A little bit about Queen Natalia's father,Moldavian Boyar Peter Keshko:
"...Queen Nathalie has all the indomitable energy of her late father, Col. Keshko, who left the Russian service after a duel with Martinoff, by whom was killed the Russian novelist Lermontoff. Col. Keshko, one of the handsomest men of his generation, inherited a colossal fortune from his father, a very wealthy boyar of Bessarabia. He was highly educated, of very polished manners, and a favorite in the highest social circles of every capital in Europe, where his adventures and duels were as sensational as any ever recorded in romance. One of these last was with Prince Dolgorouky, the man who was so notorious for his quarrels with the Russian government and his libels upon the Moronzoff family. The Prince gave a revolutionary toast at a dinner table, Keshko took it up, and Queen Nathalie’s father severely wounded his adversary, just as he had previously done with Count G. at Vienna. Keshko finally married the Princess Pulcheria Sturdza from Moldavia, and from that moment his romance was confined to his fireside. He was a devoted husband and father, and of his four children, three girls and a boy, the eldest is she about whom the continental Chancelleries are now so exercised. Mme. Keshko died soon after the Colonel, leaving the orphans to the care of her sister, Princess Constantin Mouruzi, with whom as co-guardians were Messrs. Krista and Prince Manonckbey, rich Bessarabian landowners, who so admirably administered their wards’ fortune that it reached an enormous figure, when was proposed to the lovely heiress the alliance of Milan Obrenović, a Prince in name, but really only a vassal of the Osmanli."
