"Marriages" with other dynasties

[kmerov]

Anybody knows if prior to WWI, Germans or Austrians princes could be suitors to marriage with OTMA or with Nicholas II sisters? And anyone knows why both GD's married with russian princes instead of a foreign?

Yes, in theory they could be suitors, most likely were German Princes who were Protestant. NII's sisters married for very different reasons, but I think they both enyoyed being able to live in Russia, unlike so many other Romanov GDss's. Olgas husband, Peter of Oldenburg was from a protestant German family.

[Robert_Hall]

As has been mentioned before, it would take a rarely given papal dispensation  for a marriage between Orthodox &  Catholics.
 Also,   Xenia & Olga were far down in the line of succession, so their marriages were less important.

[Velasco]

I believe that under the Rurikids foreign marriages were more common than under the early Romanovs...perhaps because the Romanovs preferred marrying inside Russia in order to strengthen alliances with the boyar class? I can recall Ivan the Terrible wanting to marry Elizabeth Tudor and then Lady Mary Hastings, and I faintly recall mentions of Russian marriages into Scandinavian, Lithuanian, Polish and Hungarian royalty from time to time. Ivan IV's aunt Elena (Helen) married Alexander Jagiellon, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, for example. After that I think the constant turbulence in Russia and the Orthodox/Catholic differences were a pretty big impediment to foreign marriages for a good while.

[agordon2000]

Until the Romanovs started intermarrying with Peter the Great this had not been done for a long long time. I do not think this was a rule as Tzar Fyodo married a Polish girl but it was the custom to marry a girl from minor nobility and the princess or sisters and daughtters of the Tzar could not marry as no one was up to their status. The Romanov started to intermarry with the nobles of Europe under Peter the Great. They were a low status family in the 1700s and only ugly girls or well connected noble families with no money would consider them, though they tried. They wanted a marrisge of the daughter of Peter to someone high in France. No one would marry but she eventually became ruler of Russia and settled down with a good looking choir boy from Ukraine. At any rate his son married a girl from Germany he famously hated but had 2 kids. His nieces married the ruler of Courland in Latvia at his order who died on the way back and who owed him a huge favor, his other niece married a wretched old man as his third wife in wife and then after having a baby left him. Shortly thereafter the Tzars were hardly Russian. Tzar Nicholas II had a mother who was the sister of the ruler of England. They were mistaken for one another. His wife was the grand daughter of Queen Victoria. They were a club and there was almost no Russian in the royal. I figured it out once and there was like 1 100 part Russian in the last Tzar. They kept marrying Germans.