The Romanov Family
At the time of the executions, about a dozen Romanov relatives were known to have escaped the Bolsheviks, including Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, her daughters Xenia and Olga, and their husbands. Of the 53 Romanovs who were alive in 1917, it’s estimated that only 35 remained alive by 1920.
For Russian royalists, the continued existence of Romanov descendants keeps hope alive that someone in the royal family will reclaim the throne, but they don’t agree on which member of the family has the strongest claim. While the Pauline Laws ceased to be the law of the land as a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Romanov family’s exile, the sections of the Pauline Laws that regulate the membership and leadership of the Imperial House remain in full effect as the Romanov House Law. The major conflict occurs with the argument on this section of the Pauline Laws: “if any person in the Imperial Family enters into a marriage with a person of a status unequal to His, that is, not belonging to any Royal or Ruling House, in such a case the person in the Imperial Family cannot pass on to the other person the rights which belong to Members of the Imperial Family, and the children issuing from such a marriage have no right of succession to the throne.”
There are two branches of the Romanov family arguing over the issue, including a Russian political party called the Monarchist Party created in 2012.
These are the possible claimants to a revitalized Romanov monarchy*:
Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna
Maria Vladimirovna, great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II, lives in Spain. Her father, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, was born in exile in Finland in 1917, and from 1938 claimed to be head of the Russian imperial family. When he died in 1992, his daughter succeeded him. She calls her son, the Grand Duke George Mikhailovich, the heir apparent. However, Maria Vladimirovna never joined the Romanov Family Association, founded in 1979 to unite descendants. She and her supporters do not believe the members have a legitimate claim to the throne because the association members include ancestors who married outside the dynasty.
Prince Andrew Andreevich
Prince Andrew is the great-great-grandson in the male line of Emperor Nicholas I. He is also the grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna (Nicholas II’s sister) and Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Nicholas II’s uncle). Xenia fled Russia in 1917 along with her mother (Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna) and others on a warship sent by her cousin, Britain’s King George V. Born in London in 1923, Andrew is an artist and author who lives in California. After the death of Prince Dmitri Romanovich in December 2016, Prince Andrew inherited the claim to the throne supported by the Romanov Family Association.
Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen
Prince Karl (born June 12, 1952) is also known by his Orthodox Russian name Nikolai Kirillovich Romanov. He is the eldest son of Emich, 7th Prince of Leiningen and is an elder brother of Andreas, 8th Prince of Leiningen. His Romanov roots are as a grandson of Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna (1907–1951), eldest child of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (and cousin of Nicholas II), who claimed the Russian crown from exile in 1924. He is a great-great-grandson of Emperor Alexander II and grandnephew of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich. In 2013, the Monarchist Party of Russia declared Prince Karl the primary heir to the Russian throne upon his conversion from Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburg
Most everyone is familiar with Prince Philip, husband of Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately, his legacy moved into history upon his death, April 9, 2021. He was a grandnephew of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as well as a great-great-grandson of Nicholas I. In 1993, after unmarked graves believed to contain the remains of Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, and three of their daughters, were exhumed, Prince Philip offered a blood sample to scientists seeking to identify the remains. His mitochondrial DNA matched the bodies of Alexandra and the three girls.
Princess Olga Andreevna Romanov
Princess Olga is the daughter of Prince Andrei Alexandrovich (son of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and the eldest nephew to Nicholas II). Born in 1950, she is the only child from her father’s second marriage and a half-sister to Prince Andrew Andreevich. In 2017, she became president of the Romanov Family Association, founded in 1979 to unite descendants. Olga Andreevna has four children.
Prince Michael of Kent
A minor royal in Britain (first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II), Prince Michael is connected to the Romanovs through Emperor Nicholas II, who was a first cousin of his grandmother. In July 2018, he joined Olga Andreevna and other Romanov descendants in St. Petersburg to mark the 100th anniversary of the royal family’s execution and to visit the cathedral where the remains of Emperor Nicholas II’s family are buried. His mother was Princess Marina, a daughter of Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna, a first cousin of Emperor Nicholas II.
Prince Rostislav Rostislavovich
Prince Rostislav is a male-line descendant of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia, the youngest son of Tsar Nicholas I. He is also a descendant of Alexander II and Alexander III as the great-grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia (sister of Nicholas II) and her husband Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (cousin to Alexander III). Prince Rostislav has been a member of the Romanov Family Association since 1985. Born in Illinois, he grew up in London. He is also an accomplished landscape artist working mainly in oils, and he also works with the Raketa Watch Factory in St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great. In 2017—the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution—he designed a special watch stained with a drop of his blood to commemorate the bloodshed and sacrifice of the revolution and the violent end of Romanov rule in Russia.
King Constantine II of Greece
The king’s great-grandmother Olga Constantinovna was a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, a niece of Tsar Alexander II, and first cousin of Tsar Alexander III. His grandfather was King Constantine I of Greece, making him a cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. In 1967, he fled from a military junta in Greece and lived in exile in London until 2013, when he moved back to Greece with his Danish-born wife, Anne-Marie.
Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster
Born in 1991, Duke Hugh is a descendant of Tsar Michael I. The duke inherited a fortune worth some $12 billion at the age of 25, becoming one of the world’s youngest billionaires when his father died in 2016. His mother, Natalia Phillips, is the great-granddaughter of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich Romanov, a grandson of Nicholas I.
Nicoletta Romanoff (Consolo)
Nicoletta is an Italian television and movie actress. She is the daughter of Italian politician Giuseppe Consolo and Princess Natalija Nikolaevna Romanov, from who she gets her Romanov stage name. Her maternal grandfather is Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia, who was the grandson of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, a younger son of Emperor Nicholas I—which makes her a great-great-great-great granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. She has collaborated with the jewelry company Damiani on a Romanov Collection line, showcasing the name and mystique of her famous family.
*Grand Duke Alexandrovich Mikhailovich Romanov (son of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich and grandson of Nicholas I) married Grand Duchess Xenia Aleksandrovna Romanov (daughter of Alexander III and sister of Nicholas II) and had one daughter and six sons. As first cousins once removed, they are the ancestors of many current Romanov descendants.