Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna-younger, her life and relations

Does anyone know how often Marie saw her son before and after the Revolution? I know she left him behind in Sweden when she returned to Russia, but I read a few times of meetings with him when he was an adult.

Going by the family tree, Lennart seems to have had a fairly interesting life, with two marriages, one to a much younger woman. He fathered children when he was in 60s and 70s with his second wife. I saw a picture of  him with one of the children of his first marriage, Marie Louise. She looks strikingly like her grandmother Marie Pavlovna.  

In 1921 she sow Lennart again. they were a little close to eachother.

It doesn't seem to me Maria P was very close with Lennart, either before of after the Revolution.  Apparently she was rather distant towards children in general, probably from her own upbringing without a mother and later without her father...

There was an article on the Royalty Digest site dealing with various 'hodge-podge' clippings. This one pertained to MP:
Let us start with Marie, Grand Duchess of Russia's book A Princess In Exile, a bestseller both here and in the States around 1932. In a cutting from the Evening Standard of March 11th, 1932 we find Marie flying 3,000 miles to be with her son Prince Lennart when he married Miss Karin Nisavandt. Neither Marie nor her brother Grand Duke Dimitri, who was also in London, attended the registry office wedding or heard Lennart renounce his royal rank. "Romanoffs," she told the press, "do not recognise register office weddings." Neither she nor her brother attended the Dorchester reception either, on the grounds that they hadn't been invited. Before the happy couple left for Lake Constance as Mr. and Mrs. Bernadotte, Marie sat in her Piccadilly hotel hoping they would call, but they didn't. It will be remembered that the Grand Duchess had a short and rather stormy marriage to Prince Wilhelm of Sweden in her younger days, hence the Bernadotte. The couple did receive telegrams from both Marie and King Gustav of Sweden, Lennart's grandfather.  Marie talked to the press at some length. Her basic objection was the lack of a religious service, but there seems to have been little contact with her son and she was unaware that he was leaving that afternoon, instead of the following day. A friend explained some of the background. After the Russian Revolution, the Swedish Court had returned Marie's jewels but held onto her large dowry, upon which Lennart was living rather well while his mother worked as a dressmaker in New York. Her two books, both very popular, gave her back her independence. An ink note at the end of one chapter quotes Axel Munthe saying how intensely annoyed the Queen of Sweden was when Marie's reminiscences were serialised in a popular Swedish weekly magazine. She summoned Munthe and tried to get him to stop it. Another note quotes Rebecca West, in a review in the Sunday Telegraph of June 13th, 1974, as saying that Munthe was the lover of the Queen of Sweden. She certainly appears discreetly in the book The Story of Axel Munthe visiting him in the Mediterranean.
Another cutting in the same volume, from the Daily Mail of January 3rd, 1952, reports a luncheon in Sweden with Prince Wilhelm, his "life friend Mme. Jeanne de Tramcourt" and Prince Lennart (who seems to have dropped the 'Mr. Bernadotte' at this stage). Afterwards 67-year-old Prince Wilhelm was involved in an accident in a snowstorm in which the lady was killed. There is another note on an endpaper stating that both Marie and Dimitri were buried in a vault at Mainau in Germany belonging to her son 'Count' Bernadotte. Yet another cutting records her death in Switzerland in 1958 and that she had been estranged from Lennart for twenty years.

i remember reading her memoirs at my school when i was about 12 or so (very old school with very old and impressive library!)

i remember being SO disappointed with her; why couldnt' she just settle down and live happily ever after, like a princess should? but now, i really do understand not being able to live peacefully with some husbands!

could someone refresh my memory: why exactly did she leave vilhelm?

i remember reading her memoirs at my school when i was about 12 or so (very old school with very old and impressive library!)

i remember being SO disappointed with her; why couldnt' she just settle down and live happily ever after, like a princess should? but now, i really do understand not being able to live peacefully with some husbands!

could someone refresh my memory: why exactly did she leave vilhelm?

I think there were a variety of reasons:
1) she didn't love him or even want the marriage in the first place
2) rumors of his sexual preferences
3) wanted to be in Russia rather than Sweden
4) didn't fit in with the Swedish royal family (save for her father-in-law & sister-in-law) or connect with the public
5) incredible incompatability with her husband which precluded trying to work around issues 1 & 2 despite their son

Marie in "motherly" mode with baby Lennart:

I have that card and others taken in the same sitting and general period. It always struck me as sad that that was basically all Lennart would have of his mother most of his life--those relatively few photos taken of his family within such a short period of time. I was also struck in many of the poses how ill-at-ease Marie seems with him--she's either holding him rather far away, or looking at him on the couch/bassinet or William's holding him or another relative. There's very little of the intimacy you see with N&A and OTMAA or her Swedish relatives or Greek relatives. I think it shows in a way how ill-equipped MP was to be a mother, or if she ever really felt 'maternal' at all not having much in ways of examples. It's too bad that her grandmother Queen Olga couldn't have raised her.

Maria Pavlovna, Lennart, Olga of Greece, Alexandra Yossifovna:


in 1925:

I have to agree Grandduchessella.  I think that MP's emotional scars were deep and acquired at an early age.  That marriage was really doomed form the start as I think that I am right in saying that she felt as though she had no option but to marry Willem beacuse ella wished her to be out from under her feet.
As ever we have to rely on MP' version of events, so we need to be judicious about how much we accept at face value.
It is sad that she ended her life estranged form her son - didn't she have another child that she was also estranged from (by her second marriage)?

She had a son Roman (?) by Prince Putiatin. When she fled Russia she left the infant behind with her in-laws where he soon died. I don't know where he might be buried or anything else really about him.

I finally found the picture. Here's MP and DP's gravesites on Mainau. Apparently her personal effects (photos, china, etc...) are also kept at Mainau.

Does anyone have pics of Marie with her second husband Serge Putiatin?
Angie

Marie's son by Putiatin is probably buried in Romania - he died there when he was very young. I am doubtful that there are photos of Marie and Serge P - they were married during the Revolution and were not well to do throughout their marriage. But, if anyone has one, it would be delightful to see it.

I'm not sure if Marie loved her son,.but in this pic she looks happy to me.



and this is my favorite picture of Lennart as a child.

I think he looks adorable in this one