke Joseph August of Austria-Hungary and Princess Augusta of Bavaria) thought of the marriage is anybody's guess. If it came to that, his maternal grandparents (Prince Leopold of Bavaria and Archduchess Gisela of Austria) were still living as of the wedding (1924). I'm not sure if they attended, or what they thought of it, either ... In any case, it was a perfectly "equal" marriage, dynastic in accordance with existing Habsburg imperial house laws.
To the best of my knowledge, King Ferdinand of Romania always officially recognized Princess Ileana as his own child -- insofar as he never formally repudiated her. And there is no genetic evidence against paternity, since she had blue eyes -- just like himself and her mother, Queen Marie. In this, she was unlike her younger brother, Prince Mircea, who had brown eyes. And Prince Barbo Stirbey treated her as he did her older siblings -- avuncular affection. Things were different with Mircea.
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