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Prince Nicholas Romanov

Discussion in 'WWII Era Obituaries (non-military service)' started by GRW, Sep 27, 2014.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    "PRINCE NICHOLAS ROMANOV, who has died aged 91, was the great-great-grandson of Nicholas I, Tsar of all the Russias from 1825 to 1855, and the oldest member of Russia’s former imperial family.


    The tall, French-born prince SHARED[​IMG] the name of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, and was recognised by most members of the extended Romanov family as head of the imperial house.


    Unlike some of his kinsmen, however, the prince expressed no nostalgia for the days of the tsars. On the contrary, he was an avowed republican, regarded by some of his relations as almost a Leftist, a label that caused him some amusement. “I am not any '-ist’,” he told an interviewer, “but I am a lover of history and I have learned from it.”


    Possibly as a consequence of his antimonarchist credentials, Prince Nicholas was a key adviser to Russian officials preparing the funeral in 1998 of Tsar Nicholas and his family, who had been murdered by the Bolsheviks along with the tsar’s personal physician and three servants in 1918. Their remains (minus those of the last Tsar’s fourth daughter and his only son, Alexei, which were only discovered in 2007) had been exhumed in 1991.



    It was Prince Nicholas who proposed that the entire group, from the tsar to his footman, be buried together in the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg, rather than separately to reflect their different social stations in life. He saw the ceremony as a “moment of repentance, understanding and mutual pardon” which might usher in a new Russia “at peace with its past”.


    However negotiations about the ceremony brought to the surface splits between the prince and members of the exiled dynasty who consider the post-communist Russian government an extension of the Bolshevik regime and seek a restoration of the monarchy.
    Some refused to attend the ceremony, most prominently the prince’s cousin, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a rival claimant to the status of head of the family, who announced that she would refuse to attend unless those she insisted on calling Bolsheviks “kneel and repent for their sins”.
    The split between the two factions DATED[​IMG] back to 1992 when Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, the former Romanov pretender, died in Miami. As his only child, the Grand Duchess claimed primacy as the oldest descendant of Tsar Alexander III, her great-grandfather, who ruled from 1881 to 1894. She disputed her cousin’s rival claims on the grounds that he and some of his forebears had flouted the rules of imperial succession by marrying beneath their royal station. Supporters of the prince, however, pointed out that the tsars had excluded women from the succession in the late 18th century.
    Maria Vladimirovna’s claims are supported by some monarchist groups, but are disputed by, among others, the Almanac de Gotha on European royal families.
    The prince, however, preferred to look to the future. After leading representatives of the Romanovs at the funeral of the last Tsar and his family in July 1998, he urged Russians to look forward, not back: “I have always said that not only were we burying the tsar and those who died with him, but we were also burying the most bloodstained pages of our past. Leave them to SCHOLARS[​IMG]. Russians should look forward.”
    Nicholas Romanovich Romanov, was born on September 26 1922 at Cap d’Antibes, France, the eldest son of Prince Roman Petrovich and his wife Princess Praskovia Dmitrievna (née Countess Sheremeteva). His great-grandfather, Nicholas Nikolaevich, was a younger son of Emperor Nicholas I.
    Prince Nicholas was brought up in a Russian environment, using the Julian calendar, surrounded by Russian staff and educated privately according to the imperial Russian curriculum. He was bilingual in both French and Russian.
    In 1936 his family moved to Italy, where during the early years of the war, they found shelter with King Victor Emmanuel III. In 1942 Nicholas was invited by the ruling Fascists to take the throne of Montenegro. He declined. When King Victor Emmanuel fled ROME[​IMG] after an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate peace with the Allies behind Mussolini’s back, Nicholas and his family went into hiding."
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11121560/Prince-Nicholas-Romanov-obituary.html
     

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