Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia

Princess of the Imperial Blood Vera Konstantinovna of Russia (; – 11 January 2001), was the youngest child of Grand Duke Konstantine Konstantinovich of Russia and his wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mavrikievna. A great-granddaughter of Nicholas I of Russia, she was born in Russia and was a childhood playmate of the younger children of Nicholas II of Russia. She lost much of her family during World War I and the Russian Revolution. At age twelve, she escaped revolutionary Russia, fleeing with her mother and brother George to Sweden. She spent the rest of her long life in exile, first in Western Europe and from the 1950s in the United States.

Early life

Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia was born at Pavlovsk on . She was the youngest child among the nine children of Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mavrikievna, born Princess Elizabeth of Saxe-Altenburg. She was going to be named Marianne in honor of her mother's favorite sister, Princess Marie Anne of Saxe-Altenburg, but her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Vera Constantinovna of Russia insisted that her niece should be named after her, in her family, Vera is affectionately called "Verusia". Her godparents were her brother Prince Constantine Constantinovich of Russia and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Vera Constantinovna spent her first years in fabulous splendour during the last period of Imperial Russia. Her father, a respected poet, was a first cousin once removed of Tsar Nicholas II. Her father, who recorded her birth meticulously in his private journals, noted the profound emotional impact of her arrival, viewing it as a divine solace following the sudden infant death of their previous daughter Natalia in 1905:

Princess Vera was eight years old when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated and World War I broke out, in the summer of 1914. Vera was with her parents and her brother George in Germany visiting her maternal relatives in Altenburg at the start of the war. The conflict took them by surprise, trapping them in Germany, an enemy country. It was thanks to the intervention of the German Empress, Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein that they were allowed to return to Russia. Vera's older siblings joined the Russian army in the military effort, and her favorite brother Oleg was killed in action. She was considered too young and was not allowed to attend her brother's funeral. Her brother's death was just the first of many family misfortunes.

The following year, her father died of a heart attack in her presence. In a letter to her brother, she later described how she was sitting with her father in his study, when Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich began gasping. Princess Vera managed to push open a heavy door between her parents' studies, pushing aside several heavy plants that stood in front of the door, and ran to her mother crying that her father couldn't breathe. Her mother ran after her, but the grand duke had already died.

Revolution Left to right back row: Princess Tatiana; Prince Gabriel; Prince Ivan; Grand Duchess Elizabeta Mavrikievna and Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich. Front row: Princess Vera; Prince George; Prince Igor; Prince Oleg and Prince Constantine, 1911. After the death of her father, in 1916, Vera moved with her mother and her brother George to the Marble Palace in Petrograd, leaving Pavlovsk to her eldest brother Prince Ivan Konstantinovich. For a time, they lived a precarious existence, and her mother was forced to secretly sell family heirlooms to provide for the family. They stayed in the palace until the summer of 1918, when the revolution forced them to leave it and to take an apartment in the city. During the War, she worked as a translator in a camp for prisoners of war. But German officials soon removed her from that position because she had tried to help the fellow prisoners. The constant stream of visitors she regarded with some amusement and found rather trying. She did not care for those who would speak in awe-struck tones of the late Imperial family; she would often relate stories of their humanness and misbehavior. For her, the children of the last Tsar remained her childhood playmates, not distant figures for adoration.

Archives Vera Constantinovna's personal papers (including correspondence and photographs) are preserved in the "Romanov Family Papers" collection in the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, California, USA).

Ancestors