Grand Duke Kyrill, his wife Victoria Fedorovna and children, Part II

[perdita]

Exactly ! There is always fire where there is smoke. However I think Serge was much more repressed than his cousin Grand Duke Constantine. He at least had an outlet in both in the dramatic arts and bath houses. Serge was a bigoted Christian who believed in a very narrow road to salvation. I think Kirill's case was even more complicated. He was in the navy for awhile and never heard about having a mistress.

"There is always fire where there is smoke."

Since "smoke" equals "fire" when it comes to second hand gossip THEN it is confirmed that the Empress Alexandra was a German spy, she was Rasputin's lover, Alexis was their son,--and in her zeal she gave each of her daughters to the "mad monk".

i.e.,--Allegations asserted by MILLIONS & multiple "credible" sources pre & post 1918.

Demonstrably, historical figures are guilty of conjecture until proven innocent.

Evidence not required.

[perdita]

From "The Court of the Last Tsar"  by Greg King pg. 80.

King replete with "anonymous" sources, a myriad of second hand tell-alls, & hostile (or otherwise) witnesses running the gamut from pre/post revolutionary to one hundred years after the fact is not evidence.

Rumor: "A statement or report not authenticated."

[Eric_Lowe]

Well...There are some people that believe that Ella's Serge's marriage weren't consummated. Unless you go to Jerusalem and do an autopsy on Ella, it cannot be proven that it was. She might still be a virgin.

Prove has to be on both sides...

[Kalafrana]

Ella may be an Orthodox saint, but I very much doubt that her remains are sufficiently incorrupt for a post-mortem to ascertain whether or not she was a virgin at her death!

The long and the short of it is that we don't know anything conclusive about Serge's sexuality, or Kirill's for that matter. We know about KR's from his diaries, but Serge's diaries do not show anything of that nature, and I don't know whether Kirill was a diarist at all. Given the absence of evidence, it is perfectly possible that Serge and Ella had a sex life together, but one or other was sterile.

Ann

[Eric_Lowe]

The point I am making is that it all boils down on who said what or what is believable without forensics to proof otherwise (like in the Anna Anderson case). Kyrill might be a closeted gay in all probability based upon his lack of a mistress before he married Ducky. Most other grand dukes did (including the moral Nicholas II and Sandro). This lack of a woman in his life strangely mirrors that of Ernie. It is not proof but it does begs the question.

[Kalafrana]

Nowadays there seems to be a general assumption that everyone is at it like rabbits, or should be.

Maybe Kirill just didn't have much sex drive. Not everybody does.

Simply to illustrate my point, Boris of Bulgaria waited until he was 36 to marry, and I am not aware that he had any mistresses before that. He and Giovanna then had a happy marriage and two children. Maybe he was rather repressed, as the son of the notoriously homosexual Ferdinand, or he preferred the uncomplicated pleasures of shooting and driving trains.

Ann

[Eric_Lowe]

I think that begs the question especially since Kyrill's brother Boris was a womanizer (Ducky's sister Missy being one of his conquest) and his other brother Andrei had a long relationship with Nicholas II's ballerina mistress. Why not Kyrill ? Also he was on a ship a lot of the time, and lots of seamen had homosexual sex, although not all are gay.

Indeed. With a father like foxy, it would not be a wonder that Boris may have question his own sexuality too. But happily he found out that he was not. Although he still needs to get married and produce an heir.

[Kalafrana]

Perhaps Kirill's apparent lack of interest simply stands out because one of his brothers was the womanising Boris, and the other was Andrei, who got involved with Matilde when he was 20, was attached to her thereafter until his death and seems never to have looked at anyone else.

In any case, brothers aren't necessarily alike - my three maternal uncles were very different characters indeed! And we could contrast the womanising Edward VII with Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who married at 29, without, as far as I know, any mistresses before that. He later had a lengthy attachment to Leonie Leslie, but we do not know how far it got (maybe no further than tea and conversation).

As I've said before, we don't know about Kirill and probably never will.

Ann

[Eric_Lowe]

Well...As a man I can tell you that it is pretty strange. As science has told us that men thought about sex much more than women. Quite a lot of straight boys had sex with each other growing up call "rites of passage". As we trace Kyrill's growing up and time spent on ship, it is quite possible that he had sex with other men/boys at that time.

Also Kyrill also had a passive nature and let Ducky dominate him. She was the one eager to be empress and the dynamo in the partnership according to those who work with them. In short, Kyrill apparently had no relationship with any woman before Ducky and none after. He was being described as a bit of a "cold fish". All this point to him being possibly a "closeted" gay man. His only slip was the one that wound Ducky to the core. I think Kyrill would be a good case as a closeted gay man. Lot of circumstantial evidence points to that direction. 

[CountessKate]

I think Kyrill would be a good case as a closeted gay man. Lot of circumstantial evidence points to that direction.

I must take issue with the use of the word "evidence".  No evidence at all, circumstantial or direct, is available for Kyrill as a closeted gay man.  It is just as possible that he had sex with other men as that he didn't.  Nothing evidential points in that direction.

[Eric_Lowe]

of him not involving with a woman before he met Ducky ? That is strong evidence...in fact very similar to Ernie's case.

[Kalafrana]

Eric

You are jumping to conclusions on the assumption that if an unmarried man is not leaping into bed with women he must be leaping into bed with other men!

You say yourself that Kirill was a rather passive individual. Is it not possible that this passivity extended to sex and that he didn't have much love life before he married?

Incidentally, Andrei seems to have been rather passive in his relationship with Matilde. He tolerated being in a menage a trois with Serge Mikhailovich for over 15 years, and then seems to have allowed Matilde to be the driving force in their marriage.

All the information we have about Kirill is circumstantial and capable of more than one interpretation. This is all that I'm saying.

Ann

[Eric_Lowe]

I am not saying that there is 100% proof. But there is a strong case that he might be. Also Mathilde's son may not been Andrei's. He was rather passive too, unlike his brother Boris and other Romanov cousins and uncles.

[Kalafrana]

Eric

I am sinmply saying that we don't know and are unlikely ever to know.

Andrei was indeed rather passive - I've already said that! For what it's worth, I think that Matilde's son looked far more like Andrei than he did SErge Mikhailovich, but without DNA there can be no proof. Doubtless it suited Matilde to keep two Grand Dukes on the hop at the time of his birth (though if she was sleeping with both at the same time she could not have known herself!)

Ann

[Eric_Lowe]

But Kyrill was sandwiched between two strong women, Miiechen (his mother) and Ducky (his wife). He never had that kind of adventure and appeared to be repressed. A strong case for being a closeted gay man. Agree never be 100 % sure, but a strong case none-the-less. In the US you can convict a person of murder without a body or murder weapon. Kyrill most certainly had possible motive here.