Life At Court
In 1907, his elder brother, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, married Grand Duchess Militza's sister, Princess Anastasia of Montenegro, known as Stana. The two couples were socially very influential at the Russian Imperial Court in the early 20th century. Nicknamed joined "the black peril", a group interested in the occult. They are credited with introducing first a charlatan mystic named merely Philippe, and then, with graver consequences, Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916) to the Imperial family. Prince Felix Yussupov (1887–1967) — who was their neighbour in Koreiz — once described Znamenka, the Grand Duke and Duchess's palace, as "the central point of the powers of evil". This was later to be a widely held belief within the higher echelons of the divided Russian court. The Dowager Empress Marie firmly believed that the couple plotted with Rasputin and others to gain influence and favours through the neurotic Empress Alexandra (1872–1918). However, by 1914, Alexandra herself referred to them as "the black family" and felt herself to be manipulated by them.
Read more about this topic: Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich Of Russia
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or court:
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
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“GOETHE, raised o’er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life,
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mar, to gown and town,
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)