Inglorious Royal Marriages

by Leslie Carroll

  Except there was no more throne. Kirill and Ducky had been stripped of their titles and lived in increased deprivation. As the Revolution had continued to close in around the imperial family and their Romanov relatives, Kirill chose to declare his allegiance to the Provisional Government. This decision spared his own nuclear family, but also made them objects of contempt to other Romanovs. They considered Kirill a traitor who had sold out to the Revolution. Kirill also used his connections to spirit Ducky and their children out of the hotbed of rebellion. Forbidden to take “anything of value” (although Ducky cleverly sewed her most precious jewelry into the family’s garments), and permitted to bring only “such clothes as they could carry,” at the end of May, they quietly departed for Finland, an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian Empire since 1809. On August 30, 1917, Ducky gave birth to a boy they named for Kirill’s father. Their son, Vladimir, was the last Romanov to be born within the borders of the old empire.

  Meanwhile, to the east, the Revolution became a clash of ideologies, as the Communist Bolsheviks (the “Reds”) clashed with the moderate and conservative opponents of the royalist regime (the “Whites”). How ironic that concurrent to the War of Cousins, a civil conflict raged in Russia between two opposing philosophies of government that was named for the same two colors delineating the combatants in the Wars of the Roses—that other Cousins’ War.

  A full-scale civil war erupted in Finland at the end of 1917. Kirill and Ducky endured frightening raids on their home and property, saved only by the former grand duke’s reputation as a beloved military commander, and the knowledge that Kirill had pledged his allegiance to the Provisional Government.

  In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty with Germany, bringing those hostilities to an end, but the Russian civil war continued. In late July, Ducky and Kirill collapsed at the news that Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, their few devoted household attendants, and even the family dog had been summarily executed. That month, as part of the Bolsheviks’ agenda to rid Russia of its imperial past, several of Kirill’s relatives as well as Ducky’s cousin Ella (sister to Alexandra and Ernie, and the widow of a previously assassinated Romanov grand duke) were murdered.

  Ducky pleaded with her cousin, England’s George V, for aid in destroying the monster of Bolshevism, writing,

  Is it possible that great political men such as England has at the head of her government fail to realize that the Bolsheviks do not represent the democracy of Russia and that they are not socialist, even in the remotest sense of the word; that they are nothing but the scum of the earth profiting of a momentary madness to maintain their power by a reign of terror against which all humanity and civilization cry aloud. . . . Petersburg at the present moment has reached the limit of human endurance, the population reduced to some seven hundred thousand souls who are dying of starvation and want. The remaining supplies of food are entirely in the hands of the Bolsheviks and not allowed to reach any of the population not belonging to Bolshevik organizations—all the bourgeoisie and higher classes and a great part of the working classes, not employed by the Bolsheviks are literally dying daily by thousands for want of food, clothing and warmth. Their lodgings are taken from them—all former officers and officials are thrown into prison and forced into Bolshevik service by drastic measures such as the shooting of their entire families, wives and children.

  Replying to Ducky’s impassioned plea, George V denied that England was refusing to become involved, but explained that Russia’s chaotic military morass made British interference nearly impossible.

  By 1919, the First World War was over, and three massive royal empires had collapsed, relegated to the history books. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, once the Holy Roman Empire founded by Charlemagne, was gone forever. The Romanovs and their imperial splendor had been replaced by the triumphant Communists, who began to push westward into Central Europe. And the Kaiser’s Prussian hegemony had been broken, replaced by the socialist Weimar Republic; the petty potentates of all those German duchies with hyphenated names still had fancy titles, but had nothing left to rule.

  Ducky and Kirill joined the ranks of postwar peripatetic royalty. They moved from Switzerland to France and back to Coburg, where Ducky had spent so much of her youth. The couple kept homes in more than one country, all the while maintaining the hope that the Russian throne would be restored to the Romanovs.

  It was difficult for Kirill and Ducky to adjust to the new world order. As her onetime friend Meriel Buchanan explained, “After years of unhappiness she had married the man she loved, and, having at last got all she wanted, saw it destroyed, and herself faced a future of despair and bitterness, an exile in poverty and humiliation.” Approaching the age of forty-three, she had even lost her beauty. Deprivation and fear had taken it from her.

  Kirill, however, had retained his looks and was as handsome as ever. Rumors circulated around Coburg that unbeknownst to Ducky he was indulging “his passion for . . . beautiful women.”

  Kirill—and Ducky—were searching for an identity after the war. Everything they were raised with had been demolished. They were unwelcome in many parts of the world. Cousin George, who still presided over the familiar comforts of a monarchy, feared the Bolsheviks would come scratching at the White Cliffs of Dover if he extended asylum to a Romanov. They certainly couldn’t return to Russia; the Soviet government had no intention of admitting them; nor were there to be any postwar reparations, or recognition of their personal rights. And yet, Ducky fed Kirill’s dream of ascending the throne. He was the last of the Romanovs—if you didn’t count his older and authoritative cousin Grand Duke Nicholas, the former commander in chief of the Russian army, who contested Kirill’s rights of succession, absurd as both claims were after the triumph of communism. Yet in 1922, the same year Kirill claimed the artistically inventive title of “Curator of the Imperial Russian Throne,” a royalist faction choosing a new czar proclaimed the childless Nicholas “Emperor of All the Russias.”

  In 1923, Kirill suffered a nervous breakdown that left him so shattered he was unable to cross streets without Ducky’s assistance. She devoted herself to rehabilitating him, body and spirit, chiefly by encouraging his fight to restore the Romanov monarchy and, in her husband’s words, “save his country from suffering and misfortune.” Her sister, Marie of Roumania, thought it was a fool’s errand and a lost cause, but Kirill was completely committed to it. On August 8, 1924, from his rented house in Saint-Briac-sur-Mer on the coast of Brittany, he issued his first “Manifesto,” declaring himself “Guardian of the Throne.” The following month, a lengthier manifesto urged the Russian people to “rise together with the army and recall . . . [the] lawful Tsar.” That would be him—as he made plain in the manifesto, setting forth his claim as “the senior member of the Czarist House and sole legal Heir of the Russian Imperial Throne, [taking] the title of Emperor of all the Russians which without possible doubt is mine.” He went on to “proclaim My Son, Prince Vladimir Kirillovich, as Heir to the Throne with the title of Grand Duke Heir and Czarevich.”

  Kirill faced a surprising stumbling block: his aunt Minnie—the mother of the murdered czar, who adamantly refused to believe that Nicholas II and his family had been killed. If her son was still alive, then Kirill had no claim!

  Other detractors raised their objections to Kirill’s assertion of his imperial rights; most other surviving members of the family felt that his declaration of loyalty to the Provisional Government during the war had been tantamount to treason. A Soviet newspaper tarred him with the nickname “Cyril Égalité,” an allusion to Louis XVI’s cousin, the duc d’Orléans, who became a friend of the French Revolutionaries.

  Then another, stranger voice piped up. An impostor claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia had the audacity to declare Kirill and Ducky traitorous “pretenders” to the throne!

  Kirill paid none of them any heed. He brought his family back to Coburg at the close of 1924,
from then on behaving in thought and action as an emperor. His two teenage daughters, zaftig Marie (known as Masha) and slender Kira, became grand duchesses. Ducky had reached the apotheosis of her mother’s ambitions: By virtue of being Kirill’s consort, she became Empress Viktoria Feodorovna of Russia.

  But her own ambition had yet to be entirely fulfilled. While Ducky seemed born for her new regal role, Kirill remained a czar without a throne, and she would not be fully content until it was restored, maintaining her conviction that her husband’s ascension was inevitable; it was all a matter of time. To that end, she vigilantly monitored his conduct. When he laughed too uproariously at a joke one evening, she reprimanded, “Remember, Kirill, you will be Emperor one day!”

  On November 29, 1924, Ducky left Le Havre for the U.S., sailing off to promote Kirill’s monarchist agenda, despite her repeated denials to the American press and her insistence that it was purely a social visit. It was also a speculative fund-raising mission. On her husband’s behalf, Ducky had hoped to dip into the country’s deep pockets, but she had miscalculated the rigidity of America’s dedication to isolationism in the wake of the First World War. Ducky enjoyed herself in New York City, but when she arrived in Washington, D.C., the Coolidge administration—aware of the awkwardness inherent in honoring the consort of the self-proclaimed Russian emperor, when they had officially recognized the Soviet government—diplomatically avoided her. The first lady managed to be out of town for the duration of Ducky’s visit. The Washington press was downright derisive of both Ducky and Kirill. Although she had written to her husband daily from America, Ducky tried to conceal her disappointment when she returned to Coburg. The trip had not been a success.

  On November 25, 1925, the same day Ducky turned forty-nine, her oldest daughter, the eighteen-year-old Grand Duchess Marie, married Friedrich Karl, hereditary prince of Leiningen, a tiny principality near Hesse-Darmstadt that had managed to remain in existence after the Great War. As far as Ducky and Kirill were concerned, Masha had married beneath her, but at least her husband was a genuine prince and their union was a love match.

  After the Bavarian government established cordial relations with Moscow during the mid-1920s, Germany’s homegrown Communists demanded that Kirill remove his imperial court, unformed as it was, “to some place where monarchies are more popular.” So Ducky and Kirill quit Coburg and returned to Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, resuming their residence at Ker Argonid, which translates to Villa Victoria in English. There, Ducky gardened and Kirill golfed, while they continued to plan for the future. Ironically, their imperial prospects suddenly seemed brighter after the death of the dowager empress in October 1928. With his aunt Minnie gone, Kirill was now the most prominent surviving member of the Romanov dynasty. And after his cousin, the Grand Duke Nicholas, died on January 5, 1929, Kirill’s claim to Russia’s throne was uncontested.

  A groundswell of support for Kirill was now bolstered by legions of Russian émigrés, underscoring the validity of his rights of succession. He and Ducky organized a “general secretariat” in Paris to keep track of monarchist sympathizers and timely developments.

  The secretariat was transferred to Ker Argonid in 1929. While Ducky painted and pottered about the garden, Kirill diligently worked from nine to six on imperial business, but as his cousin Alexander observed, he was a “highly overrated” Shadow Emperor. His subjects, former royalists, had been dispersed in the vast diaspora of Russian émigrés, “. . . driving taxis in Paris, serving as waiters in Berlin, dancing in the picture houses on Broadway, providing atmosphere in Hollywood, unloading coal in Montevideo or dying for Good Old China in the shattered suburbs of Shanghai.” Former judges were employed as factory workers; military officers were working as dishwashers. Yet all of them optimistically considered Kirill the czar and wrote him passionate pleas for his aid and guidance.

  Ducky and Kirill marked their silver wedding anniversary on October 3, 1930, with a celebration attended by most of their extended family. Looking back on this quarter century of marital happiness, their son Vladimir later wrote, “It was a marriage which was based entirely on the mutual love of my parents, and which took place in spite of the circumstances in which they found themselves. For twenty-five years they lived together with one heart and mind, and our family could well be an example to all. . . .”

  The early 1930s united Ducky and Missy in sisterly solidarity after Marie of Roumania’s son Carol began to treat her abominably. Then it was Ducky’s turn to require Missy’s solace after a horrific revelation during the early months of 1933 sent her to bed with a raging fever. At first the empress dared not confide, even to her sister and best friend, what had devastated her; nor would Missy ever divulge the reason for her “errand of mercy.” It clearly concerned Kirill, because for the rest of her life Ducky refused to sleep with him or even to permit him to touch her. However, for the sake of everyone’s reputation and dignity, they decided to preserve the appearance of the happy couple they had previously been. Even their children never suspected that a dark secret had come between them. Marie of Roumania did confide to a friend that her younger sister “had an overwhelming soulgrief which has shattered her conception of life and humanity,” but never specified what it was.

  Ducky may have already known that Kirill had an eye for the ladies. She had caught her first husband in the arms of a stable groom, which at the time, had stunned her to the core, and later in their marriage, she was humiliated by Ernie’s numerous homosexual liaisons. But her reaction to Kirill’s betrayal was exponentially stronger. What sin was so great that it destroyed Ducky’s “conception of humanity”?

  Whatever it was, it began to destroy her as well. Missy reported that from the time Ducky discovered her husband’s betrayal, she began to die “by inches,” spiraling into a depression from which she could not, and stubbornly would not, be rescued. She had devoted three decades of her life to Kirill; he had been everything to her. Now the Shadow Emperor and empress had a shadow marriage. Missy wrote to her friend Lord Astor, “. . . Through the horror of what happened to her in her married life, she has learnt to doubt . . . all men. . . .”

  Shortly after Ducky’s fifty-ninth birthday, she traveled to Germany, where her oldest daughter, Marie, was about to give birth to her fifth child. On January 2, 1936, she bore a daughter. Ducky, who had not been well, insisted on tending to the new mother and child, and caught a chill that worsened as the month progressed. Her spirits sank further at the news of the passing of her first cousin, King George V, on the night of January 20. “You know, we have rights on the Russian throne and some on the English; how splendid it would be if our two Empires could be joined, we would dominate the world,” she told a friend sadly, still dwelling, if only in her mind, in the bygone era of imperial splendor.

  The day after her infant granddaughter Matilda’s christening, Ducky suffered a stroke, paralyzing one side of her body and destroying most of her powers of speech. Her immediate family arrived to share her final days. Fortunately, Marie of Roumania had been granted permission to leave the country from the sovereign, her abusive oldest son, Carol. When Ducky was asked whether she was pleased that Missy had come, although it was an incredible effort to reply, she managed to form the words, “It makes all the difference.”

  Missy held her younger sister’s hand through the end, softly reminiscing about their golden days. Finally, at twelve fifteen a.m. on March 2, 1936, Ducky took her last breath.

  Writing to Nancy Astor (her friend Waldorf’s wife) after Ducky’s death, Marie referred to her sister as “our Conscience.” Yet she added that when Kirill had “betrayed her, she did not know how to forgive, so she allowed him to murder her soul. From then onwards, her strength became her weakness, her undoing—she was too absolute, she could not overcome herself. And now she had to die, unforgiving! Her lips were sealed because of the stroke which had felled her to the ground—but although she knew we were there and the first day she found a murmur of
recognition for each of us in turn, she shuddered away from his touch— Whilst we sat, in turns holding her hand, he stood like an outcast on the threshold of her door not daring to enter her room—”

  Ducky’s corpse was wrapped in a white silk robe. Marie laid some white lilies about her head and shoulders, and their sister Sandra placed a few stems of white freesia in her hands.

  According to Ducky’s wishes, the burial was a simple family affair. Her body was brought to Coburg on March 5. The following day, while a winter storm raged outside, a modest funeral was conducted, after which Ducky’s coffin was interred alongside the remains of her parents and her brother Alfred in the family vault of the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

  Kirill and their children returned to Saint-Briac after Ducky’s funeral, but her spirit so pervaded Ker Argonid that it was difficult for him to go on without her. Kirill never recovered from the shock of his wife’s death; after Ducky was gone, he began to prematurely age, spending the rest of his days poring over her letters and photographs and speaking of her frequently and glowingly.

  In 1938, though ailing, he insisted on traveling to Potsdam to attend their daughter Kira’s wedding ceremony to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia. His health deteriorated through the summer, and by September he was too physically weak for surgery to remove the extensive gangrene consuming his body. After another month of suffering, surrounded by his family, Kirill died on October 12, 1938, at the age of sixty-two.

  His death was viewed as a “national sorrow” by the diaspora of Russian exiles across the globe. Requiems were held around the world, but he, too, had a quiet funeral in Coburg, where he was laid to rest alongside Ducky.

  Ducky’s first husband, Ernie, remarried in 1905, wedding a social inferior, the frumpy Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich. She knew nothing about Ernie’s homosexuality going into her marriage, but evidently made her peace with it, and bore him two sons, in 1906 and 1908. Ernie and Eleonore considered themselves happily married until his death in October 1937. Ernie was buried alongside Elizabeth, his daughter by Ducky. One month later, his widow, Eleonore, died in a plane crash.