August 15: Today in Royal History

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Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French; Credit – Wikipedia

August 15, 1316 – Birth of John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, son of King Edward II of England, at Eltham Palace in London, England
In 1327, when John was eleven years old, his father King Edward II was forced to give up his crown in favor of his son 14-year-old son King Edward III, with his mother Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer, 3rd Baron Mortimer, 1st Earl of March acting as regents. King Edward II died in Berkeley Castle on September 21, 1327, probably murdered on the orders of Isabella and Mortimer. John was the heir to the English throne until 1330, when his nephew Edward, Prince of Wales, the first child of King Edward III, was born.  King Edward III began marriage negotiations for his brother several times but none of the negotiations led to a betrothal. John had a brilliant military career, similar to the later military career of his nephew Edward, Prince of Wales, known as The Black Prince, who predeceased his father, and whose career ended just as suddenly. John of Eltham, 1st Earl of Cornwall died on September 13, 1336, in Perth, Scotland at the age of 20. The cause of his death is uncertain. There are references to John dying from a fever and dying in a skirmish with the Scots.
Unofficial Royalty: John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall

August 15, 1369 – Death of Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England, wife of King Edward III of England, at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England; buried at Westminster Abbey in London, England
Philippa married King Edward III of England in 1348. The couple had thirteen children including her eldest child, Edward the Black Prince, who was born days before her sixteenth birthday. The sons of Edward and Philippa married into the English nobility and it was their descendants who later battled for the throne in the Wars of the Roses. Like other medieval consorts, Philippa often accompanied her husband on military campaigns.  She was known for her kind nature and successfully pleaded for the lives of six burghers who had surrendered their city of Calais to King Edward III. Philippa died of a “dropsical malady” (edema) that had bothered her for about two years. She was 55 years old and had outlived seven of her children. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, Philippa died holding the hands of her husband and her youngest child Thomas who was fourteen years old.
Unofficial Royalty: Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England

August 15, 1769 – Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Corsica, France
Napoléon joined the French army and quickly advanced. During the latter part of the French Revolution, he rose to prominence and by the age of 30 was the First Consul of France. Napoléon was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. In the early part of the 19th century, Napoléon’s quest for power led to wars throughout a large part of Europe. In 1814, Paris was captured by the coalition fighting against Napoléon and his marshals decided to mutiny. He had no choice but to abdicate. The Treaty of Fontainebleau exiled Napoléon to the Mediterranean island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, Italy. Napoléon escaped from Elba on February 26, 1815, and arrived in France two days later. He attempted to regain power, but he was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, by a coalition of forces from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Nassau, Brunswick, and Prussia.
Unofficial Royalty: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French

August 15, 1824 – Birth of Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Baden in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, now in Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Ludwig was the eldest surviving son of Leopold, Grand Duke of Baden and Sofia of Sweden.  As Ludwig got older, signs of mental illness began to show, and in March 1852, he was diagnosed as having a non-curable mental disorder. The following month, Ludwig’s father died and he succeeded as Grand Duke of Baden. However, because of his illness, his brother Friedrich served as Regent during Ludwig’s brief four-year reign.
Unofficial Royalty: Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Baden

August 15, 1860 – Death of Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna of Russia, at her estate in Elfenau, near Bern, Switzerland; buried at her estate in Elfenau
Julianne was an aunt to both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She made an unsuccessful marriage to Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich of Russia, the second son of the future Paul I, Emperor of All Russia. Juliane managed to leave Russia and upon arriving back home in Coburg, she refused to ever return to Russia. She soon began to negotiate for a divorce. However, the Russian court would not allow a formal end to the marriage. Although still technically married, Juliane had several affairs, two of which resulted in the birth of children. In 1814, after refusing an offer of reconciliation from her husband, Juliane purchased an estate in Bern, Switzerland along the banks of the Aare River. She named the property Elfenau, and it would become her home for the rest of her life.
Unofficial Royalty:  Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna

August 15, 1950 – Birth of Princess Anne, Princess Royal at Clarence House in London, England
Full name: Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise
From a young age, Princess Anne was passionate about riding and she soon became an excellent equestrienne. In 1971, Anne won the European Eventing Championship and was voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.  For more than five years Anne competed with the British eventing team, winning a silver medal in both individual and team disciplines in the 1975 European Eventing Championship. In the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, Anne competed as a member of the British equestrian team.
Unofficial Royalty: Anne, Princess Royal

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August 14: Today in Royal History

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Prince Heinrich of Prussia with his wife Irene of Hesse and by Rhine; Credit – Wikipedia

August 14, 1473 – Birth of Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury, daughter of  George, Duke of Clarence (third son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York) and niece of King Edward IV and King Richard III, at Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset, England
Margaret was one of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the Wars of the Roses. She was the mother of Reginald Pole, Cardinal, Papal Legate, last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Queen Mary I.  After the rise of the Tudors, the remaining members of the House of York were systematically dealt with through marriage, imprisonment, and eventually, execution. Accused of conducting treasonable correspondence with her son Cardinal Pole, Margaret was executed during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Unofficial Royalty: Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury

August 14, 1479 – Birth of Catherine of York, Countess of Devon, daughter of King Edward IV of England, at Eltham Palace in London, England
In 1495, sixteen-year-old Catherine married twenty-year-old William Courtenay, son and heir of Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, a strong supporter of the then-current monarch, King Henry VII, and they had three children. After her marriage, Catherine remained close to her eldest sister Elizabeth of York, wife of King Henry VII. She attended the wedding of her eldest nephew Arthur, Prince of Wales and Catherine of Aragon in November 1501, and the betrothal of her eldest niece Margaret Tudor to James IV, King of Scots in January 1502. After the death of her husband in 1511, Catherine took a vow of celibacy and was rarely at court. One of her few appearances at court was in 1516 for the christening of her great-niece, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, the future Queen Mary I of England, at which Catherine was the godmother. Catherine of York died on November 15, 1527, at Tiverton Castle in Tiverton, Devon, England, aged 48.
Unofficial Royalty: Catherine of York, Countess of Devon

August 14, 1687 – Birth of Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt-Dessau, now in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange and his wife Princess Marie Luise of Hesse-Kassel are the most recent common ancestors of all currently reigning European monarchs. At the time of Johan Willem Friso’s birth, his first cousin once removed Willem III was Prince of Orange and Stadtholder (Governor) of five of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic. Willem III had married his English first cousin Mary Stuart, the elder surviving child of King James II of England. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which deposed King James II, Willem and Mary jointly ruled England as King William III and Queen Mary II, but the couple had no children.  After Willem’s death,  Johan Willem Friso claimed succession in the five provinces of the Dutch Republic that William (Willem) III had held as well as to the title Prince of Orange. However, the five provinces over which Willem III had ruled as Stadtholder all suspended the office of Stadtholder after his death. A dispute arose between Johan Willem Friso and Friedrich I, King in Prussia, also a grandson of Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, over the Principality of Orange which was located in France. Friedrich I eventually inherited the land and ceded the land to France in 1713. However, the title Prince of Orange continued to be used in the Dutch Republic. In July to The Hague to meet with King Friedrich I of Prussia about their succession dispute. To cross the Hollands Diep, a wide river in the Netherlands, Johan Willem Friso and his carriage traveled on a ferry. The captain had trouble with the sails and suddenly a great gust of wind filled the sails, the ferry capsized and Johan Willem Friso drowned at the age of 23 on July 14, 1711. His body was found floating in the river eight days later.
Unofficial Royalty: Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange

August 14, 1688 – Birth of Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, in Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, now in Brandenburg, Germany
For the first few years of his life, Friedrich Wilhelm was raised in Hanover, at the court of his grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, along with his cousins – his future wife, Sophie Dorothea of Hanover,  whom he married in 1706, and her brother, the future King George II of Great Britain. Friedrich Wilhelm came to the Prussian throne upon his father’s death in 1713. Unlike his father who viewed the treasury as his own money and lived a very lavish lifestyle, Friedrich Wilhelm chose to go the opposite direction. He sold many of his father’s possessions and lived a very austere life. While his father was focused more on his personal enjoyment, Friedrich Wilhelm focused on strengthening Prussia, particularly the economy and the military.
Unofficial Royalty: Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia

August 14, 1720 – Birth of Friedrich II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, husband of Princess Mary of Great Britain (daughter of King George II of Great Britain), in Kassel in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, now in Hesse, Germany
Friedrich II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel became famous during the American Revolution as a supplier of thousands of Hessian soldiers who fought on behalf of the British. Friedrich and his wife Mary are ancestors of the current British royal family through their fourth son Prince Friedrich. Prince Friedrich’s daughter Augusta was the grandmother of Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, better known as Queen Mary, the wife of King George V of the United Kingdom. Through their third son Prince Karl, Friedrich and Mary are great-grandparents of King Christian IX of Denmark. Through King Christian IX, Friedrich and Mary are ancestors of six of the ten current European monarchs (King Philippe of Belgium, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, King Harald V of Norway, King Felipe VI of Spain, King Charles III of the United Kingdom.
Unofficial Royalty: Friedrich II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel

August 14, 1754 – Death of Maria Anna of Austria, Queen of Portugal, wife of King João V of Portugal, in Lisbon, Portugal; initially interred at the Monastery of São João Nepomuceno (Saint John Nepomuk), which she founded, her heart was interred in the Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Church in Vienna, Austria, the burial place of her birth family, the Habsburgs. In 1855, her remains were transferred to the Royal Pantheon of the House of Braganza at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon, Portugal, where her husband João V had been interred.
Maria Anna, the daughter of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, was the wife and first cousin of João V, King of Portugal. Maria Anna and João V had six children including two kings of Portugal. Soon after her marriage, Maria Anna realized that beauty and luxury were valued at the Portuguese court much more than learning and knowledge, which were the traits valued at the Austrian court. João had many mistresses and several illegitimate children and although he was well educated and religious, he occupied himself with whatever pleased him at the moment.  Maria Anna died four years after the death of her husband.
Unofficial Royalty: Maria Anna of Austria, Queen of Portugal

August 14, 1862 – Birth of Prince Heinrich of Prussia, son of Friedrich III, German Emperor, at Neues Palais in Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia, now in Brandenburg, Germany
Full name: Albert Wilhelm Heinrich
Prince Heinrich was the son of Victoria, Princess Royal and Friedrich III, German Emperor, and Queen Victoria’s grandson. He married his first cousin Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, daughter of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Irene was a hemophilia carrier having inherited the gene from her mother Princess Alice who had inherited it from her mother Queen Victoria. Nine of Queen Victoria’s descendants were afflicted with hemophilia and two of them were Heinrich and Irene’s sons. At the age of 15, Heinrich started his career in the  German Imperial Navy.  In 1909, he was promoted to Grand Admiral (Großadmiral), the highest rank in the German Imperial Navy. At the beginning of World War I, Heinrich was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet. He was charged with preventing the Russian Navy from attacking the German coast and was successful. At the end of World War I, and with the abdication of his brother Wilhelm as German Emperor and King of Prussia, Heinrich left the navy. After the dissolution of the German monarchies, Heinrich and his family lived at Hemmelmark, an estate in Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where he died at the age of 66, on April 20, 1929.
Unofficial Royalty: Prince Heinrich of Prussia

August 14, 1876 – Birth of King Alexander I of Serbia in Belgrade, Serbia
King Alexander I of Serbia was the last ruler of Serbia from the House of Obrenović. His reign ended with his and his wife’s brutal assassinations in 1903. He was the only surviving child of King Milan I of Serbia and his wife Natalija Keschko. In 1889, King Milan unexpectedly abdicated in favor of his twelve-year-old son who became King Alexander I of Serbia. In 1893, 17-year-old King Alexander proclaimed himself of age and dismissed the regency council in order to take royal authority for himself. The following year, King Alexander abolished the 1889 liberal constitution and restored the former conservative 1869 constitution. The political situation continued to worsen until the army had enough.  A conspiracy was organized by the military called the May Coup to replace King Alexander I of the House of Obrenović with Prince Peter Karađorđević of the rival House of Karađorđević.  This resulted in the assassination of Alexander and his wife.
Unofficial Royalty: King Alexander I of Serbia

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Andrew Romanoff, born Prince Andrew Romanov

by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Andrew Romanoff; Credit – https://www.legacy.com/

Prince Andrew Romanov, known as Andrew Romanoff after he came to the United States in 1949, a great-great-grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, was one of the disputed pretenders to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family from 2016 – 2021. The Headship of the Russian Imperial Family and succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, mainly due to disagreements over whether marriages in the Romanov family were equal marriages – a marriage between a Romanov dynast and a member of a royal or sovereign house. Andrew inherited the claim after the death of Prince Dimitri Romanov who had no sons. With his death, the male line of Dmitri’s Nikolavevichi Branch of the Russian Imperial Family descended from Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaevich of Russia, a son of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, became extinct, transferring the claim to the Mikhailovichi Branch, descended from Grand Duke Michael Nicolaevich of Russia, a son of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia. Andrew was also the great-grandson of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, through their elder daughter Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia.

Andrew’s great-grandparents Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark; Credit – Wikipedia

Line of Andrew and his sons Alexis and Peter from Nicholas I: Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia → Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia → Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia → Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia → Prince Andrew Andreievich Romanov  → Prince Alexis Andreievich Romanov and Prince Peter Andreievich Romanov

Prince Andrew Romanov was born in London, England on January 21, 1923. He was the youngest of the three children and the second of the two sons of Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia and his first wife Duchess Elisabetta Sasso-Ruffo Di Sant Antimo from the Italian noble House of Ruffo di Calabria. Andrew’s paternal grandparents were Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia (grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia) and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia (daughter of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and sister of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia). His maternal grandparents were Fabrizio Ruffo, Duke of Sasso-Ruffo and Princess Natalia Alexandrovna Mescherskaya, a descendant of the wealthy, Russian noble House of Stroganov.

Andrew (left), with his sister Xenia and brother Michael; Credit – http://russculture.ru/2021/12/02/ushel-iz-gzizni-poslednii-nastojashii-romanov/

Andrew had two elder siblings. His elder brother had no children and predeceased both Prince Dmitri Romanov and Andrew and so Prince Dmitri’s claim came to Andrew.

  • Princess Xenia Romanov (1919 – 2000), married (1) Calhoun Ancrum, divorced, no children (2) Geoffrey Tooth, no children
  • Prince Michael Romanov (1920 – 2008), married (1) Jill Murphy, divorced, no children (2) Shirley Cramond, no children (3) Giulia Crespi, no children

Andrew’s half-sister Princess Olga Romanov

Andrew had one half-sister from his father’s 1942 second marriage to Nadine McDougall.

Andrew’s father Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia; Credit – Wikipedia

After the Russian Revolution, Andrew’s parents Andrei and Elisabetta spent their first several years in exile in France where Andrew’s siblings were born. In dire financial circumstances, Andrei, Elisabetta, and their family eventually settled permanently in England where Andrei’s mother Grand Duchess Xenia had a grace-and-favour residence provided to her by her first cousin King George V of the United Kingdom. Andrei, Elisabetta, and their family lived in a guest house on the grounds of Windsor Castle, granted to them by King George V.

Andrew’s paternal grandmother Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, an important figure in his life; Credit – Wikipedia

When Andrew was born in 1923, the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, served as his godfather. Andrew and his siblings were brought up in the Russian tradition under the strict supervision of their paternal grandmother, the daughter of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and sister of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, who lived until 1960 when Andrew was thirty-seven. Xenia was sure that the Romanovs would again rule in Russia and wanted to ensure that her grandchildren would take their rightful place in Russia. However, Andrew’s parents belonged to a different generation and no longer believed that the Russian monarchy would be restored. They raised their children with a sense of duty to Russia but with the ability to cope with the realities of the modern world. At home, the family always spoke only Russian. Until he was twelve years old, Andrew received a private traditional education at home, characteristic of the House of Romanov. He then attended Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an English independent boarding and day school for 11- to 18-year-olds near Hertford, England. In 1940, during World War II, when Andrew was sixteen years old and away at school, his mother was killed when a Nazi bomb exploded near the family’s home. Already ill with cancer, she was crushed when a ceiling beam fell on her.

In 1942, during World War II, Andrew joined the Royal Navy. He refused to accept an offer to become an officer, preferring to be a simple British sailor. He served on the light cruiser HMS Sheffield, taking part in Arctic convoys, sailing to the port city of Murmansk, then in the Soviet Union, now in Russia, where he often acted as an interpreter. Andrew also participated in the Battle of the Atlantic, the North African Campaign, the Allied landings at Normandy, and campaigns in the Pacific Ocean.

After World War II, Andrew worked as an intern on a farm in Kent, England, studying to become an agronomist, a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness. After working in a tree nursery near London, Andrew, his uncle Prince Vasily Alexandrovich and his first cousin Prince Nikita Romanov decided to emigrate to the United States. In 1949, with only $800 in his pocket, Andrew, his uncle, and his cousin traveled to the United States on a cargo ship.

Andrew dropped his royal style and title when he came to the United States, calling himself Andrew Romanoff. He settled in California, where he first worked in a store, and then at the California Packing Company where he grew tomatoes using hydroponics and worked on the introduction of new varieties of vegetables. He studied sociology and criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. Andrew later worked as a broker in a shipping company, a real estate agent, and a furniture designer. In 1954, he became a naturalized American citizen.

Andrew and his first wife Elena Konstantinovna Durnova; Credit – http://russculture.ru/2021/12/02/ushel-iz-gzizni-poslednii-nastojashii-romanov/

Andrew married three times:

  • On March 21, 1951, in San Francisco, California, Andrew married Elena Konstantinovna Durnova (1927 – 1992). Andrew and Elena had one son before divorcing in 1959.
    • Prince Alexis Romanoff (born 1953), married Zoetta “Zoe” Leisy, no children – Alexis is the current claimant to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family
  • On March 21, 1961, in San Francisco, California, Andrew married Kathleen Norris (1935 – 1967). Andrew and Kathleen had two sons. Kathleen died from pneumonia.
    • Prince Peter Romanoff (born 1961), married Barbara Anne Jurgens, no children, Peter is the heir to his half-brother’s claim to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family
    • Prince Andrew Romanoff (born 1963), married Elizabeth Flores, had one daughter, Andrew is second in the line of succession to the claim to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family
  • On December 17, 1987, in Reno, Nevada, Andrew married the American artist Inez Storer (born 1933)

Andrew and his third wife artist Inez Storer; Credit – Marin Magazine

After the death of his second wife, Andrew moved to Inverness, Marin County, California, where he worked as a carpenter, building houses with a Russian cousin, and started a company, Brass Menagerie, that made jewelry and other items. Without any formal art education, Andrew began drawing in the primitive art style, creating pictures by intuition and relying on imagination. His work depicted personal memories, impressions of American news, culture, and scenes of domestic life. It was through art that Andrew met his third wife artist Inez Storer in 1973. The couple lived in a 1906 former Inverness hotel with fourteen rooms, big enough to accommodate their blended families, and married in 1987. In 2007, Andrew released an autobiography called The Boy Who Would Be Tsar, illustrated with his small narrative paintings as well as his personal family photos. Some of Andrew’s work can be seen at the link below from the website of Gallery Route One, an art gallery that Andrew helped found.

Andrew was an original member of the Romanov Family Association, formed in 1979 to strengthen the links between the family and protect it from impostors. Today, the Romanov Family Association unites the majority of descendants of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia. From 1989 – 2016, Andrew served as an advisor to Prince Nicholas Romanov and Prince Dmitri Romanov during their terms as President of the Romanov Family Association. As of the writing of this article in August 2023, Andrew’s half-sister Princess Olga Romanov is the President of the Romanov Family Association, and his three sons are members.

On July 17, 1998, together with other members of the Romanov family, Andrew attended the reburial of the remains of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, his wife and three daughters, and their servants at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was one of the initiators of the transfer of the remains of his great-grandmother Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, from Denmark to the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia so she could be buried next to her husband Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia. In September 2006, Andrew attended all the events related to the transfer of the remains of his great-grandmother from Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark to Peter and Paul Cathedral in Russia. After the discovery in July 2007 of the remains of Nicholas II’s children Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Andrew provided his DNA to establish the authenticity of the remains.

The headship of the House of Romanov has been contested since the death of the last undisputed male dynast Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia in 1992. Upon his death, competing claims over the headship of the House of Romanov emerged between Prince Nicholas Romanov and Grand Duke Vladimir’s daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna. Prince Nicholas’ claim was based on a 1911 Ukase issued by Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia that the equal marriage rule applied only to Grand Dukes (the sons and grandsons of an emperor) and that princes (the great-grandsons onward of an emperor) could marry women of “good standing” for their marriage to be dynastic and therefore transmit succession and dynastic rights to their children, and that women, namely Maria Vladimirovna, could succeed only on the total extinction of the male line. The Romanov Family Association recognized Prince Nicholas Romanov as the senior male dynastic representative and head of the family on December 31, 1992, in Paris, France and this was symbolically re-confirmed on Russian soil after the state burial of Emperor Nicholas II and his family in 1998. The Romanov Family Association further stated that they consider the marriage of Maria Vladimirovna’s parents to be unequal. (See Maria Vladimirovna’s article for more information.)

Andrew and his predecessors Prince Nicholas Romanov, and Prince Dmitri Romanov did not act for the restoration of the monarchy or engage in dynastic activities such as the distribution of Russian imperial titles and orders. Maria Vladimirovna claims the status of de jure Empress of All Russia, styles herself as Grand Duchess and her son George Mikhailovich as Grand Duke and Tsesarevich, the title for the heir apparent, and actively distributes Russian imperial orders, all of which have been condemned by the Romanov Family Association.

Prince Dmitri Romanov inherited the claim to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family upon the death in 2014 of his elder brother Prince Nicholas Romanov who had two daughters but no sons. When Prince Dmitri Romanov died on December 31, 2016, Andrew inherited the claim because Dmitri had no sons. With Dmitri’s death, the male line of Dmitri’s Nikolavevichi Branch of the Russian Imperial Family descended from Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaevich of Russia, a son of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, became extinct, transferring the claim to the Mikhailovichi Branch, descended from Grand Duke Michael Nicolaevich of Russia, a son of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia. All descendants of the Russian Imperial Family except for Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and her son Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia recognized Andrew as the head of the House of Romanov.

Andrew Romanoff, born Prince Andrew Romanov, died surrounded by his family, on November 28, 2021, two months short of his 99th birthday at an assisted living center in San Anselmo, California after a long illness. A traditional Russian Orthodox funeral service was held at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in San Anselmo, California followed by the burial at Olema Cemetery in Olema, California.

This article is the intellectual property of Unofficial Royalty and is NOT TO BE COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances. It is permissible to use a link that directs to Unofficial Royalty.

Works Cited

  • Liberatore, P. (2021) Andrew Romanoff, Marin’s Russian prince, dies at 98, Marin Independent Journal. Available at: https://www.marinij.com/2021/12/13/andrew-romanoff-marins-russian-prince-dies-at-98/ (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • Mailonline. (2021) Eldest member of the Romanov family, Prince Andrew Andreievich, dies aged 98, Daily Mail Online. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10258767/Eldest-member-Romanov-family-Prince-Andrew-Andreievich-dies-aged-98.html (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • Massie, Robert K. (1995) The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. New York: Random House
  • Orlov, Daniel. ‘The last real Romanov’ passed away (2021) Русская Культура. Available at: http://russculture.ru/2021/12/02/ushel-iz-gzizni-poslednii-nastojashii-romanov/ (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Andrei_Alexandrovich_of_Russia (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • Prince Andrew Romanoff (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Andrew_Romanoff (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • Романов, Андрей Андреевич (2023) Wikipedia (Russian). Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Accessed: 12 August 2023).
  • The Romanov Family Association. Available at: http://www.romanovfamily.org/index.html (Accessed: 12 August 2023)

Royal Birthdays & Anniversaries: August 13 – 19

© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Below is a select list of birthdays and wedding anniversaries for current monarchies. It does not purport to be a complete list. Please see the Current Monarchies Index in the heading above for more information on current monarchies.

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73rd  birthday of Anne, Princess Royal, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom; born at Clarence House in London, England on August 15, 1950
Full name: Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise
Unofficial Royalty: Anne, Princess Royal

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Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway; Credit – Royal House of Norway

50th birthday of Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, wife of Crown Prince Haakon of Norway; born Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby in Kristiansand, Norway on August 19, 1973
Unofficial Royalty: Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway

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August 13: Today in Royal History

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Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of Naples and Sicily; Credit – Wikipedia

August 13, 1090 – Death of Constance of Normandy, Duchess of Brittany, daughter of King William I of England (the Conqueror), buried at St. Melans near Rhedon in France
Born around 1066, Constance was one of the daughters of William I and Matilda of Flanders.  She married Alan IV, Duke of Brittany in 1086 but they had no children. Two chroniclers of the time had very different views of Constance. Orderic Vitalius wrote that Constance was caring and attentive to the subjects of her husband and that her death on August 13, 1090, was the greatest loss for the inhabitants of the duchy. However, William of Malmesbury wrote that her “harsh and conservative manner” of government made Constance unpopular in the duchy, and her husband ordered her servants to poison her.
Unofficial Royalty: Constance of Normandy, Duchess of Brittany

August 13, 1752 – Birth of Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of Naples and Sicily, first wife of the future Ferdinando I, King of the Two Sicilies, at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria
Full name: Maria Carolina Louise Josepha Johanna Antonia
Maria Carolina was the thirteenth of the sixteen children and the tenth of the eleven daughters of Empress Maria Theresa, who was in her own right Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary, Queen of Croatia, and Queen of Bohemia, and Franz, Holy Roman Emperor, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Duke of Lorraine. During childhood, Maria Carolina was very close to her younger sister Maria Antonia, better known as the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. Maria Carolina married King Ferdinando IV of Naples and III of Sicily, who became King of the Two Sicilies after her death. Despite her dislike for her husband, Maria Carolina fulfilled her most important duty – to continue the dynasty. Maria Carolina and Ferdinando had seventeen children but only seven survived childhood. Seven of their children died from smallpox. However, four of their five surviving daughters married sovereigns, and their son Francesco succeeded his father.
Unofficial Royalty: Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of Naples and Sicily

August 13, 1792 – Birth of Queen Adelaide of the United Kingdom, wife of King William IV of the United Kingdom, born Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen at the Elisabethenburg Palace  in Meiningen, Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, now in Thuringia, Germany
Full name: Adelheid Luise Therese Karoline Amalie
After twenty-one-year-old Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only child of George, Prince of Wales, died delivering a stillborn son, the unmarried, aging sons of King George III began a frantic search for brides to provide for the succession. One of the sons was William, Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV).  William had never married but had lived for 20 years with actress Dorothea Jordan. Soon after the death of Princess Charlotte of Wales, negotiations began for the marriage of William to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, and the engagement was announced on April 19, 1818. William was 52 and Adelaide was 25. Adelaide loved children but was destined not to have one of her own. Sadly, Adelaide had two babies who died in early infancy, a miscarriage, and two stillbirths. A child of William and Adelaide would have succeeded to the throne as William’s two elder brothers (George IV and Frederick, Duke of York) had no surviving children.  Adelaide wrote to her widowed sister-in-law the Duchess of Kent, “My children are dead, but your child lives, and she is mine too.”  That child was the future Queen Victoria.
Unofficial Royalty: Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, Queen of the United Kingdom

August 13, 1904 – Death of Elizabeth Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington, Queen Victoria’s Mistress of the Robes 1861–1868, 1874–1880, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England;  at Stratfield Saye House in Hampshire, England
Born Lady Elizabeth Hay, daughter of George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale, she married Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington.
Unofficial Royalty: Elizabeth Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington

August 13, 1910 – Birth of Said bin Taimur, Sultan of Oman in Muscat, Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, now the Sultanate of Oman
In 1932, Said’s father, Taimur bin Feisal, abdicated. The new 21-year-old Sultan of Oman inherited a country that was heavily in debt to the United Kingdom and India. To break away from the United Kingdom (Oman had become a British protectorate in 1891) and maintain autonomy, Oman needed to regain economic independence. During his reign, Said maintained close oversight of Oman’s budget. Oil wealth would have allowed Said to modernize his country. However, his policies were extremely conservative and he opposed any modernization, therefore, Oman was isolated from the outside world. He did achieve Oman’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1951. In 1970, he was overthrown in a coup d’etat by his son Qaboos bin Said Al Said, Sultan of Oman. Said bin Taimur, former Sultan of Oman lived out the rest of his life in exile in the United Kingdom.
Unofficial Royalty: Said bin Taimur, Sultan of Oman

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Johanna Beatrix of Dietrichstein, Princess of Liechtenstein

by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Coat of Arms of the Princes of Dietrichstein; Credit – Wikipedia

Princess Johanna Beatrix of Dietrichstein was the wife of her maternal uncle Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein. Born circa 1625 in Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, now in Austria, she was the fifth of the eleven children and the fourth of the seven daughters of Maximilian, 2nd Prince of Dietrichstein, Baron of Hollenburg, Finkenstein, and Thalberg and his first wife Princess Anna Maria of Liechtenstein. Johanna Beatrix’s paternal grandparents were Siegmund II, Count of Dietrichstein, Baron of Hollenburg, Finkenstein and Thalberg and his second wife Johanna von der Leiter Baroness von der Leytter zu Behrn und Vicenz auf Amerang. Her maternal grandparents were Karl I, Prince of Liechtenstein and Baroness Anna Maria von Boskowitz and Černahora.

Johanna Beatrix had ten siblings:

Johanna Beatrix had six half-siblings from her father’s second marriage to Countess Sophie Agnes Mansfeld-Vorderort-Bornstädt:

  • Maria Josepha of Dietrichstein (1641 – 1676)
  • Franz Anton of Dietrichstein (1643 – 1721), unmarried, a Jesuit priest
  • Joseph Ignaz of Dietrichstein (born and died 1644), died in infancy
  • Philipp Sigmund of Dietrichstein (1651 – 1716), married (1) Baroness Marie Elisabeth Hofmann of Grünbühel-Strechau (2) Baroness Dorothea Josepha Jankovský z Vlašimi, no children
  • Maria Rosina Sophia of Dietrichstein (1652 – 1711), married (1) Count Franz Eusebius of Pötting, had three children, all died in infancy (2) Count Václav Ferdinand of Lobkowicz, had five children
  • Maria Charlotte of Dietrichstein (1655 – 1682)

Like his ancestors, Johanna Beatrix’s father Maximilian, 2nd Prince of Dietrichstein was in the service of the House of Habsburg. He served as a diplomat, Lord Chamberlain, Conference Minister, and a Privy Councillor for Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III. Because of this, Johanna Beatrix and her siblings grew up mostly in Vienna.

Johanna Beatrix’s husband Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein; Credit – Wikipedia

On August 6, 1644, nineteen-year-old Johanna Beatrix married her thirty-three-year-old maternal uncle Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein, son of Karl I, the first Prince of Liechtenstein and Baroness Anna Maria von Boskowitz and Černahora.

Johanna Beatrix and Karl Eusebius had nine children:

  • Princess Eleonora Maria of Liechtenstein (1647 – 1704), married Prince Johann Seyfried von Eggenberg, had seven children
  • Princess Anna Maria of Liechtenstein (1648 – 1654), died in childhood
  • Princess Maria Theresia of Liechtenstein (1649 – 1716), married James Leslie, 2nd Count Leslie of the Holy Roman Empire (his father was a Scottish lord, Alexander Leslie, 14th Baron of Balquhain, 1st Count of the Holy Roman Empire), had one son
  • Princess Johanna Beatrix of Liechtenstein (1650 – 1672), married her second cousin Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein, had two children
  • Prince Franz Dominik Eusebius of Liechtenstein (born and died 1652), died in infancy
  • Prince Karl Joseph of Liechtenstein (born and died 1652), died in infancy
  • Prince Franz Eusebius Wenzel of Liechtenstein (1654 – 1655), died in infancy
  • Princess Cäcilie of Liechtenstein (born and died 1655), died in infancy
  • Hans-Adam I, Prince of Liechtenstein (1657–1712), married his first cousin Princess Edmunda Maria Theresia of Dietrichstein, had seven children

Johanna Beatrix’s husband Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein began to invest in a personal art collection and he became one of the preeminent Central European art collectors of his time. He laid the foundation for the Liechtenstein Museum, formerly a private art museum in Vienna, Austria. It has not been run as a museum since 2012 and is now called Palais Liechtenstein. The Palais Liechtenstein remains home to part of the private art collection of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, one of the largest private collections in the world, started by Karl Eusebius and is available for visit by booked guided tours.

Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Vranov, Czech Republic; Credit – Von Ojin – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6438939

Johanna Beatrix predeceased Karl Eusebius, dying at the age of fifty, on March 26, 1676, in Brno, Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. She was buried in the Old Crypt at Chuch of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Vranov, Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. Karl Eusebius survived his wife by eight years, dying at the age of 72, on April 5, 1684. He was also buried in the Old Crypt at Chuch of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Karl Eusebius left his son and successor Hans-Adam I, Prince of Liechtenstein a rich inheritance and an extensive collection of artworks that were multiplied by his son and other descendants.

This article is the intellectual property of Unofficial Royalty and is NOT TO BE COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances. It is permissible to use a link that directs to Unofficial Royalty.

Works Cited

  • Flantzer, Susan. (2021) Karl Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein, Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/karl-eusebius-prince-of-liechtenstein/ (Accessed: 17 June 2023).
  • Johanna Beatrix von Dietrichstein-Nikolsburg (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Beatrix_von_Dietrichstein-Nikolsburg (Accessed: 17 June 2023).
  • Johanna Beatrix of Dietrichstein (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_Beatrix_of_Dietrichstein (Accessed: 17 June 2023).
  • Maximilian, Prince of Dietrichstein (2022) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian,_Prince_of_Dietrichstein (Accessed: 17 June 2023).
  • Maximilian von Dietrichstein (2023) Wikipedia (German). Available at: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_von_Dietrichstein (Accessed: 17 June 2023).
  • Princely House of Liechtenstein. 2023. Biographies of all Reigning Princes – 17th century. [online] Available at: <https://fuerstenhaus.li/en/die-biographien-aller-fuersten/17-century/> [Accessed 17 June 2023].

August 12: Today in Royal History

© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Tsesarevich Alexei of Russia; Credit – Wikipedia

August 12, 1503 – Birth of King Christian III of Denmark and Norway at Gottorp Castle in Schleswig, Duchy of Schleswig, now in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein
Christian III lived during the time of the Reformation. After the death of his father, the Catholic Frederik I, the Council of State had a lengthy discussion on whether the Danish throne should go to Christian, Frederik I’s Lutheran son from his first marriage, or Frederik I’s Catholic twelve-year-old son Johann from his second marriage. In 1534, Christian was proclaimed Christian III, King of Denmark at an assembly of Lutheran nobles in Jutland. However, the Council of State, made up of mostly Catholic bishops and nobles, refused to accept Christian III as king. Johann, Frederik’s son from his second marriage, was deemed too young and the council was more amenable to restoring the deposed King Christian II to the throne because he had supported both the Catholics and Protestant Reformers at various times. Christopher, Count of Oldenburg, the grandson of a brother of King Christian I of Denmark and the second cousin of both Christian II and Christian III, led the military alliance to restore King Christian II to the throne. What resulted was a two-year civil war, known as the Count’s Feud, from 1534 – 1536, between Protestant and Catholic forces, that led to King Frederik I’s son from his first marriage ascending the Danish throne as King Christian III. In 1537, Christian III was also recognized as King of Norway.
Unofficial Royalty: King Christian III of Denmark

August 12, 1674 – Birth of Marie of Lorraine, wife of Antonio I, Prince of Monaco in Paris, France
In 1688, in the Chapel Royal at the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France, 14-year-old Marie married 27-year-old Antonio, the future Prince of Monaco. Antonio and Marie had six daughters but only two survived to adulthood. The elder surviving daughter Louise-Hippolyte succeeded her father as the reigning Princess of Monaco. The marriage was not happy. In what seems to have become a Grimaldi tradition, Antonio had several illegitimate children from different affairs. Marie responded by finding lovers of her own. In 1701, Antonio became Prince of Monaco upon the death of his father Louis I, Prince of Monaco. Marie spent the last years of her life quietly, frequently returning to the French court. She died at the Prince’s Palace in Monaco on October 30, 1724, at the age of 50.
Unofficial Royalty: Marie of Lorraine, Princess of Monaco

August 12, 1762 – Birth of King George IV of the United Kingdom at St. James’s Palace in London, England
George’s birth marked the first time an heir had been born to a reigning monarch since the birth of King James II’s son in 1688. At birth, George was automatically Duke of Cornwall as the eldest son of the reigning monarch. Five days after his birth, George was created Prince of Wales. George was created a Knight of the Garter at age three and was introduced to ceremonial functions at an early age. In 1795, George married Caroline of Brunswick, his first cousin. This marriage is one of the worst ever royal marriages. Upon first seeing Caroline, George said to his valet, “Harris, I am not well. Pray get me a glass of brandy.” Caroline said George was fat and not as handsome as his portrait. It is doubtful that the couple spent more than a few nights together as husband and wife. Their only child, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was born nine months later. They both found each other equally unattractive and never lived together nor appeared in public together.  Their daughter Charlotte married Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (the uncle of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the future King of the Belgians), but she predeceased both her parents, dying in childbirth in 1817 at the age of 21, along with her son. Had Charlotte lived, she would have succeeded her father on the throne.
Unofficial Royalty: King George IV of the United Kingdom

August 12, 1779 – Birth of Georg, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Hanover, Electorate of Hanover, now in Lower Saxony, Germany
In 1807, Georg represented his father in Paris to negotiate the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz’s entry into the Confederation of the Rhine. He again represented his father seven years later at the Congress of Vienna. Through his efforts, Mecklenburg-Strelitz was raised to a Grand Duchy. Georg became Grand Duke in 1816, upon his father’s death. Georg found Mecklenburg-Strelitz in great debt and in need of much rebuilding. To eliminate much of the debt, he sold several towns to Prussia, towns that had been given to the Grand Duchy at the Congress of Vienna. He abolished serfdom and throughout his reign, he worked to raise the standards of education, building schools and instituting compulsory education. He made vast improvements to the infrastructure which would help to energize the grand duchy’s economy.
Unofficial Royalty: Georg, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

August 12, 1872 – Birth of Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor, England
Full name: Franziska Josepha Louise Augusta Marie Christina Helena
Marie Louise was the daughter of Princess Helena, third daughter of Queen Victoria, and Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1890, Marie Louise married Prince Aribert of Anhalt. However, the marriage was unsuccessful. In 1900, the marriage was dissolved by Marie Louise’s father-in-law, at her husband’s insistence. It has been speculated that the marriage was never consummated, and implied that Aribert was homosexual, and had been caught in a delicate situation by either his wife or his father. In her memoirs, Marie Louise states that even though her marriage was annulled, she maintained the vows she had made at her wedding, and would never remarry.
Unofficial Royalty: Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein

August 12, 1904 – Birth of Tsesarevich Alexei of Russia, son of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, at Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia
Alexei’s mother Empress Alexandra, born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, was the daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Prior to Alexei’s birth, Queen Victoria’s son Prince Leopold, two of her grandsons, and two of her great-grandsons had been born with hemophilia, a genetic disease that prevents the blood from clotting properly. One of the grandsons was Empress Alexandra’s brother Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine (Frittie) who died of a brain hemorrhage at age 2 ½ after falling out a low window to the ground below. Therefore, there was a risk that Empress Alexandra was a hemophilia carrier. Even before Alexei was two months old, when he suffered severe bleeding from his navel, it was evident that he too had been born with hemophilia. After Alexei’s birth, three more great-grandsons of Queen Victoria would also be diagnosed with the disease.  In 2009, DNA analysis done on the remains of Empress Alexandra, Alexei, and his sister Anastasia, the only sister who was a carrier, revealed that Alexei suffered from the rare, severe form of hemophilia, known as Hemophilia B or Christmas Disease. Throughout his short life, Alexei suffered greatly.
Unofficial Royalty: Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia
Unofficial Royalty: Hemophilia in Queen Victoria’s Descendants

August 12, 1932 – Birth of Queen Sirikit of Thailand, widow of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand; born Sirikit Kitiyakara at the home of Lord Vongsanuprabhand, her maternal grandfather, in Bangkok, Siam, now Thailand
Sirikit’s paternal grandfather Prince Kitiyakara Voralaksana was the twelfth son of King Chulalongkorn of Siam.  She shared a descent from King Chulalongkorn with her husband King Bhumibol Adulyadej and they are first cousins once removed.  While he was attending the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, King Bhumibol Adulyadej frequently visited Paris and it was there that he met his future wife Sirikit Kitiyakara who was the daughter of the Thai ambassador to France. Both Sirikit and King Bhumibol Adulyadej were studying at the Thai embassy and a relationship developed. They married in 1950, just a week before the king’s coronation. After the coronation, the 22-year-old king and the 17-year-old queen returned to their studies in Lausanne, Switzerland. The couple had three daughters and one son including the current King of Thailand, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Unofficial Royalty: Queen Sirikit of Thailand

August 12, 2013 – Death of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, son of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, at Huis ten Bosch Palace, his mother’s residence in The Hague; buried at the Dutch Reformed Cemetery in Lage Vuursche, Utrecht,  the Netherlands
On February 17, 2012, while on the royal family’s annual skiing holiday in Lech, Austria, Prince Friso was buried under an avalanche and was in a coma. According to medical reports, he had been buried for 25 minutes and suffered neurological injuries due to the lack of oxygen. On March 1, 2012, he was moved to Wellington Hospital in London, England, nearer to his family’s home. In the summer of 2013, he was declared to be in a minimally conscious state and no longer in need of hospital care. He was moved again on July 9, 2013, to Huis ten Bosch Palace, his mother’s residence in The Hague in the Netherlands. It was there that Prince Friso passed away at the age of 44.
Unofficial Royalty: Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau

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August 11: Today in Royal History

© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Nikolai Kulikovsky and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia; Credit – Wikipedia

August 11, 1467 – Birth of Mary of York, daughter of King Edward IV of England, at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England
Mary was the second of the ten children and the second of the seven daughters of King Edward IV of England, the first King of England from the House of York, and Elizabeth Woodville. In 1481, negotiations began for a marriage between Mary and Frederik, Duke of Holstein and Schleswig (the future King Frederik I of Denmark and Norway), the youngest son of King Christian I of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. However, at the end of 1481, Mary became seriously ill with an unknown illness and died, aged fourteen. She was interred on the north side of the altar in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle in Windsor, England at the side of her younger brother George, who had died three years earlier at the age of two. Mary’s parents were interred in a tomb nearby – her father in 1483 and her mother in 1492.
Unofficial Royalty: Mary of York

August 11, 1730 – Birth of Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Philippsthal, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of Anton Ulrich, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, in Philippsthal, Landgraviate of Hesse-Philippsthal, now in Hesse, Germany
In 1750, Charlotte Amalie married Anton Ulrich, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, who was 43 years older. He had previously contracted a morganatic marriage and had ten children, but they were not eligible to succeed to the ducal throne. This marriage was solely intended to provide an heir for Saxe-Meiningen. The couple had eight children. Following her husband’s death in 1763, Charlotte Amalie was appointed the sole guardian of their sons and served as Regent of Saxe-Meiningen.
Unofficial Royalty: Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Philippsthal, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen

August 11, 1763 – Birth of Luise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, in Langenburg, Principality of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, now in Baden-Württemberg, Germany
In 1782, Luise Eleonore married Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The couple had three children including Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the wife of King William IV of the United Kingdom. In December 1803, her husband died and her three-year-old son became Bernhard II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. Luise Eleonore became Regent and is credited with steering the duchy through some very difficult times.
Unofficial Royalty: Luise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen

August 11, 1863 – Birth of Ernst Gunther, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein in Dolzig, Kingdom of Prussia, now in Poland
In 1864, following the Second Schleswig War, the Duchy of Holstein and the Duchy of Schleswig became occupied territories of the German Confederation, and two years later, following the Austro-Prussian War, part of the new Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein. Just like his father, Prussia recognized Ernst Gunther as the mediatized duke of these two duchies, with the rank and all the titles. (mediatize – to annex monarchy to another state, while allowing certain rights to its former sovereign)
Unofficial Royalty: Ernst Gunther, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein

August 11, 1873 – Birth of Luise Charlotte of Saxe-Altenburg, Princess Eduard of Anhalt, wife of the future Eduard, Duke of Anhalt, in Altenburg, Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, now in Thuringia, Germany
In 1895, Luise Charlotte married Eduard, the future Duke of Anhalt. They had six children but were divorced on January 26, 1918, just a few months before he succeeded to the ducal throne. Luise Charlotte spent her remaining years in Altenburg, Germany where she died in 1953.
Unofficial Royalty: Luise Charlotte of Saxe-Altenburg, Princess Eduard of Anhalt

August 11, 1958 – Death of Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky, second husband of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, at 2130 Camilla Road, Cooksville in Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto; buried at York Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Grand Duchess Olga was in an unsuccessful marriage with Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg when, in 1903, she saw Nikolai at a military review. It was love at first sight.  Despite Olga’s continuing requests to her brother Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, permission for marriage was not granted until 1916. Olga and Nikolai had two sons. After the Russian Revolution, the couple and their sons lived in Denmark. After World War II, the Soviet Union notified the Danish government that Olga was accused of conspiracy against the Soviet government. Because they were fearful of assassination or kidnap attempts, Nikolai and Olga decided to move their family across the Atlantic to the relative safety of rural Canada.  By 1952, Olga and Nikolai’s sons had moved away and the farm became a burden so they sold it and moved to a five-room house at 2130 Camilla Road, Cooksville, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Toronto, where Nikolai died.
Unofficial Royalty: Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky

August 11, 1968 – Birth of Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, widow of Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, born Mabel Martine Wisse Smit in Pijnacker, the Netherlands
Mabel is the widow of Prince Friso, son of the former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who was critically injured in a skiing accident after being buried by an avalanche in 2012. He died eighteen months after the accident. Mabel is a prominent human rights activist and has served in leadership roles in several human rights organizations. Most notably, in 2008, she became the first CEO of The Elders, an international non-governmental organization of public figures noted as senior statesmen, peace activists, and human rights advocates founded by Nelson Mandela.
Unofficial Royalty: Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau

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Prince Dmitri Romanov

by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Prince Dmitri Romanov being awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in October 2016; Credit – Government.ru. http://government.ru/news/24797/

Prince Dmitri Romanov, a great-great-grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, was one of the disputed pretenders to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family from 2014 – 2016. The Headship of the Russian Imperial Family and succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, mainly due to disagreements over whether marriages in the Romanov family were equal marriages – a marriage between a Romanov dynast and a member of a royal or sovereign house. Dmitri inherited the claim upon the death in 2014 of his elder brother Prince Nicholas Romanov who had two daughters but no sons.

The line from Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia to Dmitri and his brother Nicholas:  Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia → Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia → Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia → Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia → brothers Prince Nicholas Romanov and Prince Dimitri Romanov

Born on May 17, 1926, at the villa of his grandfather Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia in  Antibes, France, where his parents were in exile, Nicholas Romanovich Romanov was the elder of the two children and the elder of the two sons of Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia, a great-grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, and Countess Praskovia Sheremeteva, a member of the House of Sheremeteva, one of the wealthiest and most influential Russian noble families. Nicholas’ paternal grandparents were Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia and Princess Milica of Montenegro, daughter of King Nikola I of Montenegro. His maternal grandparents were Count Dmitry Sergeevich Sheremetev and Countess Irina Illarionovna Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Prince Roman Petrovich, his wife Praskovia, holding Dmitri, and Nicholas; Credit – Time Note

Dmitri had one older brother:

Dmitri spent the early years of his life in Antibes, France, where his family employed a Russian staff and a Russian nanny for Dmitri and his brother. The family used the Julian calendar and spoke Russian and French. Dmitri received a traditional Russian education, following the old Russian school curriculum. In 1936, his family moved to Italy, where Dmitri continued his education, and the family lived at the Quirinal Palace in Rome with Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy and his wife Elena of Montenegro, Queen of Italy, who was the sister of Nicholas’ paternal grandmother Princess Milica of Montenegro. After the Italian monarchy was abolished in 1946, Dmitri’s family left for Egypt.

Dmitri worked as a mechanic at the Ford plant in Alexandria, Egypt. After three months of training, he received a mechanic’s certificate and could assemble the engine of the car and the fuel and cooling systems. Dimitri worked at the plant for three years and then got a job as a car sales manager. In 1952, after the overthrow of King Farouk I of Egypt, Dimitri returned to Italy, where he worked in a travel agency and then in the shipping company Fratelli d Amico.

In 1958, Dimitri and his friends went on a trip to Scandinavia by car. In Helsingør, Denmark, he met Johanna von Kauffman (1936 – 1989). Dmitri and Johanna were married in Copenhagen, Denmark on January 21, 1959, and settled in a suburb of Copenhagen. After his marriage, Dmitri learned Danish, got a job at Danske Bank, and became vice president of the bank in 1975. He remained at Danske Bank until his retirement in 1993. At the suggestion of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Dmitri, who had been stateless, became a Danish citizen in 1979. Dmitri and Johanna had no children, and Johanna died from cancer in 1989.

At a reception in 1991, Dmitri met Dorrit Reventlow, born in 1942 in Brazil to Danish parents. Dorrit’s father was from a noble Danish-German family, Reventlow. Dorrit had her own translation company, known as Translator Dorrit Romanoff & Associates after her marriage to Dmitri. On July 28, 1993, Dmitri and Dorrit were married in Kostroma, Russia, the first time a Romanov had been married in Russia since the fall of the dynasty in 1918. Before the wedding, Dorrit converted to Russian Orthodoxy taking the name Feodora Alekseevna.

President Vladimir Putin with Prince Dmitri Romanovich and his wife Dorrit at a state reception in 2006; Credit – By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7386249

Prince Vsevolod Ioannovich, Dmitri’s father Prince Roman Petrovich, and Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, the heads of the Konstantinovichi, Nikolaevichi, and Mihailovichi branches of the Russian Imperial Family came up with the idea of a family association of the Romanovs. The purpose of the association would be to strengthen the links between the family and protect it from impostors. Some preliminary work had been done but the association had not yet been created when Prince Roman Petrovich died in 1978. After looking through his father’s papers, Dmitri’s brother Nicholas found that everything was in place for the creation of the Romanov Family Association. In 1979, the Romanov Family Association was officially formed with Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich (a grandson of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and the son of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, the sister of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia) as president and Dmitri’s brother Prince Nicholas Romanov as vice-president. When Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich died in 1980, his younger brother Prince Vasili Alexandrovich became president and Nicholas remained vice president. In 1989, after the death of Vasili Alexandrovich, Dmitri’s brother Nicholas was elected the president of the Romanov Family Association. The majority of male-line descendants of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia are members of the Romanov Family Association.

In 1924, after Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich (son of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and brother of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia) whose body has never been found, was declared legally dead, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, a male-line grandson of Alexander II, Emperor of All Russia, declared himself Guardian of the Throne and later assumed the title Emperor of All Russia. Upon the death of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich in 1938, his son Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich was recognized as the Head of the Russian Imperial House by the Grand Dukes and Princes of Imperial Blood behind him in order of dynastic seniority and by the majority of the reigning houses of Europe.

The official position of the Romanov Family Association is that the rights of the family to the Russian throne were suspended when Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia abdicated for himself and for his son Tsarevich Alexei in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Michael declined to accept the throne unless the people were allowed to vote for the continuation of the monarchy or for a republic. Of course, that vote never happened. Emperor Michael II, as he was legally pronounced by Nicholas II, did not abdicate but empowered the Provisional Government to rule. Michael’s “reign” did not end until his execution in 1918.

After the Russian Revolution, surviving members of the House of Romanov were in exile and settled in Europe with close or distant relatives. Because of their situation, many male Romanovs were unable to choose a spouse from European sovereign houses, and married women from noble and famous Russian families – Kurakins, Orlovs, Chavchavadze, Sheremetevs, Vorontsov-Dashkovs, Kutuzovs, Golitsyns. Regarding unequal marriages, Prince Nicholas Romanov said, “Our parents married commoners. So what? We have married commoners. Again, so what? There was nobody to ask us to renounce our rights, so we married without renouncing them, and we and our children still have rights to the throne of Russia.”

The headship of the House of Romanov has been contested since the death of the last undisputed male dynast Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia in 1992. Upon his death, competing claims over the headship of the House of Romanov emerged between Prince Nicholas Romanov and Grand Duke Vladimir’s daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna. Prince Nicholas’ claim was based on a 1911 Ukase issued by Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia that the equal marriage rule applied only to Grand Dukes (the sons and grandsons of an emperor) and that princes (the great-grandsons onward of an emperor) could marry women of “good standing” for their marriage to be dynastic and therefore transmit succession and dynastic rights to their children, and that women, namely Maria Vladimirovna, could succeed only on the total extinction of the male line. The Romanov Family Association recognized Prince Nicholas Romanov as the senior male dynastic representative and head of the family on December 31, 1992, in Paris, France and this was symbolically re-confirmed on Russian soil after the state burial of Emperor Nicholas II and his family in 1998. The Romanov Family Association further stated that they consider the marriage of Maria Vladimirovna’s parents to be unequal.

Pre-revolutionary Romanov house law allowed only those born of an equal marriage between a Romanov dynast and a member of a royal or sovereign house to be in the line of succession to the Russian throne. The throne could only pass to a female and through the female line upon the extinction of all legitimately-born, male dynasts. Maria Vladimiovna’s mother Princess Leonida of Bagration belonged to a family that had been kings in Georgia from medieval times until the early 19th century. However, no male line ancestor of Leonida had reigned as a king in Georgia since 1505 and her branch of the Bagrations, the House of Mukhrani, had been naturalized as non-ruling nobility of Russia after Georgia was annexed to the Russian empire in 1801. There is a precedent that a marriage between the House of Romanov and the House of Bragation-Mukhrani was unequal. The House of Bragation-Mukhrani did not possess sovereign status and was not recognized as an equal marriage by Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia for the purpose of dynastic marriages at the time of the marriage of Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna of Russia and Prince Konstantine Bragation-Mukhrani in 1911, thirty-seven years before the marriage of Princess Leonida of Bragation-Mukhrani and Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia. The couple married but Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna was required to renounce her rights to the Russian throne and she was no longer a member of the House of Romanov because the marriage was unequal.

Neither Prince Dmitri nor his elder brother Prince Nicholas acted for the restoration of the monarchy or engage in dynastic activities such as the distribution of Russian imperial titles and orders. Maria Vladimirovna claims the status of de jure Empress of All Russia, styles herself as Grand Duchess and her son George Mikhailovich as Grand Duke and Tsesarevich, the title for the heir apparent, and actively distributes Russian imperial orders, all of which have been condemned by the Romanov Family Association.

The Romanov Family Association does not recognize Maria Vladimirovna as either the head of the family or the head of the House of Romanov because they consider the marriage of her parents to be unequal. With the exception of Maria Vladimirovna, Prince Nicholas was recognized by the rest of the family as head of the Romanov family. See The Romanov Family Association’s article Succession of the Imperial House of Russia for more information.

After Dmitri retired from Danske Bank in 1993, he became very active in charitable causes. Along with seven other Romanov princes, under the auspices of the Romanov Family Association, Dmitri met in Paris, France in June 1992, where it was decided to create the Romanov Fund for Russia. Dmitri visited Russia in July 1993 on a fact-finding mission to decide on which areas the charity should focus. Dimitri served as chairman of the Romanov Fund for Russia. He was also chairman of the Prince Dimitri Romanov Charity Fund, which he founded in 2006.

Prince Dmitri Romanov (left) and Prince Nicholas Romanov (second left) stand at the tomb of Empress Maria Feodorovna during a burial ceremony in the royal crypt at the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg on September 28, 2006

Because of the connections he had, Dmitri lobbied Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and President Vladimir Putin of Russia to allow the transfer of the remains of Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, from Denmark to Russia so she could be buried alongside her husband Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia. Dmitri and his brother Nicholas were among the Romanovs present on September 28, 2006, at a service for Empress Maria Feodorovna at Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and then at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, both in St. Petersburg, where she was interred next to her husband Emperor Alexander III.

Prince Dmitri Romanov attends a press conference on July 16, 2008 in St. Petersburg on the eve of the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the murders of Nicholas II and his family

Upon the death of his elder brother Prince Nicholas Romanov in 2014, Dmitri inherited the claim to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family because his elder brother had no sons. Dmitri also became president of the Romanov Family Association. However, his claim to the headship and his term as president lasted only two years. In December 2016, Dmitri’s health suddenly and sharply declined, requiring hospitalization. On December 31, 2016, Prince Dmitri Romanov, aged 90, died in a hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. With his death, the male line of the Nikolaevichi branch of the Russian Imperial Family, descendants of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia, son of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, became extinct.

The funeral was held on January 10, 2017, at the Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Church in Copenhagen, Denmark. Dmitri’s coffin was covered with the Romanov flag – black, yellow, and white with a double-headed eagle. Among the wreaths were ones from Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation. Dmitri was buried at Vedbæk Cemetery in Rudersdal, Denmark next to his first wife Johanna.

This article is the intellectual property of Unofficial Royalty and is NOT TO BE COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances. It is permissible to use a link that directs to Unofficial Royalty.

Works Cited

  • Dorrit Reventlow (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorrit_Reventlow (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Flantzer, Susan. (2016) Obituary – Prince Dimitri Romanovich Romanov (1926-2016), Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/prince-dimitri-romanovich-romanov-1926-2016/ (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Flantzer, Susan. (2023) Prince Nicholas Romanov, Unofficial Royalty. Available at: https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/prince-nicholas-romanov/ (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Funeral of Russian Prince Dimitri Romanovich (2017) The Siver Times | News and Analytics. Available at: https://sivertimes.com/funeral-of-russian-prince-dimitri-romanovich-his-widow-and-his-relatives-in-mourning/14579 (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Massie, Robert K. (1995) The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. New York: Random House
  • Prince Dimitri Romanov (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Dimitri_Romanov (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Roman_Petrovich_of_Russia (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Романов, Димитрий Романович (2023) Wikipedia (Russian). Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%94%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Романов, Роман Петрович (2023) Wikipedia (Russian). Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • The Romanov Family Association. Available at: http://www.romanovfamily.org/index.html (Accessed: 10 August 2023).

Prince Nicholas Romanov

by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2023

Prince Nicholas Romanov; Credit – www.nashagazeta.ch

Prince Nicholas Romanov, a great-great-grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, was one of the disputed pretenders to the Headship of the Russian Imperial Family from 1992 – 2014. The Headship of the Russian Imperial Family and succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, mainly due to disagreements over whether marriages in the Romanov family were equal marriages – a marriage between a Romanov dynast and a member of a royal or sovereign house.

The line from Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia to Nicholas and his brother Dimitri who succeeded Nicholas in his claim: Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia → Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia → Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia → Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia → brothers Prince Nicholas Romanov and Prince Dimitri Romanov

Born on September 26, 1922, at the villa of his grandfather Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia in Cap d’Antibes, France, where his parents were in exile, Nicholas Romanovich Romanov was the elder of the two children and the elder of the two sons of Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia, a great-grandson of Nicholas I, Emperor of All Russia, and Countess Praskovia Sheremeteva, a member of the House of Sheremeteva, one of the wealthiest and most influential Russian noble families. Nicholas’ paternal grandparents were Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia and Princess Milica of Montenegro, daughter of King Nikola I of Montenegro. His maternal grandparents were Count Dmitry Sergeevich Sheremetev and Countess Irina Illarionovna Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Prince Roman Petrovich, his wife Praskovia holding Dmitri, and Nicholas; Credit – Time Note

Nicholas had one younger brother:

Nicholas spent the early years of his life in Antibes, France, where his family employed a Russian staff and a Russian nanny for Nicholas and his brother. The family used the Julian calendar and spoke Russian and French. Nicholas received a traditional Russian education, following the old Russian school curriculum. He later said that as a child, everything around him was so Russian that he did not realize he was living in France and not Russia until he was six years old. In 1936, his family moved to Italy, where Nicholas attended the Humanitarian Academy in Rome, and the family lived at the Quirinal Palace in Rome with Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy and his wife Elena of Montenegro, Queen of Italy, who was the sister of Nicholas’ paternal grandmother Princess Milica of Montenegro. After the Italian monarchy was abolished in 1946, Nicholas’ family left for Egypt, where Nicholas was involved in the purchasing and sale of Turkish tobacco. In 1950, Nicholas returned to Italy and worked in Rome for the Austin Motor Company until 1954.

Prince Nicholas Romanov and his wife Sveva; Credit – https://tsarnicholas.org/

In 1950, Nicholas became acquainted with Countess Sveva della Gherardesca, the daughter of Count Walfred della Gherardesca and Nicoletta de Piccolellis, from the noble Tuscan family, the House della Gherardesca. Nicholas and Sveva were married in a civil ceremony in Florence, Italy on December 31, 1951, and in a Russian Orthodox ceremony at the Church of the St. Michael the Archangel in Cannes, France on January 21, 1952.

Nicholas and Sveva had three daughters:

  • Princess Natalia Nikolaevna Romanova (1952), married Giuseppe Consolo (link in Italian), an Italian politician, had one son and one daughter Nicoletta Romanoff, an Italian actress
  • Princess Elisaveta Nikolaevna Romanova (born 1956), married Mauro Bonacini, had one son and one daughter
  • Princess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova (born 1961), married (1) Giambattista Alessandri, no children, divorced (2) Giancarlo Tirotti, had one daughter

Following the death of his wife’s brother, Nicholas managed his wife’s property and business in Tuscany, Italy, a large farm that bred cattle and produced wine. The farm was sold in 1982 and Nicholas and Sveva moved to Rougemont, Switzerland where they lived for part of the year, and then lived in Italy with their daughters for the other part of the year. Nicholas was a stateless person, a refugee from birth, and traveled on a letter issued by the King of Greece. He finally became a citizen of Italy in 1988. Nicholas visited Russia for the first time in June 1992 when he acted as a tour guide for a group of businessmen.

Prince Vsevolod Ioannovich, Nicholas’ father Prince Roman Petrovich, and Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, the heads of the Konstantinovichi, Nikolaevichi, and Mihailovichi branches of the Russian Imperial Family came up with the idea of a family association of the Romanovs. The purpose of the association would be to strengthen the links between the family and protect it from impostors. Some preliminary work had been done but the association had not yet been created when Prince Roman Petrovich died in 1978. After looking through his father’s papers, Nicholas found that everything was in place for the creation of the Romanov Family Association. In 1979, the Romanov Family Association was officially formed with Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich (a grandson of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and the son of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, the sister of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia) as president and Prince Nicholas Romanov as vice-president. When Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich died in 1980, his younger brother Prince Vasili Alexandrovich became president and Nicholas remained vice president. In 1989, after the death of Vasili Alexandrovich, Nicholas was elected the president of the Romanov Family Association. The majority of male-line descendants of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia are members of the Romanov Family Association.

In 1924, after Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich (son of Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia and brother of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia) whose body has never been found, was declared legally dead, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, a male-line grandson of Alexander II, Emperor of All Russia, declared himself Guardian of the Throne and later assumed the title Emperor of All Russia. Upon the death of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich in 1938, his son Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich was recognized as the Head of the Russian Imperial House by the Grand Dukes and Princes of Imperial Blood behind him in order of dynastic seniority and by the majority of the reigning houses of Europe.

The official position of the Romanov Family Association is that the rights of the family to the Russian throne were suspended when Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia abdicated for himself and for his son Tsarevich Alexei in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Michael declined to accept the throne unless the people were allowed to vote for the continuation of the monarchy or for a republic. Of course, that vote never happened. Emperor Michael II, as he was legally pronounced by Nicholas II, did not abdicate but empowered the Provisional Government to rule. Michael’s “reign” did not end until his execution in 1918.

After the Russian Revolution, surviving members of the House of Romanov were in exile and settled in Europe with close or distant relatives. Because of their situation, many male Romanovs were unable to choose a spouse from European sovereign houses, and married women from noble and famous Russian families – Kurakins, Orlovs, Chavchavadze, Sheremetevs, Vorontsov-Dashkovs, Kutuzovs, Golitsyns. Regarding unequal marriages, Prince Nicholas Romanov said, “Our parents married commoners. So what? We have married commoners. Again, so what? There was nobody to ask us to renounce our rights, so we married without renouncing them, and we and our children still have rights to the throne of Russia.”

The headship of the House of Romanov has been contested since the death of the last undisputed male dynast Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia in 1992. Upon his death, competing claims over the headship of the House of Romanov emerged between Prince Nicholas Romanov and Grand Duke Vladimir’s daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna. Prince Nicholas’ claim was based on a 1911 Ukase issued by Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia that the equal marriage rule applied only to Grand Dukes (the sons and grandsons of an emperor) and that princes (the great-grandsons onward of an emperor) could marry women of “good standing” for their marriage to be dynastic and therefore transmit succession and dynastic rights to their children, and that women, namely Maria Vladimirovna, could succeed only on the total extinction of the male line. The Romanov Family Association recognized Prince Nicholas Romanov as the senior male dynastic representative and head of the family on December 31, 1992, in Paris, France and this was symbolically re-confirmed on Russian soil after the state burial of Emperor Nicholas II and his family in 1998. The Romanov Family Association further stated that they consider the marriage of Maria Vladimirovna’s parents to be unequal.

Pre-revolutionary Romanov house law allowed only those born of an equal marriage between a Romanov dynast and a member of a royal or sovereign house to be in the line of succession to the Russian throne. The throne could only pass to a female and through the female line upon the extinction of all legitimately-born, male dynasts. Maria Vladimiovna’s mother Princess Leonida of Bagration belonged to a family that had been kings in Georgia from medieval times until the early 19th century. However, no male line ancestor of Leonida had reigned as a king in Georgia since 1505 and her branch of the Bagrations, the House of Mukhrani, had been naturalized as non-ruling nobility of Russia after Georgia was annexed to the Russian empire in 1801. There is a precedent that a marriage between the House of Romanov and the House of Bragation-Mukhrani was unequal. The House of Bragation-Mukhrani did not possess sovereign status and was not recognized as an equal marriage by Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia for the purpose of dynastic marriages at the time of the marriage of Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna of Russia and Prince Konstantine Bragation-Mukhrani in 1911, thirty-seven years before the marriage of Princess Leonida of Bragation-Mukhrani and Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia. The couple married but Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna was required to renounce her rights to the Russian throne and she was no longer a member of the House of Romanov because the marriage was unequal.

Prince Nicholas Romanov did not act for the restoration of the monarchy or engage in dynastic activities such as the distribution of Russian imperial titles and orders. Maria Vladimirovna claims the status of de jure Empress of All Russia, styles herself as Grand Duchess and her son George Mikhailovich as Grand Duke and Tsesarevich, the title for the heir apparent, and actively distributes Russian imperial orders, all of which have been condemned by the Romanov Family Association.

After the discovery and identification of the remains of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, his family, and the servants who were killed with the family, Maria Vladimirovna proposed the remains be divided into three groups – Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna be interred at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia, the traditional Romanov burial site, the three daughters who were identified be interred at the Grand Ducal Mausoleum located on the left side of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, and the servants be interred in Ekaterinburg, Russia where the murders occurred. (Note: The remains of Tsesarevich Alexei and his sister Grand Duchess Maria were discovered in 2007, and were positively identified in 2009. However, the remains of Alexei and Maria have not yet been buried. The Russian Orthodox Church has questioned whether the remains are authentic and blocked the burial.)

This proposal shocked Prince Nicholas Romanov and the other members of the Romanov Family Association. Their original position was to bury all the remains together in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Prince Nicholas stated the Romanov Family Association’s position: “We Romanovs want everybody, every victim of that massacre, to be buried together, in the same place, in the same cathedral, and, I’d say, in the same tomb. You want to bury the tsar in the Peter and Paul Fortress cathedral? Good! Then bury the doctor, the maid, and the cook with them, in the tsar’s mausoleum. They have been lying together for seventy-three years. They are the only ones who never betrayed the family. They deserve to be honored at the same time, in the same place.”

Prince Nicholas Romanov led the Romanov family at the formal burial of Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their daughters Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia, their physician Dr. Eugene Botkin, their cook Ivan Mikhailovich Kharitonov, their footman Alexei Yegorovich Trupp, and their maid Anna Stepanovna Demidova on July 17, 1998, the 80th anniversary of their deaths, in St. Catherine Chapel at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Because, at the time, the Russian Orthodox Church did not recognize the authenticity of the remains, Maria Vladimirovna did not attend the formal burial. However, the Russian government’s refusal to recognize her status as the official Head of the Romanov House is also given as a reason.

Prince Dmitri Romanov (left) and Prince Nicholas Romanov (second left) stand at the tomb of Empress Maria Feodorovna during a burial ceremony in the royal crypt at the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg on September 28, 2006

Prince Nicholas and his brother Prince Dmitri lobbied Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and President Vladimir Putin of Russia to allow the transfer of the remains of Empress Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, from Denmark to Russia so she could be buried alongside her husband Alexander III, Emperor of All Russia. Nicholas and Dmitri were both present on September 28, 2006, at a service for Empress Maria Feodorovna at Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and then at the Peter and Paul Cathedral, both in St. Petersburg, where she was interred next to her husband Emperor Alexander III.

Prince Nicholas Romanov died on September 15, 2014, eleven days before his 92nd birthday, in Bolgheri, Tuscany, Italy. His funeral was held on September 17, 2014, at the Church of Saints Jacob and Christopher in Bolgheri, Tuscany, Italy. He was interred in the crypt of the Counts della Gherardesoc, the burial site of his wife’s family, at the Basilica of Saint Francis in Pisa, Tuscany, Italy.

This article is the intellectual property of Unofficial Royalty and is NOT TO BE COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances. It is permissible to use a link that directs to Unofficial Royalty.

Works Cited

  • Massie, Robert K. (1995) The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. New York: Random House
  • Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia (2021) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Romanov,_Prince_of_Russia (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Prince Nicholas Romanov – Obituary (2014) The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11121560/Prince-Nicholas-Romanov-obituary.html (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Roman_Petrovich_of_Russia (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Романов, Николай Романович (2023) Wikipedia (Russian). Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B9_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • Романов, Роман Петрович (2023) Wikipedia (Russian). Available at: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 (Accessed: 10 August 2023).
  • The Romanov Family Association. Available at: http://www.romanovfamily.org/index.html (Accessed: 10 August 2023).