Photo source: Hermitage Museum (Wikimedia Commons)
To fully understand the family of Tsar Nicholas II and its confusing jumble of royal aunts, uncles and cousins, it helps to take a look at the big picture. We can actually gain some very useful perspective on the House of Romanov in 1914 if we step back to the year 1814 and examine the family of Tsar Nicholas I (1796 - 1855), the man who gave Nicholas II his name.
FOUR PRINCES WITH RIVAL COURTS
During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, the Russian royal family began to break into four separate branches or four rival courts. The reason for this break-up was simple: Tsar Nicholas I had four powerful sons, the Grand Dukes Alexander, Constantine, Nicholas and Michael.
Each of these wealthy princes had a palace or salon of his own, where he would throw large parties and invite friends and guests to dine in the evening. The table talk would invariably turn to gossip about events in the main court, the court of the Tsar, and at times the talk over brandy and cigars would certainly veer toward political planning and plotting.
The people who hung about the court of the Tsaraevich, Grand Duke Alexander, were obviously politicians, businessmen, military leaders and social climbers. They wanted to curry favor with the man who might soon be the next Tsar.
Those who had military ambitions greatly valued any invitation to the court of the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was commander of the Tsar's Army.
Those whose tastes were more artistic, literary or musical preferred the courts of Grand Duke Constantine and Grand Duke Michael, who were famous patrons of the arts. They might never be Tsar, but they were very generous patrons of the royal art academies in St. Petersburg.
Each of the Grand Dukes having established for himself a reputation, the rival courts soon became fixed in their ways, a great number of people depended upon them, and for all practical purposes they became permanent institutions within Petersburg society.
PATRONYMICS HELP ONE SORT THE COUSINS
Each of these four princes, in their four palaces, had children. In noble Russian families, the children were almost always given their father's first name as their own middle name. The addition of the patronymic or "father-name" was a sign of respect for that person's father, and it was expected, when addressing someone formally in polite society, that one would use both the first name and the patronymic.
For example, when Russians referred to Tsar Nicholas II, son of Tsar Alexander III, they did not simply call him "Nicky" or Nicholas, they called him "Nicholas Alexandrovich" (Nicholas Alexander's son). When Russians spoke about Tsar Nicholas I, son of Tsar Paul I, they referred to him as "Nicholas Pavlovich" (Nicholas Paul's son).
By using the patronymic, the speaker could not only show respect, but also designate exactly the Nicholas Romanov to whom they were referring, and the listener could easily tell the two apart.
Prince Alexander, son of Tsar Nicholas I, was therefore called Alexander Nicholaevich. His brothers were called Constantine Nicholaevich, Nicholas Nicholaevich, and Mikhail Nicholaevich.
When the "Big Four" princes, Alexander, Constantine, Nicholas and Michael, began to have lots of children of their own, people kept all of these little Romanov princes straight by paying special attention to their patronyms or middle names: Alexandrovich, Constantinovich, Nicholaeivch and Mikhailovich told you exactly whose son you were addressing.
Consequently the four main Branches of the Russian Imperial Family began to be called: The Alexandrovichi (sons of Alexander), the Konstantinovichi (sons of Constantine), the Nikolaevichi (sons of Nicholas), and the Mihailovichi (sons of Michael).
The Tsar's family were descendants of the Alexandrovichi branch. Tsar Nicholas II (Nicholas Alexandrovich) was the son of Tsar Alexander III (Alexander Alexandrovich), who was the son of Tsar Alexander II (Alexander Nicholaevich), who was the senior son of Tsar Nicholas I. One only had to hear the middle name "Alexandrovich" to know that one had just been introduced to a member of the senior branch of the royal family -- the branch that inherits the crown.
The Konstantinovichi, Nikolaevichi and Mihailovichi were junior or cadet branches, and these patronymics therefore became associated with their junior or inferior status within the Imperial family. These branches were not, however, without power or money -- far from it -- and their children were very ambitious indeed.
By 1914, a very large crowd of Konstantinovichi, Nikolaevichi and Mihailovichi cousins were watching Tsar Nicholas II as he led their country into World War I. Not all of them were pleased with his policies and performance at court -- there was definitely a great deal of whispering going on in the dining rooms of their separate palaces.
The Russian court of Tsar Nicholas II thus began to resemble a single chess board with four corners -- and rival players in each corner.
The four family palaces of the four sons of Tsar Nicholas I still served as the basic framework for all political intrigue, gossip and discussion within the Romanov Imperial family. But, after two generations, the number of the Tsar's rivals had greatly increased. The competing branches of the Romanov family had become deeply rooted, their rivalries intense and well-established.
COLLATERAL BRANCHES
While the "Big Four" princes certainly formed the main trunk of the Romanov tree in pre-war St. Petersburg, by 1914 there were several branches of the Roman family scattered across Europe
For example, in Poland there was a "Lost Branch" of the Romanovs -- the Polish children of Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich (the older brother of Tsar Nicholas I). They were skeletons in the Romanov closet -- a very real embarrassment to all the descendants of Tsar Nicholas I, because they were rival claimants to the throne.
In France, as the Great War started, one could still find the children of Ekaterina Dolgoroukov, the Princess Yourievskaia, a royal mistress who had been driven out of Russia when Tsar Alexander II died and Tsar Alexander III came to power.
Within the court at St. Petersburg in 1914, one must also pay close attention to the auntie "Nicholaevnas" -- daughters of Tsar Nicholas I -- because their marriages forged key alliances to the German royal houses. As Tsar Nicholas II went to war in 1914, he certainly had to keep track of his aunties and their German husbands! Some of his aunts were actually living in the country the Russians were about to attack. Conversely, the Tsar's own wife, Alexandra, was a German princess (Alix of Hesse) -- as were many of the royal Romanov wives.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that all of these branches of the Romanov family, though seemingly separate, worked together in a highly coordinated manner, the way a group of instruments in a large orchestra play together, or the way a large group of people dancing a quadrille follow the same music and steps. They saw themselves as separate, with their own special interests, and yet no matter where they lived, they were always very much aware that they were part of a single, orchestrated group: The Russian Imperial Family.
FAMILY GROUP OF TSAR NICHOLAS I
To illustrate how all of these strange and disparate branches were woven into a single and unified whole, let's take a look at Tsar Nicholas I and his family history. This story illustrates how close-knit the Romanov family was, yet it also shows how the selfish and ornery behavior of few family members managed to affect the fate of the entire Romanov family -- and Russia as a whole.
Tsar Nicholas I (Nicholas Pavlovich) was the third son of Emperor Paul I and Princess Sophie Dorothea of Wurttemberg. He was the younger brother of his predecessor, Tsar Alexander I, and between 1814 and 1824 almost everyone ignored Nicholas Pavlovich, because they expected that, if Tsar Alexander I were to die suddenly, then the second eldest son, Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich, would surely become the next Tsar.
Courtesans who threw themselves at Constantine Pavlovich (he was quite the ladies' man) only smiled politely at the awkward jokes made by Nicholas Pavlovich, who was rather a shallow sort, and never really trained to be the Tsar.
In 1817, then, seeing him only as a "spare heir" and a political bargaining chip, the Romanov family decided to marry Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich to Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who was the daughter of the King of Prussia, Frederick William III, and the sister of the German Emperor Wilhelm I.
When they married, Charlotte joined the Russian Orthodox church and took the Russian name Alexandra Feodorovna ("Alexandra, daughter of Frederick"). The match turned out to be a happy one. Nicholas and Alexandra began producing children right away: Alexander Nicholaevich in 1818, Maria Nicholaevna in 1819, Olga Nicholaevna in 1822, and a lovely little girl named Alexandra Nicholaevna in 1825.
Note well: We already begin to see the first of the princes who will become heirs (Alexander) and a few of the "Nicholaevnas" popping up. More importantly, Nicholas was shrewdly presenting himself as a sturdy and reliable family man, not a playboy, and he had successfully gained the political support of the Prussian and German ministers in St. Petersburg by marrying a German princess and offering her an opportunity to become Tsarina.
Indeed the story of Nicholas I illustrates the strong international interest that other countries took in love affairs and marriages within the Russian court. It wasn't just a matter of good gossip and tabloid fodder -- the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, had some very serious strategic interests involved in this marriage. The Austrian, Prussian and German princes on Russia's borders put almost as much effort into planning such marriages as they put into their military campaigns!
Royal marriages, in those days, were an extremely serious business.
The Prussians were certainly well aware, for example, that they now had a princess of their own royal family who was only a couple heartbeats away from the Russian throne. If one could somehow make arrangements to remove Tsar Alexander and Grand Duke Constantine . . .
Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich had just celebrated the birth of his sixth child when Tsar Alexander I suddenly caught typhus and died in December 1825. Tsar Alexander had no children.
Many people therefore expected the crown to pass immediately to the second-eldest son, Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich, a popular prince who had repeatedly opposed many of the more oppressive acts of his brother Alexander. Liberals looked forward to the Tsarevich's return from "exile" in Warsaw, and they hoped that Russia would soon have an enlightened Tsar.
Imagine their stunned response, then, when Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich suddenly stepped forward to announce that his older brother Constantine had "secretly" removed himself from the line of succession in 1823.
There was some very serious grumbling amongst peasants, cadets, artists and the courtesans who had curried Constantine's favor. Even the senior members of the armed services were frowning and wagging their heads. They had all invested in Constantine -- what gave Nicholas Pavlovich the right to step forward and push aside the Tsarevich?
Above: Constantine Pavlovich Romanov, the Tsarevich who never became Tsar, ca. 1799. Right: His first wife, Princess Juliane (Tsarevna Anna Feodorovna), portrayed about the same year by Louise Vigee-Lebrun. Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The general public were truly shocked. Was this a coup d'etat? Had Constantine voluntarily stepped down?
Well, yes and no. It wasn't entirely voluntary.. But explaining exactly how he had been manipulated and forced to step down, and why he had agreed to abdicate "voluntarily," was a bit embarrassing for the Tsarevich.
The trouble began in 1796 when Constantine Pavlovich had married a beautiful and vivacious princess from England, Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Although an aunt of Queen Victoria (a notorious prude), Juliane gained quite a reputation for saucy flirtations, and she became a "rising star" of the Russian court.
In fact Juliane became so very popular, and Russian rakes began paying so very much attention to her wit and charms that Constantine became convinced that he, the Tsarevich, might soon be made a cuckold, and if he weren't careful his first-born son, the heir to the Russian throne, might turn out to be another man's boy.
Genuinely jealous, Constantine began refusing to let Juliane leave their house. When she disobeyed, Constantine Pavlovich became ugly and brutal. He locked her up in her rooms -- literally kept her a prisoner in his palace.
Juliane finally escaped this imprisonment by pretending to need medical treatment. She travelled to Coburg, escaped hospital, fled to her relatives, then stubbornly refused to come back. Constantine eventually had the marriage annulled in 1820 so that he could marry his mistress in Poland, Countess Joanna Grudzinska -- a secret alliance that cost Constantine the crown.
Above: Joanna Grudzinska, mistress of Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich
A LOST BRANCH OF THE ROMANOVS
Constantine Pavlovich reportedly had three sons by Joanna Grudzinska and his other mistresses -- boys named Pawel, Constantine, and Konstanjia. After their marriage on 8 July 1820, Joanna attempted to help the Tsarevich save face by adopting the boys and using a title, the "Princess of Lovich."
But none of this mattered in the eyes of the Tsar's court at St. Petersburg. The marriage was morganatic -- it had taken place between the Tsarevich and a woman of unequal rank. More importantly, Constantine had remarried while a previous royal spouse was still living, and that made the new match seem adulterous in the eyes of many.
Consequently, as far as the court and the church were concerned, Constantine's boys were bastards -- the products of an illegitimate and scandalous marriage, born without title and unable to inherit the crown. The church could not possibly give its blessings to their enthronement.
Constantine had royally botched things.
It is also very doubtful that Prince Constantine ever requested or received permission to re-marry from his brother Alexander, the Tsar. Without the Tsar's permission, any marriage made by the Tsarevich could be declared null and void, and his wife could be stripped of all titles and honors. Constantine himself could be forced to forfeit all of his property in Russia.
Thus the Tsar brought extreme pressure to bear on Constantine Pavlovich -- unless he wanted to lose his lands, see his marriage nullified, his sons declared bastards and his wife publically disgraced, he had to abdicate in favor of his brother, Nicholas Pavlovich.
In 1823, then, Constantine agreed "voluntarily" to abdicate and his three sons lost all right to inherit the Russian crown. In return, Constantine Pavlovich was allowed to retire in peace and quiet.
The Russian public, meanwhile, remained largely unaware of Constantine's love affairs, his marital mess, his adulteries and his secret abdication. All they knew was that Tsar Alexander had died suddenly and unexpectedly, and the third in line had pushed a popular Tsarevich aside, grabbing the crown for himself.
In fact, the unexpected "coup d'etat" which removed Constantine Pavlovich and placed Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich on the throne caused more than just grumbling -- it resulted in outrage and open rebellion.
Several popular writers (Pushkin and Dostoevsky) and several hot-headed officers in the Russian Army began speaking of resistance, kidnapping, assassination or armed insurrection. They formed a secret society and hatched a secret and very serious plot to overthrow Tsar Nicholas I known as the Decembrist Revolt.
Nicholas and his police quickly uncovered this plot and brutally smashed the uprising, sending many of the writers, students and liberal idealists who had lead the demonstrations and insurrections to prison camps in Siberia. All further mention of Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich and his three sons was likewise suppressed -- they were practically erased from the pages of Russian history.
To this day, one seldom hears of the Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich or his offspring.
Tsar Nicholas I and his German wife Alexandra quickly took charge at court and reigned firmly as emperor and empress from 1825 to March 1855. Their large family soon grew into a very powerful branch of the Romanov family, one that almost completely dominated all the other offshoots of the Romanov tree.
FORESHADOWING
In many ways, the history of the first Nicholas and Alexandra foreshadowed the careers of the second Nicholas and Alexandra. Nicholas I and his German wife took power through careful marital and political alliances. Many people suspected that they had also employed a great deal of stealth and political intrigue, undermining their rivals, perhaps even committing murders amongst their own relatives. But if they did hire agents to engage in cloak-and-dagger intrigues, or to commit murders, they were quite successful at covering their tracks and putting on a good front. They were very good at "keeping up appearances."
One thing they couldn't hide: the launch to their careers as Emperor and Empress had certainly been a bloody mess. The Decembrist Revolt and the brutality with which they had suppressed the revolt earned them lots of genuine hatred. Having destroyed so many lives and imprisoned so many people, Tsar Nicholas I lived in a state of constant anxiety, never knowing when his enemies might want to take revenge.
The children of this dynasty grew up in the midst of adulteries, betrayals, court intrigues, sudden deaths, social upheavals, murder plots and a very deep fear of military coup attempts. They grew up knowing they were deeply hated, not only by the serfs and the anarchists who always wanted to throw bombs at them, but also by rivals within the Romanov family.
Having been taught paranoia and distrust from an early age, the sons of Tsar Nicholas naturally did not trust each other as they got older. They divided into rival courts.
The fracturing of the Imperial family into four separate courts, a deep division which began under Tsar Nicholas I, later played a key role in the final downfall of the Romanov dynasty under Tsar Nicholas II. Each branch of the family began actively trying to undermine the others, with the result that they did not provide a unified or organized front to their enemies, internal or external.
Just how easy it was for their external enemies (the Germans) to penetrate Romanov defenses during World War I becomes clear when we study in detail the Family Group of Tsar Nicholas I and his children, below.
The Romanovs, themselves descendants of the House of Holstein-Gottorps, clearly intermarried with several German houses: the Oldenburgs, the Leuctenbergs, the Wurttembergs, and the House of Hesse. In 1914, the Tsarina Alexandra herself was a German princess (Alix of Hesse).
In this short family history of Tsar Nicholas I, then, we may see the fall of the House of Romanov very clearly foreshadowed. Given a "Russian" royal family that was so clearly and thoroughly German, it is not surprising at all that the Russian people finally turned against them, and decided to get rid of them at the end of World War I.
TEN CHILDREN OF TSAR NICHOLAS I
Tsar Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had the following ten children:
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1. Tsar Alexander II (1818 - 1881) who married in 1841 to Marie of Hesse and by Rhine (1824 - 1880), and by her had eight legitimate children, known as the Alexandrovichi, as well as at least seven known illegitimate children by his many mistresses, including four by his second (morganatic) wife, Catherine Dolgorukov, created the Princess Yurievskaia.
2. Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (1819 - 1876) who married in 1839 to Maximilian de Beauharnais, the third Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817 - 1852), a member of the French and Bavarian royal families. They had seven children.
3. A stillborn daughter (born and died 22 July 1820)
4. Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (1822 - 1892) who married in 1846 to King Karl (Charles I) of Wurttemberg (1823 - 1891). They had no children.
5. A stillborn daughter (born and died 23 October 1823)
6. Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna (1825 - 1844), known as "Adini," who married in 1844 to Prince Frederick William of Hesse-Kassel (1820 - 1884). Her father's favorite and a beautiful singer, Alexandra fell acutely ill with tuberculosis shortly after her wedding and died in childbirth.
7. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Nikolaevna, who died at the age of three (1826 - 1829)
8. Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich (1827 - 1892) who married in 1848 to Duchess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenberg (1830 - 1911) and had by her six legitimate children, the Konstantinovichi, plus five illegitimate children with his mistress Anna Kuznetsova (1847 - 1922)
9. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (1831 - 1891), the elder, who married in 1856 to Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Oldenburg (1838 - 1900), and by her had two sons, the Nikolaevichi
THE MIKHAILOVNAS
Finally, last but not least, we come to a remarkable female branch of the Romanovs (the "Mikhailovnas") who are sometimes confused with the Mikhailovichi. They stem from a younger brother of Tsar Nicholas I.
It seems that Tsar Alexander I, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, and Tsar Nicholas I (the first, second and third sons of Emperor Paul I) had a fourth and younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich of Russia (1798 - 1849) who quietly married in 1824 to his first cousin, Princess Charlotte of Wurttemberg (1807 - 1873).
Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich and Princess Charlotte (Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, above) took up residence at the Mikhailovsky Palace in St. Petersburg (the "Old Michael Palace"), where they had five daughters. Their daughters were:
1. Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna of Russia (1825 - 1846) who died unmarried;
2. Grand Duchess Elizabeta Mikhailovna of Russia (1826 - 1845) who married Adolf, Duke of Nassau, and died in childbirth;
3. Grand Duchess Ekaternia Mikhailovna of Russia (1827 - 1894), who married Duke Georg Auguste of Mecklenburg-Strelitz;
4. Grand Duchess Alexandra Mikhailovna of Russia (1831 - 1832) who died as an infant; and
5. Grand Duchess Anna Mikhailovna (1834 - 1836) who also died as an infant.
Despite the tragic loss of four sisters, Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna (above) married happily, and she had three sons and a daughter, who descended in parallel to the senior branches of the Romanov family. One of Ekaterina's sons, Duke Georg Alexander of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1859 - 1909) is the great-grandfather of Duke Georg Borwin of Mecklenburg, (1956 to present) the current head of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Thus a little-known female line of Romanovs, having moved to Germany, survived several of the senior Russian branches.
