Michael Andreevich Romanoff: member of the Russian imperial family
Hyfler/Rosner
October 11, 2008
Michael Andreevich Romanoff: member of the Russian imperial
family
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4922121.ece
Michael Andreevich Romanoff, a grand-nephew of the last
Tsar, was, in age, the most senior member of the Romanoff
family at his death.
He was born two years almost to the day after the massacre
at Yekaterinburg, and his funeral coincided with a ruling
from the Russian Supreme Court that the killing of Nicholas
II, his wife Alexandra and their five children was a
political act and that the family should be considered
victims of Bolshevism. Yet, despite his links, of all the
Romanoffs, his life in Sydney, where he lived for more than
six decades, was probably most removed from his imperial
heritage.
The family were already in exile when he was born, on the
feast of St Vladimir the Great, in Versailles where his
parents had fled with his paternal grandfather. He was the
second child and elder son of Prince Andrei Romanoff. Prince
Andrei was the eldest of the six sons of Romanoff cousins,
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, a grandson of Nicholas I,
and Grand Duchess Xenia, a sister of Tsar Nicholas II.
Andrei's only sister, Irina, was married to Prince Felix
Yussupov, one of those thought responsible for the murder of
Rasputin. Michael's mother, Donna Elisabetta, was the
daughter of an Italian father, Don Fabrizio Ruffo di Sant'
Antimo, Duca di Sasso, and a Russian mother, Princess
Mestcherskya. Since Michael's mother was not royal, under
the old Imperial Law, the marriage was "unequal" and
therefore morganatic, but the family still accorded him the
title of prince.
Soon after his birth he joined his grandmother, Grand
Duchess Xenia, and other members of the family at Windsor.
The previous year Xenia, her mother, the Empress Marie
Feodorovna, and other members of the family, had been
rescued from the Crimea when the Empress's nephew George V
sent HMS Marlborough to bring them to Malta then on to
England where he offered them sanctuary.
In 1925 Xenia (his favourite cousin) and her large family
moved into Frogmore Cottage in Windsor Great Park. The
family proved so extensive that in 1934 the King had an
extra wing built on the cottage to house them. Michael, his
brother Andrew and sister, also Xenia, knew the King as
Uncle George.
Young Michael was educated at the Imperial Services College,
Windsor, and in 1938, the year he became a British subject,
he attended the College of Aeronautical Engineering, London.
In 1937 the family had moved with their grandmother to
Wilderness House in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace. It
was here that his mother, who was suffering from cancer,
died on October 29, 1940, the same day that the house was
bombed. For most of the war the family were based at
Craigowan Lodge on the Balmoral estate.
The Prince joined the Royal Navy and, as Lieutenant
Romanoff, he found himself in Australia with the Fleet Air
Arm as Japan surrendered. There was some delay in his
repatriation and by the time it was announced he had decided
to stay in Australia. Although his grandmother was to live
at Hampton Court until her death in 1960, the intimate links
with the British Royal Family died with George V. His father
had remarried and gone to live in Kent while most of his
family had left Britain.
Prince Michael developed a life-long passion for the
sunshine and Sydney's beaches. He found employment easily
and in a number of fields. He was a Qantas mechanic for sea
planes in Rose Bay, Sydney. He worked with wood, metal,
jewellery and fabric and eventually established his own
business as a painter-decorator. He kept his royal identity
to himself. His Australian workmates called him "Mike".
As early as the 1920s the family had been beset by
pretenders. He recalled his grandmother, Grand Duchess
Xenia, denouncing Anna Anderson's claim to be her niece
Anastasia. The family "looked upon Anderson and the
three-ringed circus which danced around her, creating books
and movies, as a vulgar insult to the memory of the Imperial
Family", he said. He felt vindicated when DNA tests
indicated Anderson to be Franziska Schanzkowska, a Kashubian
factory worker. He took a lighter view of less serious
claimants. In the 1960s, on his first trip abroad since the
war, he happily dined in New York with the celebrated
restaurateur and actor Mike Romanoff. This Mike was, in
fact, the Lithuanian-born Hershel Geguzin, a former trouser
presser from Brooklyn - and splendid company.
In the mid-1980s he retired from full-time work and spent as
much time as he could on the beach at Nielsen Park, Sydney.
But a few years later he became involved in the Order of St
John of Jerusalem. He was to become Royal Protector and
Sovereign Grand Prior of the Sovereign Order of the Orthodox
Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem. The ritual and
costume of the order might have been a glimmer of grander
days but what buoyed him was the merit of the charitable
work and that both his father and Uncle Prince Vasili,
following a tradition begun by Tsar Paul I, had been
protectors of the order before him.
Princes are a rare species in the Antipodes, and his easy
charm and noble bearing could have made him a valuable
commodity, but he never traded on his legacy. He was taken
up by the Monarchist League of Australia and Australians for
Constitutional Monarchy. He had no personal imperial
ambitions and never sought to be a claimant to the Russian
throne but he was vice-president of the Romanoff Family
Association, which represents the majority of Romanoff
descendants of Tsar Nicholas I.
His only visits to the country that exiled his family were
augustly sombre occasions that served to remind him of their
demise. In July 1998, 80 years to the day after their
assassination, Michael Romanoff joined 60 other members of
the family for the burial of the remains of the last Tsar
and his family in the Sepulchre of St Peter and St Paul in
St Petersburg. He returned there again in September 2006 for
the interment of his great-grandmother, Empress Marie.
Interest in the family and its fate grew with the years. He
was recently asked whether his uncle Felix Yussupov ever
spoke about his involvement in the murder of Rasputin.
"My boy, that's all he ever talked about," he replied.
Ailing and only a few months before his death, he was
present at St James Church, Sydney for a concert. When the
choir of Danilov Monastery visiting from Moscow recognised
him in the front pew they burst out with a rendition of God
Save the Tsar, the old imperial anthem.
Michael Romanoff married firstly Jill Murphy in 1953
(dissolved the same year); secondly Shirley Cramond in 1954,
who died in 1983; and in 1993 Giulia Crespi. She survives
him with her son (his stepson, Daniel). Michael Romanoff had
no children. By a remarkable coincidence, his first cousin
and near-namesake, Prince Michael Feodorovich Romanoff, died
in France on the same day as him.
Prince Michael Andreevich Romanoff was born on July 15,
1920. He died on September 22, 2008, aged 88