Athina Livanos

Athina Niarchos
Born	19 March 1929 London, England
Died	10 October 1974 (aged 45) Paris, France
Spouse(s)	Aristotle Onassis (m. 1946–60) John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (1961–1971) Stavros Niarchos (1971–1974; her death)
Children	Alexander Onassis (1948–1973) Christina Onassis (1950–1988)

Athina Mary Livanos Onassis Spencer-Churchill Niarchos (Greek: Αθηνά (Τίνα) Λιβανού; 19 March 1929 – 10 October 1974) was the second daughter of the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Livanos and Arietta Zafirakis. She was best known as the first wife of Aristotle Onassis, but she later married her older sister Eugenia's widower, Stavros Niarchos. She was older sister to her parents' only son, George Stavros Livanos.

Marriages and family

Known as Tina, she was married three times. Her husbands were:

1. Aristotle Onassis (28 December 1946 – 1960); with him she had two children, Alexander Onassis (1948–1973) and Christina Onassis (1950–1988). She divorced him upon her discovering that he was having an affair with the opera singer Maria Callas.^[1]
2. John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (23 October 1961 – 1971)
3. Stavros Niarchos (21 October 1971 – 1974), her sister Eugenia's widower.

After her divorce from Aristotle Onassis, Livanos dropped her married name and used her maiden name, until her marriage to the Marquess of Blandford.

In October 1971 Livanos married her third husband, Stavros Niarchos, her sister's widower. Onassis's son, Alexander Onassis, died at the age of 24 in January 1973 as a result of injuries sustained during an airplane crash in Athens.^[2] Her only living descendant is her namesake granddaughter, Athina Onassis de Miranda. Livanos's daughter, Christina, sued her mother's widower for her mother's estimated US$250 million (in 1974 dollars) estate claiming the marriage should be annulled under Greek law. Christina later dropped the lawsuit and Niarchos returned all of the money as well as Livanos's jewellery, artwork and other personal effects.

Livanos died on 10 October 1974 in the Hotel de Chanaleilles, the Parisian mansion that she shared with her husband. Livanos's death was officially ruled by pathologists as having resulted from an acute edema of the lung, but has also been attributed to her suffering a drug overdose.^[3][4] She was buried next to her sister at the Bois-de-Vaux cemetery in Lausanne, Switzerland.^[5][6]

Notes

1. Feroudi Moutsatsos, Kiki (1998). The Onassis Women. London: Putnam. ISBN 0399144439.
2. "Mr Aristotle Onassis.", The Times, London, 17 March 1975, pg. 14
3. Andrew Anthony (17 October 1999). "High Society". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2015.
4. Mary Soames (February 2001). Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-08251-4.
5. Evans 1987, p. 292.
6. Evans 1987, p. 293.

References

• Evans, Peter (1987). Ari: The Life, Times and Women of Aristotle Onassis. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-009961-4.