Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia

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Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia : biography

18 September 1891 – 5 March 1941

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (Дмитрий Павлович Романов) (18 September 1891 – 5 March 1941) was a Russian imperial dynast. He is known for being involved in the murder of the mystic peasant faith healer Grigori Rasputin, whom he felt held undue sway over Tsar Nicholas II.

Biography

Early life

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was born at Ilinskoe near Moscow, the second child and son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and a grandson of Alexander II of Russia; thus, he was a first cousin of Nicholas II of Russia. Dmitri Pavlovich’s mother, Alexandra Georgievna of Greece was a daughter of George I of Greece and his Queen consort, Olga Konstantinovna of Russia. As such, he was also a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Dmitri and his sister Maria were mostly raised by their uncle and aunt, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia and his wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, the elder sister of Tsarina Alexandra.

His mother, Alexandra, was seven months’ pregnant with him when, while out with friends, she jumped into a boat, falling as she got in. The next day, she collapsed in the middle of a ball from violent labor pains brought on by the previous day’s activities; Dmitri was born in the hours following the accident. Alexandra slipped into a coma, from which she never emerged. Although doctors had no hope for Dmitri’s survival, he lived, with the help of Grand Duke Sergei, who gave the premature Dmitri the baths prescribed by the doctors, wrapped him in cotton wool and kept him in a cradle filled with hot water bottles to keep his temperature regulated. "I am enjoying raising Dmitri," Sergei wrote in his diary.Perry, John Curtis, and Pleshakov, Constantine, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga, Basic Books, 1999, p. 43

Throughout his life, Dmitri Pavlovich was known as a great womanizer. Among his lovers were popular Russian ballerina and early film actress Vera KaralliRadzinsky, Edvard, The Rasputin File, Doubleday, 2000, pp. 476-477 and Pauline Fairfax Potter, an American fashion designer and writer. He also temporarily pursued the Duchess of Marlborough (the American-born Consuelo Vanderbilt), who was separated, and later divorced, from the Duke of Marlborough. The fact that Dmitri Pavlovich was both 16 years the Duchess’ junior, and economically challenged, did not assist his case. His most notable affairs were with Natasha Sheremetyev, morganatic wife of his cousin, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, and in the early 1920s with Coco Chanel; however, the one (reputed) affair that had the most influence on the course of his life and that effectively gave him his place in history was with another man: cross-dressing and presumably bisexual Prince Felix Yusupov, with whom he had a relationship in the winter of 1912/1913 that caused quite a scandal. It was this relationship that caused the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to decide against Dmitri marrying her eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. Later, in 1916, Felix was the one who involved him in the murder of Grigori Rasputin.

Older sources (among them Felix’s own memoirs) always maintained that the murder of Rasputin was Felix’s idea, and that Dmitri was only involved because he owned a car that could move unimpeded through the strictly controlled city of St. Petersburg in wartime because of its imperial standard. Newer research, particularly that of Edvard Radzinsky in his book The Rasputin File, has proposed the idea that the murder originated with Dmitri, and that he probably fired the shot that ultimately stopped the dying Rasputin from escaping. It is thought that the story subsequently told by the conspirators was concocted to protect Dmitri from a stain that would endanger his chances of succeeding to the throne of Russia.

As a direct result of his involvement in the murder, Dmitri Pavlovich was sent to the Persian front, which ultimately saved his life; most of his relatives were executed by the Bolsheviks, including his father, his aunt Elizabeth, and his morganatic half-brother Vladimir Paley, but he himself escaped, with British help, via Teheran and Bombay to London.