Prince Gabriel Constantinovich of Russia - A Russian Prince

A Russian Prince

Unlike his serious and reserved brothers, Prince Gabriel was much more social, and began to associate with an aristocratic crowd considered fast by the standards of the day. In August 1911, during a small ball at the mansion of the famous ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya, Prince Gabriel met Antonina Rafailovna Nesterovskaya (14 March 1890 – 7 March 1950), a twenty-one-year-old dancer and member of an impoverished family from the lesser nobility. Gabriel was twenty-four years old, very tall and thin. Nesterovskaya was nearly a foot shorter than he was, plain and plump, but she was witty and lively. Prince Gabriel fell in love with the ballerina. He managed to speak to her during the intervals while she was dancing at the Marinsky Theater every Sunday. By January 1912, he was visiting Nesterovskaya in the little apartment where she lived with her mother. They became lovers and before Easter 1912, they joined Kschessinskaya and her lover Grand Duke Andrew Vladimirovich on a trip to the Riviera, staying in Cannes and Monte Carlo. The Riviera idyll did not last long, because they soon had to return to St Petersburg, where the prince was studying. From then on, he considered her as his "fiancée". In 1913, he asked her to quit the Ballet Corps and she agreed.

Prince Gabriel was devoted to his mistress and installed her in an extravagant house he purchased for her on Kamennostrovsky Prospek in Saint Petersburg. Meanwhile, Prince Gabriel, who lived before in Pavlosk, received a large three room apartment at the Marble Palace on the second floor looking on the Palace Banks. After the death of his father in 1915, Prince Gabriel was increasingly involved with his mistress. They were a hospitable couple and kept an open house entertaining lavishly for their friends. The prince was a most generous lover, and indulged his mistress' whims. She appeared insatiable in her demands, especially when she found she only had to express a desire for anything to have her wish fulfilled.

Gabriel Constantinovich was devotedly in love, but he could not marry his mistress because the Romanov's family status forbade any morganatic union. He appealed to his aunt, Olga, Queen of the Hellenes, to intercede on his behalf, and she went to see Nicholas II requesting permission for his nephew to marry, but the Tsar flatly refused. Through the twists and turns of the years that followed, Prince Gabriel remained passionate in his devotion to the dancer, determined that one day he would overcome the obstacles and marry her.