THE RUSSIAN SUCCESSION IN 2013, SIMPLIFIED
Reproduced by kind permission of the author
Brien Purcell Horan
Copyright 2013 and 2014 by
Brien Purcell Horan ©
In the run up to
festivities planned in Russia in 2013 to mark the four hundredth anniversary of
the accession of the House of Romanoff to the Russian throne, the purpose of
this article is to simplify the succession issue.[2] Because
the Russian dynasty lost its throne nearly a century ago, there is only one way
to establish who are the members of the dynasty today and who is its head: that
is, by analyzing the succession laws which governed the Imperial House from
1797, when Emperor Paul I instituted them, through the fall of the monarchy in
1917 to the present day. In his Act of 4 April 1797 announcing the succession
laws, Emperor Paul proclaimed, “…Having
established the order of succession, I shall explain its aim, which is this: that
the State never be without a successor; that the successor be determined by the
law itself; that there be not the slightest doubt as to the successor…”
The term “succession
laws” refers to the State Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire on Succession
to the Throne and the Statute of the Imperial Family. A key provision of these
dynastic laws, still in effect today, may strike some twenty-frst century
readers as old-fashioned. In order to pass dynastic status to his children, a
member of the Russian dynasty was required to marry a member of a royal or
sovereign house. Emperor Alexander I instituted this requirement in 1820, and
successive emperors through Nicholas II enforced it strictly. In exile, the
Grand Dukes Kirill and Wladimir, successive heads of the dynasty from 1918 to
1992, fully recognized its binding effect. The equal marriage rule first took
root in the Habsburg dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, and it still applies
today to many formerly ruling dynasties of the old German Empire. Until very
recently it was closely enforced by the Spanish dynasty too, a legacy of
Habsburg rule in Spain. A union contracted by a Russian dynast with a royal
princess was called an equal marriage. The children of the marriage were
members of the dynasty. A marriage with a commoner, that is, a wife who was not
a member of a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty, was described as a
morganatic or unequal marriage. The children of the marriage were not members
of the dynasty.
In summary, the issue of the headship of the Russian dynasty is
inseparable from the succession laws, including their equal marriage
requirement. In this respect, the words of the late historian Prince Cyril
Toumanoff are appropriate: “Monarchy, if it is true
monarchy and not a caricature, is inseparable from Legitimacy. Legitimacy, in
turn, means Legality, the faithful observance of both the spirit and the letter
of the Law. Law, finally, is above and independent of human practice. Thus,
Monarchical Legitimism must survive historical adversities, and the inalienable
rights of a dynasty must continue to exist irrespective of whether that dynasty
actually rules or has been forcibly prevented by historical circumstances from
holding power.”[3]
I. THE DYNASTY IN EXILE, 1918 TO 1992
On 1 January 1917,
Emperor Nicholas II began the final weeks of his reign. Those closest to him in
the line of succession to the throne were his son, Tsesarevich Alexei (first in
line), his only living brother the Grand Duke Michael (second in line), and his
senior first cousin, Grand Duke Kirill (third in line).
In a document dated 2
March 1917 at 3 p.m., Nicholas II abdicated on behalf of himself and his son
Alexei and sought to pass the throne to his brother, Michael. The emperor’s abdication
on behalf of his minor son Alexei was technically invalid, because it did not
comply with the succession laws. A dynast had no legal right to waive or
renounce the succession rights of a minor child who himself was a full member
of the dynasty. In the revolutionary chaos and violence of March 1917, however,
one can understand a devoted father’s wish not to be separated from a son who
suffered from haemophilia, an incurable and then nearly always fatal disease. In
any event, on 3 March 1917, the Grand Duke Michael declined to accept the
throne.
The monarchy then
fell. Nicholas II and his family were made prisoners, as was the Grand Duke
Michael. Grand Duke Kirill and his family, including his pregnant wife (born
Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, a Princess of Great Britain and Ireland
and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria), escaped from St. Petersburg to Finland,
which had been part of the Russian empire and where they went into hiding. Their
only son, Prince Wladimir of Russia, was born there in August 1917.
In June 1918, the
Bolsheviks secretly executed Nicholas II’s brother Michael near Perm, Russia. The
following month, on 17 July 1918, Nicholas II and his family, including his son
Alexei, were murdered in Ekaterinburg.
Under the succession
laws, Grand Duke Kirill automatically succeeded on 17 July 1918 as head of the
dynasty and, to legitimist Russian monarchists, as emperor. Article 53 of the
Russian succession law states: "On
the demise of an emperor, his heir accedes to the Throne by virtue of the law
of succession itself, which confers this right upon him. The accession of an
emperor to the Throne is counted from the day of the demise of his predecessor."
Due to conflicting information and rumors emanating from Russia, however,
Kirill waited until 1924, when he finally became convinced that those senior to
him had in fact been murdered, to proclaim himself emperor and head of the
dynasty and to proclaim his only son, Wladimir, as the Grand Duke-Tsesarevich,
that is, as his heir.
Kirill’s 31
August/13 September 1924 succession proclamation saddened his aunt, the 76 year
old Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Nicholas II. Her reaction was not rooted in
any objection to Kirill’s legal rights, which she acknowledged, but derived instead
from her refusal until her death in 1928 to accept that her sons and grandson
were dead. Writing to the Dowager Empress on 14 September 1924, the day after he
had announced his assumption of the title of emperor, Kirill promised his aunt
that he would step aside if her sons or grandson turned out to be alive: “Should
the miracle in which you believe occur and your beloved sons and grandson all
be alive, then I will be the first to express my allegiance to my Legitimate
Sovereign and will place at his feet all that I have accomplished…Don’t let me
down in this difficult moment of my life such as none of our ancestors had to
live through.”[4]
Shortly afterwards, in a 1924
letter to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich of Russia, the Dowager Empress,
while not disputing Kirill’s eventual succession rights, wrote: “…There is no definite news up to now
about the fate of my beloved sons and grandson. I therefore consider the act of
Grand Duke Kirill’s proclamation as premature. Nobody is in the position to
deprive me of the last gleam of hope…”
- Grand Duke Kirill of Russia (first in
line)
- Grand Duke Wladimir of Russia (second in
line)
- Grand Duke Boris of Russia (third in line)
- Grand Duke Andrew Wladimirovich of Russia
(fourth in line)
- Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich of Russia (fifth
in line)
- Prince Vsevolod of Russia (sixth in line)
- Prince Gavriel of Russia (seventh in line)
- Prince George Constantinovich of Russia (eighth
in line)
- Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia
(twelfth in line)
- Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of
Russia (thirteenth in line)
- Prince Andrew Alexandrovich of Russia (fourteenth
in line)
- Prince Feodor of Russia (fifteenth in
line)
- Prince Nikita of Russia (sixteenth in
line)
- Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich of Russia (seventeenth
in line)
- Prince Rostislav of Russia (eighteenth in
line).
The most junior
male dynast, nineteenth in line in 1924, Prince Vassily of Russia (1907-1989),
did not take a position on the succession question in the 1920s. His father
Grand Duke Alexander of Russia (thirteenth in line) and his 5 older brothers
all expressed fidelity to the Grand Duke Kirill. But Grand Duke Alexander did
not ask his youngest son to sign their 1924 declaration of loyalty because
Vassily was then a minor.[6]
The principal resistance from within the dynasty to forty-seven year
old Kirill’s 1924 proclamation came from sixty-eight year old Grand Duke
Nicholas Nikolayevich (ninth in line in 1924 and sixteenth in line on 1 January
1917). Nicholas Nikolayevich never publicly disputed Kirill’s position as the
senior living dynast. But he declined to sign a statement of allegiance to
Kirill. And as was their custom, Nicholas Nikolayevich’s devoted younger and
only brother Grand Duke Peter (tenth in line in 1924) and the latter’s only son
Prince Roman of Russia (eleventh in line in 1924) followed the old grand duke’s
lead. It is widely thought that, in the event the monarchy was restored,
Nicholas Nikolayevich, then the oldest living male dynast, believed that he
would be the most suitable Romanoff to sit on the throne, not based on his
distant place in the line of succession but based upon the respect and prestige
he had earned as commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the first year of
World War I. A few weeks after Kirill’s 1924 announcement, Nicholas
Nikolayevich, not to be outdone, announced he was assuming “supreme leadership”
of all Russian armed forces in exile. And when a couple of monarchist groups
announced their support of him as future tsar, he did nothing to discourage them.
But his health soon started to fail, and he died in early 1929. Nicholas
Nikolayevich was strongly slavophile and anti-German. Encouraged by his royal
Montenegrin wife, he perhaps also had disdain for the strict Germanic
succession rules of male primogeniture instituted in 1797 by Tsar Paul. Before
Paul I, the question of who would be the next tsar was often uncertain, and
more than once the Romanoff with the strongest support had simply seized the
crown.[7]
Today the only male descendants of the male line of the Nikolayevichi
branch are Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) [9] and his younger
brother Dmitry, who, as sons of the morganatic marriage of Prince Roman of
Russia, are not dynasts. Despite the unwillingness of the 3 Nikolayevichi male
dynasts to agree to issue a declaration of loyalty to Kirill in the 1920s, even
the morganatic Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) has publicly conceded after the
fact that Kirill and Wladimir were the successive lawful Heads of the Imperial
House. In a published letter to a French magazine in 1992, he described
Kirill’s position as head of the dynasty as “incontestable”
(indisputable).[10]
Thus his unfounded assertion that he himself succeeded as dynastic head in
April 1992 on the death of Grand Duke Wladimir (an assertion analyzed below) is
an obvious acknowledgement that Wladimir was indeed head of the Imperial House.[11]
In conclusion, despite
whatever debates may have raged at different times in the past, the position of
the Grand Dukes Kirill and Wladimir as successive dynastic heads was
unquestioned by the overwhelming majority of senior dynasts. This is an
important point, because the pronouncements of these two Heads of the Imperial
House during the decades of exile are highly relevant to the succession
question.
II. THE EQUAL MARRIAGE RULE OF THE RUSSIAN
DYNASTY
Here are several
relevant extracts from the principal laws and documents which specify that
membership of the dynasty is limited to children of equal marriages only and
that the children of morganatic marriages are not dynasts.
“188. A
person of the Imperial Family who has entered into a marriage alliance with a
person of a status unequal to his, that is, not belonging to any royal or
ruling house, cannot pass on to that person, or to the posterity that might
issue from such a marriage, the rights which belong to members of the Imperial
Family.
Addendum (1911): Henceforward none of
the grand dukes or grand duchesses may enter into a marriage with a person of
unequal status, that is, not belonging to a royal or ruling house.”
Thus, again, the
children born of a marriage of a member of the Imperial House with a commoner
cannot themselves be members of the Imperial House. And the Addendum, inserted
by Nicholas II in 1911 at the time he was trying to prevent the marriage of his
grand ducal brother to his mistress (a commoner), meant that henceforth the
emperor would not give permission to the grand dukes, the senior members of the
dynasty, to marry non-royal spouses.
The marriages of the
Grand Duke Paul of Russia (1860-1919), uncle of Nicholas II, illustrate how the
equal marriage rule operated. Grand Duke Paul married twice and had a son by
each wife. His first wife was Princess Alexandra of Greece, a member of a royal
house. Because this was an equal marriage, their only son, Grand Duke Dmitry of
Russia (1891-1941), was a member of the Russian Imperial House. Paul’s second
wife was a commoner, Mme. von Pistohlkors. Because this was a morganatic
marriage, their only son, Vladimir Paley (1897-1918), was not a member of the
Russian Imperial House. In 1915, Nicholas II gave Vladimir Paley and his mother
the morganatic titles of Prince and Princess Paley. These were noble, non-royal
titles, quite different from the dynastic title of Prince of Russia. Nicholas
II gave them the surname of Paley, because, as explained in more detail later,
in imperial Russia it was forbidden for morganatic descendants of dynasts to
bear the name Romanoff, which was the surname of the dynasty.
Second, Articles 36 and 126 of the succession laws are also very
straightforward. Article 36 states:
“Children
issuing from a marriage of a person of the Imperial Family with a person not
having the corresponding dignity, that is to say, not belonging to a royal or
ruling house, have no right of succession to the Throne.”
Article 126 specifies:
“All persons of imperial blood who are born of a marriage between a person
of imperial blood and a person of corresponding birth which marriage was
authorized by the reigning emperor are recognized as members of the Imperial
House."
Third, Nicholas II in 1911 issued a similarly clear
pronouncement that, although he would not prohibit Princes of Russia, the
junior dynasts, from marrying suitable non-royal wives, the children of such
morganatic marriages would not be members of the dynasty and would not have the
right to the Romanoff surname and coat of arms. This document[14]
is a letter dated 14 June 1911, sent on behalf of Nicholas II by Baron Vladimir
Frederiks, Nicholas II’s Minister of the Imperial Court, to Grand Duke Nicholas
Nikolayevich, who had presided at a meeting of grand dukes convened to advise
the emperor on the question of permitting dynasts to contract unequal
marriages.[15] The
letter informs Grand Duke Nicholas of the following firm decisions made by the
emperor: 1) Grand Dukes of Russia may not contract unequal marriages; 2)
Princes of Russia (“Princes of the Imperial Blood”), if they receive the
emperor’s specific permission and if they renounce their succession rights
beforehand, may contract unequal marriages; and 3) “surnames and coats of arms
of the spouses and descendants of Princes of the Imperial Blood who have
contracted marriages with persons not possessing corresponding rank will be
granted in each specific case by the Lord Emperor.” The letter also states that
Nicholas II was completely unwilling to countenance recognition of any middle
category between that of “equal marriage” and of “unequal marriage.”[16]
In the 1980s, Nicholas
Romanoff (1922-2014), the morganatic son of Prince Roman of Russia, who is
discussed in more detail below, twisted the 1911 addendum to Article 188 (the
addendum holding that henceforth no grand duke would be permitted to marry a
non-royal bride) out of context to construct an illogical argument: namely,
that, because of this addendum, Princes of Russia could marry morganatically
and pass dynastic status to their children. But the language stated nothing of
the kind. It simply prohibited grand dukes from marrying morganatically. It did
not change the various articles (such Articles 36, 126 and 188) making clear
that children of morganatic marriages were not dynasts. And his suggestion that
Nicholas II intended that the morganatic children of the most senior members of
the Imperial House, the grand dukes, would have no dynastic status whilst the
children of morganatic marriages by the junior dynasts, the Princes of Russia,
would have full rights is ludicrous.[17] The
1911 letter by Baron Frederiks, discovered in the state archives by Dr.
Stanislaw Dumin in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, exploded
Nicholas Romanoff’s theory.
Due to the numerous
morganatic marriages contracted by Russian dynasts after the revolution, the
Grand Duke Kirill, as head of the Imperial House, promulgated in 1935 an
addendum to the house laws to address the question of morganatic titles and
surnames:
“In order
to establish the position of wives of Members of the Imperial House in cases of
unequal marriage and the position of the issue of such marriages, I have
established the following order in supplement to and development of the Statute
on the Imperial Family:
The wives
and children of Members of the Imperial House in cases of unequal but lawful
marriages…receive the title and surname of Princes Romanovsky with, added to
it, the maiden surname of the wife of the said Member of the Imperial House or
a surname granted by the Head of the Imperial House of Russia... May these
marriages lay the foundation for new Russian princely families with a blood
relationship to the Imperial House of Russia and, as a result of this
relationship, may they always give their faithful support to the Imperial
House. Given at Saint Briac on 28th July 1935. KIRILL”
Fifth, various members of the Imperial House who married commoners in the
decades after the revolution acknowledged their understanding and acceptance of
the equal marriage rule by seeking from the exiled heads of the Imperial House
morganatic titles for their wives and children. A Grand Duke of Russia or
Prince of Russia who married a royal princess with the permission of the head
of the dynasty would not have to seek a separate title for his spouse and
children, because they would have automatic status and titles as members of the
Imperial House. So, for example, Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich of Russia
(1901-1980) (son of Grand Duke Alexander), following his morganatic marriage in
1931, requested and received from the Grand Duke Kirill a morganatic title for
his wife. Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich of Russia (1891-1941), following his 1927
marriage to an American commoner, requested and received from the Grand Duke
Kirill a morganatic title (Prince / Princess Romanovsky-Ilyinsky) for his wife
and his son. Similarly, Prince Vsevolod of Russia (1914-1973), upon his
morganatic marriage in 1939 to Lady Mary Lygon, requested and received from the
Grand Duke Wladimir a morganatic title (Princess Romanovsky-Pavlovsky) for his
wife. There are numerous other examples.
Sixth, when the Head of the Imperial House, the Grand Duke Kirill, died in
1938 and was succeeded by his only son, the then twenty-one year old Grand Duke
Wladimir, the five members of the Imperial House most senior in the line of
succession after Wladimir issued a public declaration of loyalty to the young
Grand Duke Wladimir. These were Grand Duke Boris (first in line after Grand
Duke Wladimir), Grand Duke Andrew (second in line), Grand Duke Dmitry
(1891-1941) (third in line), Prince Vsevolod of Russia (fourth in line), and
Prince Gavriel of Russia (1887-1955) (fifth in line). What is highly
significant about this declaration is that the six[19]
most senior members of the Imperial House set forth in this document a list of
all the living male dynasts in their order of succession to the throne. In
doing this, they made clear that their own morganatic sons and the many living
morganatic sons of other male dynasts were neither members of the Imperial House
nor in the line of succession.
It is useful to read the 11/24 October 1938 declaration in its entirety:
"We,
members of the Imperial House of Russia, having assembled after the death of
the Head of our House, the Grand Duke Kirill Wladimirovich, consider it our
most sacred duty solemnly to declare that the rights of each of the members of
the Imperial House of Russia are exactly determined by the Fundamental Laws of
the Russian Empire and the Statute of the Imperial Family, that they are known
perfectly to all, and that we must observe them religiously, by virtue of a
special oath, which is why the question of the order of succession to the
throne has never caused the slightest doubt among us and still less a
disagreement of any kind. We reject any departure from the order provided by
the law, because that would be an offense against the intangibility of our laws
and of our family traditions.
"By
virtue of the laws indicated above, we recognize that the succession to the
throne belongs by right, in order of primogeniture, to the senior member of the
Imperial House of Russia, the Grand Duke Wladimir Kirillovich, which he assumed
by inheritance after the death of his father on 29 September/12 October 1938,
with a profound awareness of the sacred duty which devolves upon him
according to law as Head of the Imperial House of Russia, bestowing upon him
all the rights and duties belonging to him by virtue of the Fundamental Laws of
the Russian Empire and the Statute of the Imperial Family.
"The
members of the Imperial House of Russia appear as follows by primogeniture in
the order of succession: Grand Duke Boris Wladimirovich, Grand Duke Andrew
Wladimirovich[20],
Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich[21],
Prince Vsevolod Ioannovich, Prince Gavriel Constantinovich, Prince George
Constantinovich, Prince Roman Petrovich[22],
Prince Andrew Alexandrovich[23],
Prince Feodor Alexandrovich[24],
Prince Nikita Alexandrovich[25],
Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich, Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich,[26] and
Prince Vassily Alexandrovich.
(signed) Boris
Vsevolod”
Andrew
Dmitry
Gavriel
III. GRAND DUCHESS MARIA’S POSITION AS THE
CURRENT HEAD OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSE
By 1969, more than
half a century had passed since the fall of the monarchy and the exile of the
dynasty. As the decades of exile wore on, the ranks of a once large dynasty
thinned dramatically. Death from natural causes slowly but surely reduced the
number of dynasts of a sovereign house already decimated by Bolshevik murder
squads. Dozens of morganatic marriages after 1917 deprived the dynasty of an
opportunity to replenish its ranks. In fact, the only dynasts who felt an
obligation to contract equal marriages after 1917 were the children of the
first two successive heads of the dynasty in exile. All three of the children
of the Grand Duke Kirill (that is, the Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna, the
Grand Duchess Kira, and the Grand Duke Wladimir, who married Princess Leonida
Bagration, of the former Georgian royal house) contracted equal marriages. And
the Grand Duchess Maria, only child of the Grand Duke Wladimir and Grand
Duchess Leonida, married a Prussian dynast, Prince Franz-Wilhelm of Prussia, in
1976. Of the thirty marriages contracted by dynasts after 1917, these 4 were
the only equal marriages; the other 1926 unions were morganatic. Various aging
dynasts scattered around the world and lost contact with each other. Long gone
was the hope, still common when Grand Duke Kirill declared himself emperor in
exile in 1924 that the Soviet Union might be of short duration. Meanwhile, a
swelling number of morganatic spouses and morganatic children included several
ambitious people who resented the non-dynastic status to which they were
relegated by imperial laws that they barely understood, and fissures developed.
On December 23, 1969,
the dynastic head, Grand Duke Wladimir, issued a message that greatly ruffled
the feathers of the other surviving male dynasts. In 1969, apart from Wladimir
himself, there were only seven other surviving male dynasts. They were, in order of
succession, Prince Vsevolode of Russia (who would die in 1973), Prince Roman of
Russia (died 1978), Prince Andrew Alexandrovich of Russia (died 1981), Prince
Nikita of Russia (died 1974), Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich of Russia (died
1980), Prince Rostislav of Russia (died 1978), and Prince Vassily of Russia
(died 1989).
Of these seven, none
had married a royal spouse. All had contracted morganatic marriages. The oldest
of them was seventy-three years old, and the youngest was fifty-five. Of all these dynasts the only one to have surviving male line issue in the present generation, ineligible to succeed anyway because of their morganatic birth, was the late Prince Rostislav.
“The
office of Head of the Imperial House of Russia, lawful inheritor of the rights
and duties of the Emperors of All the Russias, with which I have been charged
by the Lord God by virtue of the paramount right of primogeniture that has
passed to me, makes me duty bound to maintain the State Fundamental Laws of the
Russian Empire on Succession to the Throne and the Statute on the Imperial
Family inseparable from the aforesaid laws. By virtue whereof I recall the
essential condition contained in the law whereby the issue of a marriage
contracted between a person of the Imperial Family and a person of a status not
corresponding in equality of birth does not inherit the rights belonging to
members of the Imperial Family, one of which is the right of succession to the
Throne. Such is the position of the issue of the Princes of the Blood Imperial
now living, as also that of the issue of morganatic (to wit, unequal) marriages
contracted by members of the Imperial House now deceased. It can hardly be
envisaged that any of the Princes of the Blood Imperial now living, in view of
their age, could now enter into a marriage equal in status of birth or have
issue possessing the right of succession to the Throne. In view of the
aforesaid, in accordance with the State Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire,
succession to the Throne, after the demise of all male members of the Imperial
House, inevitably passes to the female dynasts of our family. In accordance
with the same laws, my first born daughter, Her Imperial Highness the Lady
Grand Duchess Maria Wladimirovna, is at present senior in succession to the
Throne in the female issue and at the same time the only one capable of having
issue enjoying the right to succession.[27] …
Wherefore, while in no way infringing on the order of succession to the Throne
provided by the State Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, I declare that,
in the event of my demise, my daughter the Lady Grand Duchess Maria
Wladimirovna, shall become Curatrix of the Imperial Throne of Russia, with all
the rights and functions connected with that office, for the service of Russia
and for the protection of our Dynasty from any encroachments from any quarter
whatsoever. When the right of succession to the Throne, after the demise of the
last of the male representatives of the Dynasty, will have inevitably passed to
the female issue, then the Lady Grand Duchess Maria Wladimirovna, Curatrix of
the Throne, shall become Head of the Imperial House of Russia.”
The
Grand Duke Wladimir had sworn a solemn oath, when he reached his dynastic
majority in 1933, to uphold the State Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire on
Succession to the Throne and the Statute of the Imperial Family. He swore the
oath in the presence of his father, and he took it seriously. From his point of
view, he sought to maintain the inviolability of the succession laws in the
event any of these seven male dynasts as potential future heads of the dynasty
was inclined not to uphold these laws faithfully. His view was that over the
years several of these seven men had shown little interest in the laws,
traditions and continuation of the dynasty. Based on the 1911 letter issued by
Baron Frederiks on behalf of Nicholas II, quoted above, it is also clear that,
had the monarchy continued, these seven male dynasts would have had to renounce
their succession rights as a condition of receiving the Emperor’s permission to
contract morganatic unions. From the points of view of the seven male dynasts,
however, the Grand Duke was seeking to tie their hands, in the event they
succeeded him as head of the dynasty. Presumably, Prince Vsevolode of Russia,
first in the line of succession to the Grand Duke Wladimir in 1969, was of the
view that, if he were to succeed the Grand Duke, he would become Head of the
Imperial House with exactly the same rights as his predecessor, and without any
need for the intermediary of a curatrix or guardian. Similarly, Prince Roman of
Russia, second in line, may have considered that should he succeed as Head of
the House, a 1969 declaration from his predecessor could not validly block him
from formally amending the succession laws to eliminate the equal marriage rule
and make his morganatic sons dynasts and Princes of Russia, if he were to
choose that course of action.
Three
Princes of Russia, Princes Vsevolode, Roman and Andrew, protested the 1969
pronouncement of the head of their house. This caused a permanent rift within
the dynasty. This rift in turn led a decade later to the formation by Prince
Roman’s morganatic son Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) of the Romanoff Family
Association (RFA). As the latter
wrote on his website in 2010, “In 1978, after the
death of my father Prince Roman Petrovich and whilst organizing his papers, I,
to my great surprise, found a scheme for the creation of a Family Association
was practically ready.” Two male dynasts, Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich of
Russia (who died a few months later in July 1980) and Prince Vassily of Russia,
became RFA members. The vast majority of other RFA members, however, were
descendants of morganatic marriages. By the 1990s, except for two elderly
Princesses of Russia, the two dozen or so members of the RFA were all
morganatic descendants. Today, the organization is composed entirely of
morganatic descendants.
In
the end, however, the 1969 declaration of the Grand Duke Wladimir turned out to
be unnecessary. The Grand Duke Wladimir outlived all of the seven male dynasts
still alive at the time of the 1969 declaration. The last of the seven, Prince
Vassily of Russia, died in 1989, at which point the Grand Duchess Maria became
first in the line of succession to her father. When Wladimir died in 1992, the male line of
male dynasts of the dynasty died with him, and the succession then passed to a
female, the Grand Duchess Maria, as expressly provided for in the house laws
promulgated by Emperor Paul I at the time of his coronation in 1797.
Article 27 specifies
that both genders have the right of succession to the throne, with preference to
male dynasts by order of primogeniture but with the succession of female
dynasts by substitution upon extinction of the male dynasts. Article 6 provides
that, when the throne passes to a female dynast as empress, she has the same
power that an emperor would have. Article 30 clarifies that the female dynast
who succeeds is the one most closely related to the last emperor.
Whether one considers
the last emperor to have been Nicholas II or (as do the legitimists) the Grand
Duke Wladimir, the female dynast most closely related to him is the Grand
Duchess Maria, who is the Grand Duke Wladimir's only child and is descended
from Nicholas II's senior uncle. The other female dynasts alive in 1992,
Princesses Vera and Ekaterina, were more distantly related to Nicholas II and
the Grand Duke Wladimir. Under the laws, the Grand Duchess Maria succeeded her
father in 1992 as head of the house. Her heir is her son and
only child, the Grand Duke George of Russia.[28]
Meanwhile, certain morganatic descendants within the so-called Romanoff Family Association continued to push themselves forward. The RFA, although privately organized without the approval of the Head of the Imperial House, had an official sounding name which misled several journalists into thinking incorrectly that it was the dynasty or at least the mouthpiece of the dynasty. In the 1990s, this grouping of numerous morganatic descendants using the Romanoff surname interspersed with two elderly female dynasts increased the confusion of those who viewed the RFA as being synonymous with the dynasty.[29] Nicholas Romanoff’s elected position as its president in the 1990s also gave him a kind of platform to purport to speak for the “Romanoff family.” Although the RFA expressed criticisms of the Grand Duke Wladimir and attacked his 1969 declaration, nobody challenged his position as head of the dynasty. Instead, they bided their time and awaited his passing. Thus, Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014), flanked by six other morganatic sons of dynasts, held a press conference in Paris shortly after the April 1992 death of the Grand Duke Wladimir, during which Nicholas Romanoff called himself by the dynastic title of Prince of Russia and purported to have succeeded the Grand Duke Wladimir as head of the dynasty.
The
claim of Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) to be head of the dynasty is of course
without legal merit. In order to be the head of a dynasty, one must first be a
member of the dynasty. Nicholas was the elder son of the morganatic marriage of
Prince Roman of Russia to a non-royal spouse. The legal texts discussed above
make clear that morganatic children of a dynast cannot themselves be dynasts: namely,
the 1820 decree of Alexander I instituting the equal marriage requirement; the
several sections of the succession laws in effect in 1917 that implement
Alexander I’s decree; the 1911 letter of the minister of the imperial court
explaining Nicholas II’s position that children of a morganatic marriage
contracted by a Prince of Russia are not only not members of the dynasty but
have no right to the Romanoff surname or coat of arms; the 1935 declaration of
Grand Duke Kirill approving noble, non-royal titles for children of morganatic
marriages; the 1938 declaration issued with the approval of Grand Duke Wladimir
and signed by the five dynasts most senior after him in the line of succession
which listed all the then living male dynasts by seniority and pointedly
excluded from the list the many morganatic sons (including Nicholas Romanoff)
alive in 1938; the 1969 declaration of Princes Vsevolode, Roman and Andrew of
Russia protesting the Grand Duke Wladimir’s nomination of his daughter as
Curatrix of the Throne recognised that Prince Roman’s children to be morganatic
and therefore excluded from the succession; and the declarations of the Grand
Duke Wladimir during his fifty-three years as head of the dynasty.
Nicholas
Romanoff’s claim was based on his
consistent refusal to acknowledge the legal fact that the equal marriage rule
applied to all members of the Russian dynasty. Speaking of his father, Prince
Roman of Russia, a dynast, and of other dynasts who contracted morganatic
marriages, Nicholas Romanoff once said, “Our
parents married commoners. So what?”[30] Roman,
along with his father and his father’s brother, was, as explained above, one of
the three male dynasts who declined to acknowledge Kirill as head of the
dynasty in the 1920s. From 1973 until his death in 1978, Prince Roman of Russia
was first in the line of succession to the head of the dynasty, the Grand Duke
Wladimir. As suggested above, if Roman had outlived Wladimir and become head of
the dynasty in his own right, he might well have revised the succession laws
and dropped the equal marriage rule, declaring his two morganatic sons as
dynasts. Only the head of the dynasty would have the authority to amend these
rules. [31]
The suggestion that Nicholas Romanoff, as the morganatic son of a
dynast, might claim membership of the dynasty by embracing those aspects of the
succession laws which suit him and ignoring those which do not is wholly unreasonable.
In the light of Article 36 of the succession laws (“Children
issuing from a marriage of a person of the Imperial Family with a person not
having the corresponding dignity, that is to say, not belonging to a royal or
ruling house, have no right of succession to the Throne”), it was with even less justification that he would take the additional step of claiming to be head of the
dynasty.
By 1983, when he was
already in his sixties, and by which time all but two (Grand Duke Wladimir and Prince
Vassily) of the genuine male dynasts had died, Nicholas Romanoff started
calling himself by the title of Prince of Russia.[32] His
brother Dmitry (born 1926) followed suit.
They were never members of the dynasty, however, and therefore could not be
Princes of Russia. Nicholas Romanoff is not, and has never been eligible to be
the head of the dynasty.
Several factors
contributed to the confusion that in the minds of some people surrounds
Nicholas Romanoff’s claim to head the dynasty.[33] First,
there were two kinds of princely
titles in Russia: there were noble, non-royal princely titles (such as Prince
Paley or Prince Yurievsky) and there was the Russian dynastic title of Prince
of the Imperial Blood, that is, Prince of Russia.[34] The
legal distinction between the two was a difficult point for those without an
understanding of the difference between the titles of a reigning or formerly
reigning house and those which are considered ordinary noble titles. The titles
accorded to morganatic descendants, whether of Prince (as with Yurievsky) or
Count (Torby) are noble, nor royal titles. Second Russian imperial law and
practice before 1917 prohibited the morganatic children of dynasts from even
bearing the name Romanoff, the surname of the dynasty, in Russia. Instead, they
received new surnames, such as Yurievsky, Brassov, Paley and Iskander. In
post-revolutionary exile, however, when the morganatic child of a dynast was
born in France, Britain or the United States, he or she received the father’s
surname, Romanoff, under the laws of their country of birth. Third, Grand Dukes
Kirill and Wladimir, as successive dynastic heads, bestowed the noble title of
Prince or Princess Romanovsky on the morganatic children and wives of dynasts. As
stated earlier, these were not royal titles, and they denoted kinship to but
not membership of the dynasty. Over
time, several of those who bore the surname Romanoff based upon birth in the
West and had been granted the title of Prince Romanovsky dropped the “sky”
ending and began to call themselves simply Prince Romanoff, a title that never
existed in Russia. To some journalists and others not conversant with Russian
imperial law the joinder of a princely title to the Romanoff surname seemed to
indicate a member of the Imperial House, particularly since they descended from
the dynasty. Over the years, this
invented, self-assumed title of “Prince Romanoff” gradually received a degree
of social recognition, although it actually had no legal basis.[35] It
was but a short step for a morganatic Prince Romanovsky, using the name “Prince
Romanoff”, suddenly to start calling himself “Prince of Russia.” In 1992, Grand
Duke Wladimir, head of the dynasty and by then the only surviving male dynast
of the nineteen alive in 1924, was dismissive in a New York Times interview of Nicholas Romanoff’s self-assumption of
a dynastic title: “He can call himself
what he wants, but he is not a Prince of Russia.”[36]
APPENDIX: THE BAGRATIONS
Princess Leonida Bagration of Moukhrani, the
wife of the Grand Duke Wladimir and mother of the Grand Duchess Maria, was a
member of the Royal House of Bagration, which ruled the Kingdom of Georgia (now
the Republic of Georgia) until 1801.
The tangled history of relations between the
Romanoffs and the Bagrations and between Russia and Georgia is complicated and
can only be analyzed very briefly in this appendix. The present writer has
thought it appropriate to provide a brief treatment, however, because, in
connection with his own dynastic claim, Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) has
asserted incorrectly that the Bagrations are not a royal house.
The Bagrations, the oldest Christian dynasty of
Europe, reigned as kings in Georgia from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries.
In the eighteenth century, there were one Orthodox Christian empire and three
Orthodox Christian kingdoms in Europe: the Russian empire under the Imperial
House of Romanoff, the Kingdom of Kartli under the senior line of the Royal
House of Bagration, the Kingdom of Kakheti under a junior line of the Royal
House of Bagration, and the Kingdom of Imeretia under a third and even more
junior line of the Royal House of Bagration.
The Bagrations, Princes of Moukhrani, the family
of Grand Duke Wladimir’s spouse, were cadet members of the senior Kartli royal
line. King Vakhtang VI of Kartli was overthrown by Muslim invaders and went
into exile in Russia with his immediate family in 1724. Circa 1903, the last
descendants of Vakhtang VI in the male line died out, and the Bagrations of
Moukhrani became by primogeniture the senior princes both of the Kartli royal
line and of the entire Bagration dynasty.
When King Vakhtang VI of Kartli (western
Georgia) was overthrown, his Bagration kinsman still reigned as King of Kakheti
(eastern Georgia). In 1744, King Theimouraz II of Kakheti expelled the Muslim
occupiers from Kartli and took control of its territory and of Tblisi, its
capital. His wife Queen Thamar (born Princess Thamar Bagration) was a daughter
of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli. Their son, Irakly, a Bagration of Kakheti by his
father and a Bagration of Kartli by his mother, then held the crown of both
kingdoms, reigning from 1762 to 1798 as King Irakly II of Kartli and Kakheti,
or, as he was also called, King of Georgia.
The Bagrations of Moukhrani, cadets of the
Kartli line, had remained in Georgia after Vakhtang VI went into exile, and
they were important members of the combined ruling dynasty of the united
kingdoms. They were closely connected to King Irakly II, both by blood (through
Irakly’s mother Thamar of the Kartli line) and by marriage. Irakly II’s son
Crown Prince Vakhtang married Princess Kethevan Bagration of Moukhrani, and
Irakly II’s daughter Princess Kethevan Thamar Bagration married Ivan Bagration,
Prince of Moukhrani and head of the Moukhrani branch of the Kartli line. (The
latter couple were the direct ancestors of Grand Duke Wladimir’s father-in-law,
Prince George Bagration, who by 1946 had become the senior prince of the entire
dynasty.)
In 1783, Russia and Georgia negotiated the
Treaty of Georgievsk, a solemn treaty of friendship that went into effect the
following year. The Russian negotiator was Catherine the Great’s favorite,
Prince Potemkin. The Kartli negotiator was Irakly II’s son-in-law, Ivan
Bagration, Prince of Moukhrani.
The Encyclopedia Britannica (1992 edition) has an article on the Treaty of
Georgievsk of July 24, 1783 which states in relevant part: “[A]greement concluded by Catherine II the Great…and Erekle [Irakly]
II…by which Russia guaranteed Georgia's territorial integrity and the
continuation of its reigning Bagratid dynasty in return for prerogatives in the
conduct of Georgian foreign affairs…Under the terms of the treaty, Catherine
and her heirs were to defend Georgia against enemies, and Erekle [Irakly]
renounced dependence upon Iran or any other power. Though the treaty was to
have permanent validity, Emperor Paul I's manifesto of Dec. 18, 1800,
unilaterally declared the annexation of [Georgia] to Russia, and on Sept. 12,
1801, his successor, Alexander I, formally reaffirmed this determination.”
The following excerpts from the English translation
of the treaty by the historian Dr. Russell Martin (Ph.D., Harvard University)
are noteworthy:
“Since ancient times, the All-Russian Empire, on account of its same
faith as the Georgian people, has served as the defense, support and refuge to
the said [Georgian] people and to their Most Serene Sovereigns, against the
oppression of their neighbors, to which they were susceptible… In this very
situation, bowing to a request brought to Her Throne from the Most Serene Tsar
of Kartli and Kakheti, Irakly II Theimourazovich [son of Theimouraz], to
receive him with all his heirs and successors, and with all his Kingdoms and
Regions in the Monarchical protection of Her Majesty and of Her August Heirs
and Successors, with the recognition of the Supreme power of the All-Russian
Emperors over the Kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti, [Her] Most-Gracious [Majesty]
consented to prepare and conclude a treaty of friendship with the
aforementioned Most Serene Tsar… ….
Art. 2. Her Imperial Majesty, receiving from His Serene Highness
this sincere and solemn promise, equally promises and reassures by means of Her
Imperial word, on her own behalf and on that of her Successors, that their
favor and protection shall never be withdrawn from the Most Serene Tsars of
Kartli and Kakheti. In proof of which, Her Majesty gives Her Imperial guarantee
of the territorial integrity of the present realm of His Serene Highness Tsar
Irakly Theimourazovich,… …
Art. 6. Her Imperial Majesty, having received with favor the
recognition of Her supreme power and protection over the Kingdoms of Kartli and
Kakheti, pledges in Her Own name and in that of Her Successors: … to preserve
His Serene Highness Tsar Irakly Theimourazovich and the Heirs and descendants
to his House, uninterrupted on the Throne of the Kingdom of Kartli and Kakheti;…
…
Art. 12. The present treaty is to remain in force forever; but in the
case it shall be seen as necessary to change or amend it for the mutual benefit
of [both signatories], such changes must be made by mutual consent.”
The elderly King Irakly II of Georgia, who
viewed Russia as his closest ally, died in 1798. His son, King George XII of
Georgia, succeeded, and was formally recognized as king by Emperor Paul I, but
died in 1800. George XII’s eldest son, Prince David Bagration, that is,
Tsarevich David Georgievich of Georgia, whom Emperor Paul I had formally
recognized in 1799 as heir to the Georgian crown in accordance with the
provisions of the Treaty of Georgievsk, became regent. In 1801, in violation of
the express terms of the Treaty of Georgievsk, Russia refused to recognize
David as king, overthrew the centuries-old Georgian monarchy, and absorbed
Georgia into the Russian empire.
Queen Mariam of Georgia (widow of King George
XII) and Dowager Queen Daria (widow of King Irakly II) tried unsuccessfully to
protest the Russian annexation of Georgia. Queen Mariam with other members of
the Georgian royal family was forcibly brought to Russia and was later confined
in a Russian convent. Prince David Bagration, heir to the Georgian throne, was
deported under military guard to Russia, where he lived out the remainder of
his days, writing on numerous scholarly subjects and translating Voltaire into
Georgian. George XII’s second eldest son Prince Ioane Bagration was also
deported to Russia. The third surviving son of George XII, Prince Theimouraz
Bagration, refused to accept the Russian annexation of his father’s kingdom. He
fled to Persia and from 1804 to 1810 fought as a soldier of the Persian army in
its war against Russia. He was taken into Russian custody in 1810 and also
deported to Russia. All the brothers were accomplished scholars.
Despite the overthrow of the combined Kingdom of
Kartli and Kakheti, or Kingdom of Georgia, in 1801, the third Bagration
monarchy, the Kingdom of Imeretia, continued to reign under its Bagration
sovereign, King Solomon II. He headed a junior line of the dynasty but was
closely related to his Kartli and Kakheti kinsmen, because he was born of the
marriage of his Bagration father to Princess Helene Bagration, a daughter of
King Irakly II. In 1810, Russia also dethroned Solomon II and absorbed his
kingdom. Fleeing into exile when Russia annexed Imeretia, King Solomon II tried to enlist the support of Napoleonic
France to wrest his kingdom back from Russia.
Prince Alexander Bagration, a son of King Irakly II and half-brother of
King George XII, was fiercely anti-Russian. In 1801, pursued by Russian troops,
he escaped to Persia. Beginning in 1804, he fought alongside Persian troops in
their war against Russia. In 1812, having returned to Georgia and having seized
Kakheti at the head of a large armed force, he claimed the Georgian crown. He
could not hold Kakheti against the Russian counterattack of 1813, however, and
he fled again from Georgia. He was involved in planning several royalist
uprisings in Georgia over the years, the last one being the failed 1832 plot to
restore the Bagrations.
Another son of King George XII, Prince Okropir
Bagration, born in 1795, was removed as a child to Russia, but as an adult became
a leader of the clandestine Georgian monarchist movement. As part of the same
1832 plot to restore the Bagration monarchy, he traveled to Georgia in 1830. In
1832, shortly before the planned coup, he and other conspirators were arrested,
and he was sent into internal exile in Russia.
In other words, the Bagrations, having reigned
in Georgia for nearly ten centuries, did not leave their homeland happily, and
their supporters did not give up quietly. This stubborn Georgian resistance
bred Russian hostility. Russia’s goal was to Russify Georgia and blend it into
the empire. There would be only one tsar reigning in the Caucasus, and it was
to be a Romanoff, not the Bagration tsar. The monarchist resistance in Georgia
was crushed, and the inconvenient Bagrations were, so to speak, put in their
place. In the early years of exile in Russia, the sons of King George XII had
been accorded royal status. The former regent and heir to the Georgian throne,
Prince David Bagration, was called by the royal title of tsarevich during his
years of exile in Russia. By the 1830s, however, this royal recognition of the
sons of George XII had been withdrawn, the Treaty of Georgievsk had been
forgotten, and Russia began to treat the Bagrations as mere titled nobility and
subjects.
In 1911, Prince Constantine Bagration of
Moukhrani, a member of what had by then become what is generally believed to be the senior line of the Bagration
royal house of Kartli, and thus the senior branch of
the entire Bagration dynasty, married a member of the Russian Imperial House,
Princess Tatiana of Russia, a daughter of Grand Duke Constantine of Russia. This
was the first of three twentieth century marriages between Bagrations and other
European royal houses. As recounted by the couple’s only son (the late Prince
Theimouraz Bagration), Emperor Nicholas II, who attended the wedding, suggested
that the groom sign the marriage register as Prince of Georgia (i.e. Prince
Grousinsky). At the time of their engagement in 1910, Princess Tatiana’s
father, Grand Duke Constantine, in his diary entry of Tuesday, November 30,
1910, described the conversation his wife had with Emperor Nicholas II and
Empress Alexandra in respect of the impending marriage: “…My
wife was invited for tea with Their Majesties at Tsarskoe Selo. Having returned
from there to Pavlovsk, she told me that the Empress had reacted with more
leniency than the Emperor about Tatiana’s intentions. They both told my
wife that they would not look on her wedding with Bagration as morganatic in
view of the fact that he, like the members of the House of Orléans, is a
descendant of a once-ruling dynasty. The Emperor even said that T[atiana] would
not lose her annual stipend from the Office of Apanages. The Emp[ress] found it
unnecessary to wait until the end of the year, but my wife, citing my views on
the matter, countered that it was necessary to wait so that both were quite
sure of their feelings..”[37]
Nonetheless, despite Nicholas II’s private
assurance to the mother of the bride, no official steps were taken to declare
this an equal marriage. Less than four years after the marriage, the groom serving
as a an officer in the Russian Imperial army was killed in 1915 and, just two
years after his death, the Romanoffs joined the Bagrations as a dethroned
dynasty.
In 1946, Prince Irakly Bagration of Moukhrani,
the elder brother of Leonida, married Infante Maria Mercedes of Spain. Because
the Spanish dynasty also had an equal marriage rule, and because Georgia had
been incorporated into the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, the
Infanta’s father, Infante Ferdinand, wrote to the Grand Duke Wladimir to ask
whether he, as head of the Russian dynasty, considered the Bagrations to be of
equal royal birth. The Grand Duke issued the following document:
"Act of the Head of the
Imperial House, fifth December 1946: His Royal Highness the Infante don
Ferdinand [of Spain]…, when his daughter the Infanta Maria Mercedes was about
to contract a marriage with Prince Irakly Bagration of Moukhrani, asked me
whether…I could consider the proposed marriage to be an equal one. My reply,
which was conveyed to the Infante through the intermediary of the Spanish
minister in Berne, the Conde de Bailen, was in the affirmative, in as much as,
after prolonged and diligent study of the history of Georgia and the Georgian
question, and after consulting my uncle, His Imperial Highness Grand Duke
Andrew, brother of my late Father,…I consider it right and proper to recognise
the royal status of the senior branch of the Bagration family, as well as the
right of the members to bear the title of Prince of Georgia and the style of
Royal Highness. The present head of the family is Prince George. If Almighty
God, in His Mercy, allows the rebirth of our great empire, I consider it right
that the Georgian language should be restored for use in the internal administration
of Georgia and in her educational establishments.
The Russian language should be obligatory for general relations within the
Empire. (Signed) Wladimir.”
As the only person entitled to interpret the
meaning and application of the equal marriage rule of the Russian dynasty, the
Grand Duke Wladimir in 1946 made a pronouncement that was definitive and
binding on the dynasty he headed. He based his pronouncement on the simple fact
that the Bagrations, like the Romanoffs, were a dethroned royal dynasty. Thus,
his marriage to Princess Leonida Bagration two years later in 1948 became the
only equal marriage contracted by a male dynast since the fall of the monarchy
in 1917.
The
late Georgian historian, Prince Cyril Toumanoff, and others have pointed out the absurdity
of trying to suggest that the ancient Bagrations, who reigned as kings until
the nineteenth century, are not of “equal birth”, when one considers some of
the formerly reigning families deemed to be of equal birth for marriage
purposes, such as the roughly forty “mediatized” families which, as rulers of
various former co-states of the Holy Roman Empire, had lost sovereignty by 1806
and had never ruled as kings but only as reigning princes, dukes or counts, as
well as deposed dynasties like the royal house of Montenegro, which exercised
secular sovereignty only from the 1850s and reigned as kings only from 1910 to
1918.
The status of the Bagrations as a sovereign
house dethroned in the nineteenth century was a matter of historical fact. Why
then did the Infante Ferdinand of Spain ask the Head of the Russian Imperial
House about their royal status? The Spanish dynasty is the senior branch of the
Royal House of Bourbon, and the Infante[38]
would certainly not have posed a similar question about the royal status of
various branches of the Bourbon dynasty which had lost sovereignty in the nineteenth
century, including the formerly sovereign houses of France (1830), of Parma
(1859), and of the Two Sicilies (1860), as well as the Orléans dynasty of
France (1848). His question no doubt was prompted by the manner in which,
beginning in the 1830s, the Romanoffs had sought to reduce the Bagrations to
the status of mere Russian nobles, in furtherance of Russia’s efforts to
engender Georgian loyalty to the new Romanoff tsars of the Caucasus rather than
to the old Bagration tsars. The late Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, the
Scottish lawyer and nobiliary expert, would have none of this and viewed the
1946 declaration as unnecessary. He once wrote: “[The] Bagration…dynasty had
reigned in the male line as Kings from 886 until the nineteenth century, before
the seventeenth century boyar family of Romanoff dispossessed them. Both
Bagration and Romanoff are now equally dispossessed: which needs the official
recognition of which?”[39]
When in 1946 the Grand Duke Wladimir, as Head of
the Imperial House, formally confirmed that the Imperial House recognized the
Bagrations of Moukhrani as a deposed royal dynasty and as being of equal birth,
his pronouncement may have seemed rather abstract to some, because nobody was
alive who remembered Georgia as a monarchy under the Bagrations. The collapse
of the Soviet Union, however, made the pronouncement suddenly less abstract. Georgia
again became an independent state in 1991 and reasserted its cultural and
historical traditions.[40]
A Georgian monarchist movement quickly coalesced
around Prince George Iraklievich Bagration of Moukhrani (1944-2008), head of
the senior Kartli royal line and senior prince of the entire Bagration dynasty.
In 1995, he escorted from Spain to Tblisi the remains of his grandfather (Grand
Duke Wladimir’s father-in-law) Prince George Bagration, head of the royal
dynasty until his death in 1957, for burial in the crypt of the Georgian kings,
after a liturgy sung by the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church and
attended by the President of Georgia.
In 2007, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox
Church, Ilia II, publicly called for restoration of a Bagration monarchy as a
guarantor of national unity and independence. It had been thought by many that
the junior Kakheti royal line of Bagration, direct descendants of King George
XII, had died out in the male line during the Soviet period. In the 1980s, during
the period of Glasnost, it was
established that there were indeed several males of this line who had survived
Stalinism and the Soviet Union. This line is likely to die out in the male line
in due course, however, because none of the three surviving princes of this
line, all now older than ages sixty, has a son. The current head of the Kakheti
line is Prince Nugzar Bagration (born 1950). A question then arose as to
whether various monarchist groups preferred George, head of the senior Kartli
royal line of the Bagrations, or Nugzar, head of the junior Kakheti royal line.
In 2009, Prince David Bagration (born in Spain
in 1976), son and successor of the late head of the Kartli line (Prince George
Bagration of Moukhrani, died 2008), having become a Georgian citizen, married
Princess Anna Bagration (born in Georgia in 1976), elder child of the head of
the Kakheti line (Prince Nugzar Bagration, who has no son), in Tblisi. Their
infant son, Prince George Bagration, was born in Spain in September 2011 and like
his forebear King Irakly II, this child unites through his parents both royal
lines. In due course, given a long life, he is likely to become through his
father the head of the senior royal line of Kartli and through his mother the
heir-general of the current head of the junior royal line of Kakheti. Through
his father, he is related to Bagration émigrés who fled from Georgia to the
West after the revolution and intermarried with the Russian and Spanish royal
houses. Through his mother, he descends from Bagrations who remained in Georgia
after the revolution and survived the Soviet dictatorship. With a Georgian
mother and maternal relatives born in Tblisi, he will presumably speak fluent
Georgian and be closely connected with his country. It seems unlikely that the
restoration called for by the Georgian patriarch could ever happen, especially
as two centuries have passed since the overthrow of the Georgian monarchy in
1801. Should a monarchist movement gather strength in Georgia in future years,
it is likely to revolve around this young child whose pedigree qualifies him so
notably as the representative of this ancient dynasty.
Meantime,
the uneasy relationship between Georgia and Russia has continued to the present
day. In 2008, the two countries fought a war and broke off diplomatic
relations. In April 2012, in a diplomatic note forwarded via the Swiss embassy
because diplomatic relations remain officially broken, the Georgian Foreign
Ministry protested Russian construction plans that would result in the
destruction of a cemetery in Moscow containing royal Bagration graves. The last
chapter in this complicated history has yet to be written.
In the Treaty of Georgievsk, Catherine the Great
gave her word that Russia would recognize the royal status of the Bagrations
and keep them on their throne forever. Due to power politics, this treaty
provision was violated during the reigns of her son Paul I and her grandson
Alexander I. In the reign of her grandson Nicholas I, following the monarchist
uprisings of the 1830s in Georgia, Russia ceased treating the sons of King
George XII of Georgia living in Russia as royal princes, even though their former
royal status was a matter of historical fact. Catherine II’s
great-great-great-grandson and heir Nicholas II, perhaps mindful of this
history, made a private comment acknowledging the royal status of the
Bagrations at the time of the first Romanoff-Bagration wedding in 1911. It was
her great-great-great-great-grandson and heir Grand Duke Wladimir who in 1946
gave effect to the underlying spirit of mutual respect between the two
dynasties that was a key purpose of the treaty.
[1] Guy Stair Sainty, The Russian
Succession – Another View, at www.chivalricorders.org.
[2] The writer was the late Grand Duke Wladimir’s lawyer, a role he
continued with the Grand Duchess Maria. The Grand Duke was Head of the Russian
Imperial House from 1938 to 1992. This essay limits itself strictly to a
summary of the main points of the succession question. Those interested in a
more thorough analysis might wish to read the writer’s more detailed treatment
of the issue, The Russian Imperial
Succession, which first appeared in 1997 and has been subsequently updated.
It was translated into Russian by N. Dmitrovskii-Baikov and published in Russia
under the title Rossiiskoe Imperatorskoe
prestolonasledie (Moscow, 2001, ISBN 5-900053-024-0), with an introduction
by Viktor Nikolayevich Yaroshenko, Trade Representative of the Russian Federation
in France and, under Yeltsin, the first Minister of Foreign Economic
Development of the Russian Federation.
[3] From the introduction by Prince Cyril Toumanoff, professor emeritus
of history, Georgetown University, to the excellent and authoritative Succession to the Imperial Throne of Russia,
first published in 1984 under the editorial supervision of Archbishop Antony,
Archbishop of Los Angeles and Southern California, of the Russian Orthodox
Church Outside of Russia.
[4] In the Service of the
Imperial House of Russia, 1917-1941
by Rear-Admiral H.G. Graf (private secretary of Grand Duke Kirill) (privately
published, 1999), p. 76.
[5] This number includes Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich of Russia
(1850-1918), although some accounts attribute his death during the revolution
to illness.
[6] Although five of Grand Duke Alexander’s six sons recognized Kirill, only
four signed Alexander’s 1924 statement of loyalty. His son Prince Dmitry
Alexandrovich of Russia, who could not sign it because he was in New York when
it was written, recognized Kirill separately.
[7] Before the
revolution, the Russian dynasty was a large one, and Grand Duke Kirill and
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich (“N.N.”) had not known each other well; the
latter, twenty years older than Kirill, was of the same generation as Kirill’s late
father. If there was a major bone of contention between them, it was perhaps
the role of N.N. in persuading Nicholas II to abdicate, given Kirill’s strong
view that this decision by the isolated and abandoned emperor was a disaster
which precipitated the fall of the monarchy. On 2 March 1917, Nicholas II had
received a telegram from N.N. in which the Grand Duke said it was necessary for
him "to beg…on bended knee" that the emperor abdicate. (Mark
Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalev, The
Fall of the Romanovs [Yale University Press, 1995], pp. 89-90, citing State
Archive of the Russian Federation, Document f. 601, op. 1, d. 2102, l. 1-2). On
the afternoon of 2 March, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Voeikov, commandant of the palace,
entered the emperor's railway car to express his grief and astonishment at the
emperor's abdication. In his memoirs, Voeikov described Nicholas II's pointing
to the many telegrams on his desk and stating, "What else could I have
done when everyone has betrayed me? And first among them Nikolasha
[N.N.]." Mark Steinberg and
Vladimir Khrustalev, The Fall of the
Romanovs (Yale University Press, 1995), p. 63, citing V.N. Voeikov, S tsarem i bez tsaria (1936), p. 212. In
his famous diary entry of 2 March 1917, Nicholas II finished his description of
the day with this sentence: "All around me is treachery, cowardice and
deceit." In the first volume of his memoirs, Once A Grand Duke (New York, 1932, p. 145), Grand Duke Alexander of
Russia, Nicholas II’s brother-in-law and N.N.’s first cousin, wrote of N.N.:
“Had Nicholasha [N.N.] advised the Czar on March 2, 1917 to remain with the
army and to accept the challenge of the revolution, Mr. Stalin would not have
been entertaining Mr. G.B. Shaw in the Kremlin in 1931.” There were already
internal factions among the numerous dynasts long before the revolution. In the
same book of memoirs (pp. 40-42, 143-145), Grand Duke Alexander described how
various grand dukes at young ages took sides in the bitter lifelong feud
between two first cousins, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich (a prominent
historian and a member of the French Academy, assassinated in 1919) and Grand
Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich. It was even alleged by Grand Duke Nicholas
Mikhailovich that N.N.’s Montenegrin sister-in-law was pushing N.N., very
distant in the line of succession, as a future tsar well before the outbreak of
the revolution. On 11 May 1916, when N.N. was only sixteenth in line of
succession to the Tsar, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich wrote a letter to his
cousin Emperor Nicholas II hinting "darkly that Nikolasha's [N.N.'s]
popularity, in view of the nervous mood of the Russian public, threatened the
legitimate line of succession, inflating the potential importance of
Nikolasha's brother Peter and nephew Roman, suggesting that, through them, the
childless Nikolasha could found an alternative branch of the dynasty." The
Flight of the Romanovs by John Curtis Perry and Constantine Pleshakov (New
York, 1999), p. 125, citing Nikolai II i velikiye knyazya, ed. by V.P. Semennikov (Leningrad-Moscow,
Gosudarstvennoye izdatelstvo, 1925), pp. 63-64. Grand Duke Nicholas
Mikhailovich’s letter to the emperor was as follows: “ … Regarding the popularity of Nicholas [N.N.], I will
say this: His popularity was masterfully prepared at Kiev by Militsa [Grand
Duchess Militsa, born Princess Militsa of Montenegro, was married to N.N.’s
only brother Grand Duke Peter; Militsa’s sister Stana was married to N.N.]
quite gradually, during a long period of time and by making use of all means,
such as distributing to the people pamphlets, all kinds of booklets, pictures,
portraits, calendars, etc. Thanks to this well-planned preparation, his
popularity did not go down after the loss of Galicia and Poland, and rose again
after the victories in the Caucasus. From the very start of the campaign, I
repeatedly wrote to your dear mother, warning her of these Kiev intrigues, but
I could not write to you, without infraction of discipline, while I was
attached to the staff of Adjutant-General Ivanov. Now I am speaking freely. I
said, when you personally took the Supreme Command of the armies, and I repeat
now, that Militsa is not asleep in the Caucasus. I make bold to assure you,
from a deep conviction, that this popularity frightens me, in a dynastic sense,
especially in the excited state of our public opinion, which appears to take
more and more definite shape in the provinces. This popularity [of N.N.] does
not contribute in the least to the benefit of the Throne or the prestige of the
Imperial family, but only to the advertising of the husband [N.N.] of the Grand
Duchess [Stana] - a Slav woman [Montenegrin] and not a German - as well as of
his brother and nephew, Roman. In view of the possibility of all kinds of
troubles after the war, one has to be watchful and observe closely every move
in support of this popularity. You are aware of my boundless devotion to your
late father, your mother, yourself, and your line, for which I am ready at any
moment to lay down my life, but I do not recognize any other possibilities, in
the dynastic sense, nor shall I ever recognize any…” See www.alexanderpalace.org. The present
writer does not read the letter of Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich (a
sometimes divisive figure within the dynasty) as accusing N.N. of disloyalty to
the emperor. The letter does, however, directly claim that amidst the chaos of
1916 Grand Duchess Militsa (wife of Grand Duke Peter and mother of Prince Roman
of Russia) was working hard to advance the stature and popularity of N.N. Did
she view him as a future tsar who could take charge and save the dynasty? The
wives of N.N. and his brother Grand Duke Peter were both daughters of King
Nicholas I of Montenegro. It was the two ambitious Montenegrin princesses,
known for their love of intrigue, who had introduced Rasputin to Empress
Alexandra. In Once A Grand Duke (pp.
145-146), Grand Duke Alexander wrote that they “exercised an exceptionally bad
influence on the young Czarina.” Unlike the royal dynasties of northern Europe
where Russian grand dukes traditionally sought their wives, the Montenegrin
dynasty, which held secular sovereignty only from the 1850s until 1918, had
neither an equal marriage rule nor a well-rooted tradition of primogeniture. It
is indeed plausible to suggest that, at least after the fall of the dynasty,
the two sisters may well have contributed to a slavophile disdain for these two
rules and for legitimism in general on the part of their grand ducal husbands
and descendants. If so, this may partially explain why N.N., his brother Peter,
and Peter’s son Roman were the only male dynasts to decline in the 1920s to
recognize Grand Duke Kirill as the rightful dynastic chief by right of
primogeniture. To the extent they influenced his views, it may also explain why
the claim of Militsa’s grandson and Roman’s morganatic son Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014)
to be head of the dynasty ignores both the equal marriage rule and the
primogeniture rule. [2014 Note: In 2014, the family of Prince Felix Yusupov and
his wife Princess Irina of Russia (only daughter of Nicholas II’s sister Xenia)
sold at public auction the private letters of Felix and Irina, and a
pre-auction catalogue was published containing the texts of the letters (often
in French translation, as most of the letters were in Russian). There are
several letters from the Montenegrin sisters, Stana and Militsa, to Felix
Yusupov’s mother showing their implacable hostility to Russian legitimism. One
fascinating letter suggests that Militsa was still trying to put her son Prince
Roman of Russia on the Russian throne during World War II. This is a letter
from Felix Yusupov to his wife Irina of Russia, written during or following a
trip by the former to Rome. Although undated, it was clearly written in the
early 1940s, after Fascist Italy and its ally, Nazi Germany, had declared war
on Soviet Russia. The letter claims that Militsa, through the influence of her
sister, the Queen of Italy, was pushing the Italian government to pressure Nazi
Germany to set up a puppet monarchy in Russia with Roman as tsar, once Germany
and Italy overthrew the Soviet regime. If the French translation of the letter
is correct, it also states that Roman’s son (presumably Nicholas Romanoff, then
aged about 20 years) was using the title of Grand Duke of Russia in Rome. Was
this merely second-hand gossip that Yusupov was repeating or was it based on
actual facts? As the husband of Nicholas II’s only niece, Yusupov was certainly
in an excellent position to receive reliable information from the leading
members of the Russian community in Rome. On the other hand, the tendency to
spread gossip was not unkown in émigré
communities.]
[8] All twentieth century male line dynasts of the Imperial House
descended from one of the four sons (in order of birth: Alexander, Constantine,
Nicholas and Michael) of Emperor Nicholas I. These four branches of the dynasty
were informally known as the Alexandrovichi (that is, descendants of
Alexander), the Constantinovichi, the Nikolayevichi, and the Mikhailovichi. In
the 1920s, as stated above, only the 3 male dynasts of the junior Nikolayevichi
branch declined to endorse Kirill as dynastic head and his son Wladimir as
heir. All male dynasts of the other three branches (except Vassily of the
Mikhailovichi branch, because he was a minor and was not asked to sign the
declaration of loyalty to Kirill issued by his father and older brothers)
supported Kirill and Wladimir.
[9] Nicholas Romanoff is referred to in these pages as “Nicholas
Romanoff (1922-2014)” to avoid confusion with others named Nicholas, such as
Emperor Nicholas II, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich of Russia and Grand Duke
Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia. [2014 Note: Nicholas Romanoff died in 2014.]
[10] Point de Vue-Images du Monde, 12 May 1992, p. 17.
[11] On his website, www.nikolairomanov.com,
on which he called himself “Nikolai Romanov, Prince of Russia,” Nicholas
Romanoff wrote, “In April 1992 I became the head of the Romanov Family.”
[12]Metropolitan Vitaly, First Hierarch of ROCOR from 1985 to 2001,
opposed the notion of reconciliation between ROCOR and the Patriarchate. Long a
supporter of the Grand Duke Wladimir as head of the dynasty, the octogenarian
Vitaly was angered by the Grand Duke’s historic meeting with Patriarch Alexei
II in November 1991, and he de-emphasized the monarchism of the Church. He
resigned as First Hierarch in 2001 and was succeeded as ROCOR First Hierarch by
Metropolitan Laurus. In May 2007, the Patriarchate and ROCOR formally reconciled
during a solemn ceremony in Moscow during which Patriarch Alexei II and
Metropolitan Laurus signed an Act of Canonical Communion. The Church Outside of
Russia thereupon came under the Patriarch, although retaining a quasi-autonomy.
At his death in 2008, Metropolitan Laurus was succeeded as ROCOR First Hierarch
by Metropolitan Hilarion. On December 10, 2013, after a liturgy at the
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign in New York City and in the presence of the
Grand Duchess Maria, Metropolitan Hilarion gave a homily, during which he
welcomed the Grand Duchess as head of the dynasty. The following week, the
official website of ROCOR published, at http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/eng2013/20131219_enhihvisit.html,
a description of her visit, entitled “The Visit of the Head of the Romanov
Dynasty to America.”
[13] In his eulogy at
the funeral service on April 29, 1992, before dozens of bishops and priests and
some 15,000 mourners in St. Isaac Cathedral, St. Petersburg, the Patriarch
stated in part as follows: "I was very impressed by his deep faith, his
love for Russia and her people, whom he wished to help…His whole life outside,
all his feelings and efforts, Grand Duke Wladimir Kirillovich dedicated to a
country he considered his own…His faith and long patience were not in vain. On
the eve of his passage to the other world, he stepped on his native soil…On his
return from Russia, he never ceased to dedicate all his strength to assist his
country, and despite his fragile health, he went to the United States to
persuade various American business circles to help Russia and to have faith in
his country. He died during this trip." See also, New
York Times, April 30, 1992, page 1 (“With Old-World Pageantry, Russia
Buries A Romanov”) by Serge Schmemann).
[14] State Archives of the Russian Federation [GARF], Fond 601 (“The
Emperor Nicholas II”), Opis’ [Inventory] 1, Delo [File] 2143, Folios 58-59.
[15] The letter begins as follows: “Your Imperial Highness – After I
presented [to the Lord Emperor] my loyal report on the project undertaken at
the meeting of the Grand Dukes, at which Your Imperial Highness presided,
regarding amendments and additions to the Statute of the Imperial Family,
together with a determination by the Minister of Justice, the Lord Emperor has
seen fit to set the following conditions under which His Imperial Majesty might
permit marriages of Princes and Princesses of the Imperial Blood [Princes and
Princesses of Russia] to persons not possessing corresponding rank…”
[16] The exact language of this portion of the letter is: “In relation
to the categorization of marriages of Princes and Princesses of the Imperial
Blood, the Lord Emperor has seen fit to recognize only two categories of
marriages: (a) equal marriages, that is, those contracted with persons
belonging to a royal or ruling house, and (b) unequal marriages, that is, those
contracted with persons not belonging to a royal or ruling house, and He will
not recognize any other categories.”
[17] Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014) also used this meritless argument in
another context. Among the male line morganatic
descendants of Emperor Paul I alive in 1992, Nicholas Romanoff was still
rather junior. Ahead of him, for example, were 3 Ilyinskys, the morganatic son
and grandsons of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. According to Nicholas Romanoff’s
unreasonable argument, Paul Ilyinsky was not a dynast because his father was a
grand duke, whilst Nicholas Romanoff was a dynast because his father was only a
Prince of Russia. Later, he apparently backed away from this argument and
suddenly expanded his definition of dynast to include all morganatic
descendants in the male line: he now describes all the members of his “Romanoff
Family Association” as Princes and Princesses of Russia, at least according to
Wikipedia, even though in 2012 every single one of them is a morganatic
descendant.
[18] Aside from the Grand Duchess Maria Wladimirovna and her son, the
only other Russian dynasts by birth who were alive in the twenty-frst century
were Princess Vera of Russia (1906-2001) and the latter’s niece Princess
Ekaterina of Russia (1915-2007).
[19] Six, because it was issued with the express approval of the Grand
Duke Wladimir and signed by the five dynasts most senior in line after him.
[20] His morganatic son (and only child) Wladimir Andreivich (1902-1974)
was not included in the succession list, because he was the child of a
(subsequent) unequal marriage and thus was not a member of the dynasty. His
uncle, the Grand Duke Kirill, gave him the morganatic title of Prince
Romanovsky-Krassinsky on 28 July 1935. He left no issue.
[21] His morganatic son (and only child) Paul (1928-2004), long-time mayor of Palm Beach, Florida was not
included in the succession list, because he was the child of an unequal
marriage and thus was not a member of the dynasty. The Grand Duke Kirill gave
him the morganatic title of Prince Romanovsky-Ilyinsky. Prince Paul left two sons, both of whom only have daughters.
[22] His two morganatic sons (and only children), Nicholas (1922-2014)
and Dmitry (born 1926), were not included in the succession list, because they
were children of an unequal marriage and thus were not members of the dynasty. Nicholas left three daughters, his brother Dmitry is childless.
[23] His two morganatic sons, Michael (1920-2008), who foolishly allied himself with a notorious "self-styled" Order of Saint John and Andrew (born
1923), were not included in the succession list because they were children of
an unequal marriage and thus were not members of the dynasty. Michael was childless but Andrew left three sons, of whom the elder two are childless and the youngest has a daughter.
[24] His morganatic son Michael (1924-2008, dying one day after his cousin Michael) was not included in the
succession list because he was the child of an unequal marriage and thus was
not a member of the dynasty. His only son predeceased him and the latter's daughter survives.
[25] His morganatic sons Nikita (1923-2007) left an only daughter and Alexander (1929-2002)
died childless; they were not included in the succession list because they were children of an
unequal marriage and thus were not members of the dynasty.
[26] Of the last two signatories to this document, Prince Rostislav left
two morganatic sons, Rostislav (1938-1999) and Nicholas (1945-2000). They were
the only morganatic descendants of the house bearing the name Romanoff to
leave male line descendants, all living in the United States of America. The only other surviving male line morganatic
descendant of the dynasty, Prince George Yurievsky (born in 1961, a great-grandson of the
second, morganatic marriage of Emperor Alexander II) recently married (in 2013)
but as yet has no issue.
[27] At the time of the 1969 declaration, Grand Duchess Maria had just
reached the age of sixteen. The other female dynasts alive in 1969 were all well
past the age in which it was likely that they could have children, were they to
contract equal marriages.
[28] Grand Duke George of Russia, Prince of Prussia, born in March 1981,
was created a grand duke shortly after his birth by his grandfather, Grand Duke
Wladimir. Grand Duke George’s father, H.R.H. Prince Franz-Wilhelm of Prussia,
had converted to Orthodoxy before his marriage and remains Orthodox. Grand Duke
George's eventual accession as head of the dynasty will mark the first time
that the Romanoff succession has passed through the female line since the
promulgation of the present succession laws in 1797, but it will not be the
first time in the history of the Romanoff dynasty. In 1762, the Romanoff
dynasty technically became extinct in the male line upon the death of the
Empress Elisabeth. The throne then passed to her German nephew, Emperor Peter
III, whose mother was a Romanoff grand duchess but whose father was a German
prince, the reigning Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. (In 1742, Peter of
Holstein-Gottorp had been summoned to Russia at age fourteen by his aunt, the
Empress, who created him a Grand Duke of Russia and named him heir to the
throne.) Although after 1762 the dynasty still was known as the House of
Romanoff, it had technically become the House of Romanoff-Holstein-Gottorp. Peter
III's son, Emperor Paul I, instituted the present succession laws. Assuming the
eventual succession of her son, the present Grand Duchess Maria thus will be
the last Romanoff-Holstein-Gottorp to head the dynasty. Nonetheless, upon the
succession of her son Grand Duke George, the dynasty, as it did in 1762, will
continue to be called the House of Romanoff.
[29] In one pronouncement of the Romanoff Family Association dated March
25, 1981, Prince Vassily of Russia, elected president of the RFA, referred to
the Romanoff Family Association as being composed of two categories of members:
“members of the Imperial House of Russia” (presumably, dynasts like himself)
and “members of the Romanoff Family” (presumably, morganatic descendants who
were not dynasts). Today, the RFA is composed exclusively of morganatic
descendants.
[30] Robert K. Massie, The
Romanovs – The Final Chapter (New York, 1995), p. 278. Nicholas Romanoff’s
mother was from one of the most distinguished noble families of imperial
Russia, but her family had never occupied a sovereign throne and thus was not a
reigning or formerly reigning house.
[31] In respect of the many dethroned dynasties in which the equal marriage
rule still applies, it is the head of the dynasty who has sole authority to
amend the rule, interpret the application of the rule, and decide whether a
marriage satisfies the rule. Several foreign dynastic heads have used their
authority to allow exceptions to the rule. For example, Archduke Otto, head of
the Habsburg dynasty of Austria from 1922 to 2007, strictly enforced the
ancient Habsburg equal marriage laws, recognizing the children of equal
marriages as archdukes and archduchesses but bestowing morganatic titles (like
Count von Habsburg) on morganatic descendants. In 1993, however, when his elder
son and heir Archduke Karl married a commoner, Otto relaxed the rule,
recognizing the union as a dynastic marriage and bestowing archducal rank on
his son’s wife and children. The dethroned Emperor William II of Germany also
made an exception for the wife of one of his younger sons. When his son Prince
Oskar of Prussia married morganatically in 1914, William II at first gave his
new daughter-in-law the morganatic title of Countess von Ruppin. Later, in
1920, after the fall of the monarchy, William II, living in exile, recognized
his daughter-in-law and her children as members of the dynasty, giving them the
titles of Prince and Princess of Prussia, with the predicate of Royal Highness.
Similarly, Crown Prince Rupprecht, head of the deposed Bavarian royal house,
elevated his daughter-in-law and grandsons, previously considered morganatic,
to dynastic status in 1949.
[32] See, for example, his introduction to a book published in 1983, Les Descendants de Pierre le Grand, Tsar de
Russie (Sedopols, 1983) by Nicolas Enache, in which he uses the name
“Nicholas Romanoff, Prince of Russia.”
[33] The authoritative European reference work, the Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, was never confused on this
point. Its 1953 edition of princely houses, Genealogisches
Handbuch der Fürstlichen Häuser (C.A. Starke Verlag, 1953, volume II), is
divided into three sections. Section I lists reigning and formerly reigning
dynasties, Section II lists the mediatised princely houses that were formerly
co-states of the Holy Roman Empire, and Section III lists “other, non-sovereign
European princely houses.” Prince Roman of Russia, father of Nicholas Romanoff (1922-2014),
is, as a dynast, listed in Section I under the House of Russia. Prince Roman’s
wife and sons are, as non-dynasts, listed in Section III under the article on
“Romanovsky.” The Section III entry (p. 428) states: “The spouse of Prince Roman Petrovich of Russia…(see Section I),
Prascovia Dmitrievna, Countess Sheremetiev (born 1901) has received for herself
and her descendants (by a Ukase of the Grand Duke Wladimir as Head of the House
of Romanoff dated 7 May 1951) the name and title of Princess Romanovsky and
Prince Romanovsky, respectively…Prascovia, Princess Romanovsky, born Countess
Sheremetiev (at Poltawa 2 October 1901) married (in a union not in accordance
with the house laws) at Antibes 3 November 1921…Roman Petrovich, Prince of
Russia…(see Section I)…”
[34] Until the late nineteenth century, all male dynasts of the Russian
Imperial House had the title of Grand Duke of Russia. In 1886, Emperor
Alexander III altered this rule so that there were two titles for male dynasts:
Grand Duke of Russia for the sons and grandsons of emperors, and Prince of
Russia (“Prince of the Imperial Blood”) for more distantly related dynasts.
[35] The late Alexander Romanoff (1929-2002) was the morganatic son of
Prince Nikita of Russia. Born in Paris, he bore the Romanoff surname under
French law. He was created Prince Romanovsky on 7 May 1951 by the Grand Duke
Wladimir. He called himself Prince Romanoff socially. As he recounted to his
Scottish friend Ian Lilburn, Alexander Romanoff was once included on the guest
list of a function planned in England during the 1950s. His grandmother, the
Grand Duchess Xenia of Russia, the sister of Nicholas II living in exile in
England, reviewed the guest list in advance. When she saw her grandson named on
the list as “Prince Alexander Romanoff,” she crossed off the title of prince
and changed his name on the list to “Alexander Romanoff, Esq.” She knew that
the title “Prince Romanoff” did not exist.
[36] New York Times, 9
February 1992.
[37] Ella Matonina, editor, Zagadka
K.R.: Iz dnevnikov velikogo kniazia K.K. Romanova (Diaries of Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich), November 30,
1910 entry, Moscow (1994, no. 2): 174.
[38] Infante Don Ferdinand was by birth a Bavarian Prince whose mother
was an Infanta of Spain and whose wife, the mother of Infanta Maria Mercedes,
was the second daughter of King Alfonso XII.
[39] Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, eleventh Bart., Ph.D., LL.B., Albany
Herald, "The Social Recognition of Titles of Honour”, published in Royalty,
Peerage & Nobility of the World (London, 1976), pp. 663-667.
[40] Georgia had also
achieved independence during the chaotic period following the Russian revolution
when civil war raged across the southern and eastern part of the country. This
brief period of sovereign rule was ended following a Soviet invasion.
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