Sunday 17 September 2006

The Return of the Empress

Next Saturday, if things go according to schedule, the body of the Czarina Marie Feodorovna (1847-1928) is to be moved from Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark to St Petersburg, Russia, to be laid alongside her husband Czar Alexander III. This comes nearly 78 years after her death, and fulfills the instructions of the Dowager Empress given for the time when this might become a possibility.

The Empress Marie was the mother of Czar Nicholas II and the Grand Duke Michael, both of whom were killed in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and of the Grand Duchesses Xenia and Olga who escaped with their families. She was born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, and was the sister of King Frederick VIII of Denmark, Britain�s Queen Alexandra, and George I of Greece. Her other sister, Thyra, was married to the Hanoverian heir, the Duke of Cumberland. (See Viv Rosendahl�s recent column on this website.) Her youngest brother, Prince Valdemar, was the only one of her siblings to survive her.

The removal of the Empress�s body to St. Petersburg marks another milestone in Russia�s ongoing coming to terms with the fate of the Romanovs in the wake of the Revolution. Marie Feodorovna was the most senior member of that dynasty to survive the massacres of 1918. After a period of residence in Kiev during the last stages of her son�s reign, she and her daughters fled to Crimea in 1917 where they were protected by loyal �White Russian� forces, but later were held for a time in rigorous conditions by the Bolsheviks. According to Coryne Hall, author of the recent book Little Mother of Russia, she apparently escaped execution because rival Soviets were delayed by squabbling over who got to kill her, with the result that the Empress and her household members were eventually rescued by advancing German forces. In 1919 Britain�s George V provided a warship to evacuate his aunt to Britain. After a brief stay with Queen Alexandra at Sandringham, she retired to Denmark where she steadfastly refused to believe that all the rest of the imperial family had been slain. Now her bones will lie close by those of Nicholas II and the other victims.

The story of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution has both poignant and curious interweavings into the sagas of both the British and Danish royal houses. George V was haunted to the day he died by the fact that he had acquiesced in withdrawing Britain�s initial offer of asylum to his cousins �Nicky� and �Alix,� setting them on the road to their gruesome deaths in Ekaterinburg. The position of the British royals was itself a bit too tenuous at the time and the King opted to act in his own dynasty�s self-interest, in no way anticipating his cousins� ultimate fate. In her book Matriarch Anne Edwards recounts the scene on Sunday July 21, 1918, when Princess Helena (George V�s aunt, daughter of Queen Victoria) and her family arrived for lunch at Windsor Castle only to be kept waiting half and hour before the usually prompt King George and Queen Mary appeared, ashen-faced, to announce the news of the murder of the Czar and all his family. Little wonder then that George V is said to have later insisted that his resistant �Aunt Minnie� leave Crimea.

The Empress Marie�s decision to settle in Copenhagen proved a trial to her nephew, King Christian X. Though she had enough resources in her jewelry collection to have supported herself, the old lady made herself a permanent guest pretty much at her nephew�s expense for the last decade of her life. (George V also gave her an annual pension of ~L~ 30,000, plus a residence and smaller allowance for the Grand Duchess Xenia in Britain. Grand Duchess Olga and her family lived with Marie in Copenhagen.) When the unfortunate Danish King once sent a request that she conserve a bit on electricity, the furious dowager had her servants turn on every light in her wing of the palace.

In 1919 George V and his Keeper of the Privy Purse undertook discreet machinations with the former Russian Imperial Finance Minister to help the Grand Duchesses secure their eventual heritage. According to the account given by Leslie Field in The Queen�s Jewels, upon the Dowager Empress�s death in 1928 her large surviving jewelry collection � that she had obsessively clung to until the end � was immediately sealed in a box that was turned over to British diplomatic courier who took it to London. It was placed in the strongroom at Buckingham Palace. The illness of King George shortly thereafter delayed matters for a time, but Queen Mary advanced money to tide the Grand Duchesses over in the interim. Later in 1929 the Grand Duchesses chose what pieces of their mother�s jewelry they wished to keep, and then the rest was sold. (It is said the collection included ropes of pearls, some the size of cherries.) A number of pieces were purchased by Queen Mary, and continue as a part of the current collection worn by Queen Elizabeth II and her family.

The proceeds of the sale of the Empress�s jewelry were put into a trust fund for the two Grand Duchesses. Opinions vary as to whether the proceeds of the sale yielded full value of the imperial collection. The market had been flooded with the collections of numerous Russian exiles in the preceding decade. Queen Mary herself had the reputation for always driving hard bargains in her various acquisitions. Grand Duchess Olga later claimed that she had not gotten her fair share, but Sir Frederick Ponsonby (King George�s Keeper of the Privy Purse) insisted that all had been fairly handled. The one question I�ve not yet been able to resolve is whether poor King Christian ever got any recompense from the deal?

In any event, it is now Christian X�s granddaughter, Queen Margrethe, who will see the remains of her great-grand-aunt off to their final repose. I would suppose that some of the other related royal houses will have representatives in attendance as well. (I expect Britain�s representative to inevitably be Prince Michael of Kent, who seems to handle the most of the royal family�s Romanov connections.) It will be interesting to see how many of the descendants of the two Grand Duchesses attend the ceremonies. Their families are relatively large, with many living in Denmark and Britain. But others are scattered across Europe, with a large contingent also found in the U.S. and Canada. With their descent from the Czarina Marie they constitute the last Czar�s closest surviving relatives, though because of the old Russian succession rules none of them can apparently claim the defunct imperial throne.

A last anecdote related by Coryne Hall tells how as the old Empress sailed away from Crimea in 1919 the passengers on a passing White Russian troopship spotted her standing on the deck HMS Marlborough. Those troops began to sing the Russian Imperial Anthem. Hopefully next weekend the same anthem will figure in the ceremonies receiving her back into the embrace of Mother Russia.

Yours Aye,

- Ken Cuthbertson