Prince Vasili Alexandrovich of Russia

Prince Vasili Alexandrovich of Russia (7 July [ O.S. 24 June] 1907 – 24 June 1989) was the sixth son and youngest child of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia. He was a nephew of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Born in Imperial Russia during the reign of his paternal second cousin and maternal uncle Nicholas II, he was on vacation in Crimea at the fall of the Russian monarchy. He was joined there by his immediate family. They escaped the fate of many of his relatives killed by the Bolsheviks. He left Russia in April 1919, at age 11. In the late 1920s, he emigrated to the United States where he met Princess Natalia Golitsyna. They married in 1931. The couple had one daughter and lived for decades in Woodside, California.

Early life Prince Vasili Alexandrovich Romanov was born at Gatchina Palace on 7 July 1907, the sixth son and last of the seven children of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia. Although a grandson of Emperor Alexander III through his mother, he was not entitled to the title Grand Duke of Russia because he was only a great-grandson of Emperor Nicholas I in the male line through his father. He was a sickly child and after his birth there was some doubts that he would survive so he was baptized in the nursery. Prince Vasili spent his early years in Imperial Russia during the reign of his maternal uncle Tsar Nicholas II. At the fall of Russian monarchy in February 1917 Vasili, aged ten, was on vacation in Ai-Todor, his father's estate in Crimea. By the end of March both of his parents, all his siblings and their grandmother Empress Maria Feodorovna were also in Crimea.

In his memoirs, Vasili's father shared an anecdote about how one revolutionary tried to inspire Vasili to believe in the revolutionary ideals: "He addressed the boy in the language of Robespierre, so as to stick to the model in every detail. My son corrected his French phrasing and let it go at that. My wife laughed but I felt a peculiar presentiment of danger."

After the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, Prince Vasili along with his parents, siblings and grandmother the Dowager Empress were placed under house arrest at Ai-Todor. On 11 March 1918 they were transferred with other Romanovs relatives to Dulber, the estate of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich in Crimea. He escaped the fate of a number of his Romanov relatives imprisoned who were murdered by the Bolsheviks when he was freed with the Romanovs in his group by German troops in May 1918. He escaped from Russia on 11 April 1919 with the help of his great-aunt Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom (née Princess Alexandra of Denmark), who was Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna's sister. King George V of the United Kingdom sent the British warship HMS Marlborough which brought Vasili's family and other Romanovs from the Crimea over the Black Sea to Malta and then to England. Prince Vasili, who was eleven years old at the time, spent the rest of his life in exile.

Exile During his first years in exile, Prince Vasili lived in England with his mother. In the late 1920s, he emigrated to the United States where he spent the rest of his life. Vasili earned a living by finding work as a cabin boy, shipyard worker, stockbroker, winemaker and a chicken farmer in northern California.

Prince Vasili married in New York City on 31 July 1931, Princess Natalia Golitsyna (Moscow 26 October 1907 – Woodside 28 March 1989), a fellow Russian exile – they met in the United States. Natalia was a distant cousin of Prince Rostislav's wife. Her sister, Princess Olga Golitsyna, married Geoffrey Tooth, who would become the second husband of Vasili's niece, Princess Xenia Andreevna.

In 1980, Prince Vasili was appointed president of the Romanov Family Association in succession to his brother Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich. He remained president until his death in Woodside, California aged 81.

Ancestry