Your personal opinion on Felix Yusupov

[clockworkgirl21]

I have to admit that I can't get enough of Felix. He's my favorite outside of Tzar Nikolai's family. Even though he used people and probably didn't care about anyone's feelings, and lied a lot, I can't help but like him.

[Annie]

I'm a huge Felix fan!

[bluetoria]

I do!! I think he's wonderful...for all his peccadillos  (!!!!! !!!!)
At least he had a lot of passion about him & I love his momentary bursts of extreme piety! I also think he's VERY funny (like buying the bear and bringing it back on Ella's train.)
I also read an autobiography of an English nurse who worked in Russia during WWI. After her return to England after the revolution she met Felix & he was very kind to her.  

[yusupovs_fan]

He is my absolute favourite from that period . He had lots of fun in life, didn't bother to worry about other people's opinions, but could also be serious and make important decisions, when necessary.

[Johnny]

I love this guy. He was very handsome, very elegant, and at the same time quite a fun person. I don't think that he didn't care about other people. I remember reading in his memoirs how his mother would tell them that people like them who have so much have a responsibility to give a lot to other people. Later in exile when they were so poor that they couldn't even afford a maid and Irina had to do their laundry by hand in their bath tub, it's understandable that they couldn't be as generous as they wanted to be. What he didn't care about was probably people's prejudices and gossip. For that he gets an A+ from me.

[Annie]

I also think he's VERY funny (like buying the bear and bringing it back on Ella's train.)

That was hilarious! I also like the time that he replaced his Dad's friends cigarettes with joke firework ones during the 1905 revolution and they ran outside screaming, thinking an attempt had been made on their lives! A visiting Emir of someplace was not mad like the rest, he thought it was so funny he awarded him the highest honor of his country and pinned the medal on him!

[Janet_W.]

Felix is fascinating to read about. Not sure I'd want to know him up close and personal, though!

[Lisa]

He makes me laught. It's a funny man: incredible character, incredible personnality, incredible history!

[deYoussouppoff]

That was hilarious! I also like the time that he replaced his Dad's friends cigarettes with joke firework ones during the 1905 revolution and they ran outside screaming, thinking an attempt had been made on their lives! A visiting Emir of someplace was not mad like the rest, he thought it was so funny he awarded him the highest honor of his country and pinned the medal on him!

There was a custom among the aristocracy in those days called "epater les bourgeois," which simply means that one should shake things up a little by doing things which were, in the ordinary way of things, absolutely outrageous. This was a wonderful example. Just as dancing on the table on his mother's jewels was totally outrageous.

What this custom meant was that one was rich enough, and important enough, to be above the common run of manners and customs -- to be above the law, sometimes. These were ways of showing people that one could get away with anything.

Like Felix?  How could one NOT like Felix?  He is a fascinating character. It often occurs to me who would play Felix if a film were ever made?  He had two distinct sides, you know, and the one that sets out to be rebellious and offend everyone would be very difficult to cast, I would think...

[bluetoria]

There was a custom among the aristocracy in those days called "epater les bourgeois," which simply means that one should shake things up a little by doing things which were, in the ordinary way of things, absolutely outrageous.

Not much change there then! Don't they still do that today (but with far less finesse than Felix!  )

[Tsaritsa]

Felix is rather boorish.  I have a problem with his role in the murder of Rasputin.  I have read parts of "Lost Slendor".  He is quite the braggart.  I find that hard to deal with.  I have never cared for Felix.  

[bluetoria]

Strangely enough, Tsaritsa, I think that he is a braggart but it is so over the top that it almost becomes endearing! I think it is something which few people can 'carry off' without becoming annoying and yet somehow Felix does (to my mind).
His flamboyance itself makes him noticed but I think that there was far more to him than initially meets the eye. Beneath all the show and facade, he seems to have been quite a thoughtful person in many ways, if something of a dilettante.
His involvement in Rasputin's murder is an unpleasant thought but....hum..hum... :-/
I imagine it would have been exhausting to be in his company but never boring.  

[deYoussouppoff]

I have always supposed that being around Felix would be like being around the most interesting person in one's world: generally, such a person (and I have known a few and have even been accused, when I was much younger, of being one of that genre) would be and remain simply fascinating, if for no other reason than because they are utterly incapable of  thinking, acting or reacting like anyone else. Such a person would also be center stage, at all times, running the show, wherever he might be. These fascinators, with vast charisma and the ability to control the stage, are, in some ways, far more like circus performers than everyday people. One would have to be able to leave, to get away to a quieter sphere where one could rest and reflect, but I can see how it would be addictive to be around such a person increasingly often. I would probably fall in love with someone like that, and then spend lots of time trying to keep enough distance to keep my sanity.

I am not sure that I "like" Felix. I do, however, feel that I understand him, that I "feel" him, and the fact that I am swept up into his world all these decades later, whenever his name is mentioned, says a lot. Who else has the ability to do that?  Only someone like Felix...

[Romanov_fan]

I believe that he was a character, too. That he had something about him that was very different from the normal and that fascinated people. The stories about his anctics seem to be numerous and they are all entertaining. I would have to have been around him to see if I could like him. He is someone you would have had a strong reaction to one way or the other. I would most likely have had to be around him to see if my reactin was good or bad. One thing that is true, he would have been fascinating to know whether or not you liked him. He would have made a mark on you, and you would always remember him.

I agree with the last poster who analyzed characters, I love people like that and I am forever seeking them out, in all areas of my life. I don't know if I am myself, maybe, I would hope so, but I am not that flamboyent. I worked with a person once who was a huge character. I still remember every story about her. But then I have worked with two people or so who were ''characters''.And don't let me even get into my neighbours, past and present.... I agree that you can almost fall in love with people of Felix's type, or people who are chracters in general. They are larger than life, and everything they do is the way no one else would do it. Often people like this make history again and again, as Prince Felix did.  

[AkshayChavan]

I really like felix. This reason is because whatever his faults , he had the character and strength to own his mistakes. It takes a person with strong character to say "I was a vain and shallow person in my youth". It takes guts for a man to say "i moved in woman's clothes and loved it". He made lot of mistakes but owned them up. That tells a lot about a person.