Who is the rightful heir?

[3710]

Antonio,
could you tell us more about George and his family. They live in Madrid for a while, don't they? So I assume there might have been something in Spanish press. I have not heard about them for ages.
Thanks
MP had her list of complains about Alexandra, btw.
Galina

[Antonio_P.Caballer]

Hello Galina!
I´m afraid i do not know very much. Grand duchess Maria always appears in some charity bazar or any time the imperial russia is mentioned. There was an interview in HELLO in which she was showing her house. They live in La Moraleja, a luxurious urbanization in the outskirts of Madrid, i think. The last i wachted on television was when she was asked if she felt a russian or a spanish, and she told that she did not feel herself spanish at all but russian(she has never lived in Russia however). I´ve always found her unsimpathetic...

Antonio.

[3710]

Thanks, Antonio.
Ye, they do not inspire me to become a monarchist, either.
Galina

[Valmont]

Galina,
Your comment takes me to ask you. What is the feeling of the people in Russia toward The Romanov?. Do they care  if the monarchy is stablished again? or they simply do not care at all. Also, is it the same feeling  among the older and younger Russians?
I just read a thread  about it, and  I started to wonder, maybe you can fill in  the blanks.

Best Regards,

Arturo Vega-Llausás

[3710]

Arturo, thanks for asking! I loved reading how Russian throne is being allocated here.
It was a bit of enthisiam at the very beggining of reforms (around the time when GD Maria's family first visited). But even then, it was SO part of the history and nothing to do with real life today.
I have watched some political talk show on Russian TV recently and there was a group representing some monarhist party (never heard of it before or since). It was such a joke: they did not even bother to learn Romanovs names and titles correctly, remained seated when''God save the Tsar'' was played and have earned many ironic remarks from the audience.
Particularly now, when 70% are happy with the President, no vacancies in this department.
Difficult to speak for the entire nation, but I suspect the average Russian would say ''WHAT?'' if asked about the restoration. Too many other concerns.
Galina

[BobAtchison]

Once in Petersburg I was invited to a small gala dinner with members of the Russian Nobility Association.  It was a Mad Hatter's tea party - on one side I had an aged, decrepit Countess with a wild mop of disheveled gray hair dressed in a wild assortment of mismatching clothes; while on the otherside was a Prince who insisted his family's claim to the throne was equally valid to the Romanovs.  He requested my assistance - indeed, he asked anyone he could grab - to petition the World Court to recognise his rights.  In the lobby of the hotel were waiting the children of the false Siberian Aleksey - who wanted to plead for DNA testing to prove they were real Romanovs and the true heirs.

Bob

[olga]

i have always thought Leonida and 'grand duchess' Maria Vladimirovna to be gold diggers and just in it for the fame, titles, etc. What about the relatives of Kseniya Alexandrovna? it seems even if the monarchy was restored, the Pauline Laws would be ignored anyway.

[LisaDavidson]

Xenia Alexandrovna still has living grandchildren. Michael Andrievich lives in Australia - he has no children. His brother, Andrei Andreivich, lives in Northern California and has sons and at least one grandchild. Their half sister Olga I believe lives in the UK.

Their cousin Michael Feodorovitch lives in France, Nikita's two sons live in the New York area, and two other of Xenia's granddaughters are also still alive.

[Nick_Nicholson]

Actually Lisa, Nikita (Nikitovich) still lives in New York, but Alexander Nikitovich died last year.  In NYC we have also Feodor Romanov, and a few of the grandchildren of Prince Vasili, whose daughter Marina married a New Yorker. One of her daughters is still in NYC, and I thik a son.  The rest live (I believe) in Colorado or Montana?

Best,  Nick

[LisaDavidson]

Nick: thank you for the update on Alexander Nikitovich. In terms of Princess Marina and her children, I know where one of her daughters lives. I was trying to focus on Xenia's grandchildren with the post but of course her great-great grandchildren are likely of as much interest as her grandchildren.

[3710]

Olga, I would not go that far regarding GD Maria (gold diggers etc). I 'd rather  see them as some sort of hostages of their position. Her father spend his life time as a pretender, it must be difficult to ''pull out'' for her. Anyway, they do not seem to have many political ambitions. I have read someone overheard her complaining  along the lines of ''What I need all that inconvinience for?'' during their grand tour of Russia (early 90s).
Bob your picture is 101% correct, this is a sort of public which is into all those things in Russia.
''Nobility'' and Romanovs  are best left to historians.
Galina

[Janet Whitcomb]

When our tour group was in Russia, some of my fellow travelers brought up the subject of reinstalling a tsar to various folks--tour guides, hotel staff, families we spent time with, etc.--and the idea of going back to tsardom seemed bizarre to them all. (And I don't blame them!) Some members of our group also tried promoting the American system, which annoyed me--and no doubt our hosts--given that we were guests.  My own feeling is that among the lessons to be learned from the tragic story of Nicholas and Alexandra is that leadership should not be inherited. It places way too much stress on the unfortunate heirs (i.e., Nicholas), and even royalty themselves (i.e., the two eldest daughters of Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria and Princess Alice--the latter being Alexandra's mother) felt royalty was an outmoded system.  The Romanovs descendants who have my respect are those who (1) become independent individuals who can stand upon their own abilities, thereby honoring the name of Romanov, and then, upon attaining position and/or income, (2) work for the betterment of others rather than themselves.

[Jmentanko]

       I don't believe that a Romanov heir could be restored to a full autocrtatic position. If there happend to be a valid heir and that person did ascend the throne, I'm sure that their power would be purely cremonial. The function or practicality of even a figurehead monarch is questionable. However I don't think that the people of Russia have ever felt as united as they did under the Tsars. Such a thing as a leader that would represent a new Russia that has come to terms with her past could only be a good thing for the Russian people.

[Reed]

Anyway..... back to the succession question....The History Channel again ran the program on Catherine the Great yesterday.  It seems that succession was not always....shall we say "legal."  I have recently read and seen on programs that even some of the Romanov family were working to eliminate Nicolas as Tsar.  Would they have put forth Alexis under a regent?  Were they aware of the health issues with him?  If not him, who would have been the most likely candidate...Michael?  Pure conjecture of course.  :-/

[Robert_Hall]

As has been mentioned before, if Nicholas could name anyone his heir, including his daughter, then Maria V. could in theory be heir now. All this is quite hypothetical, as a restoration is as likely as world peace !