Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia - Exile

Exile

Following the abdication of Tsar Nicolas II,the Yussupovs returned to the Moika Palace before traveling to the Crimea. They later returned to the Palace to retrieve jewellery and two paintings by Rembrandt, the sale proceeds of which helped sustain his family in exile. In the Crimea the family boarded a British warship, HMS Marlborough, which took them from Yalta to Malta. Felix Yussupov enjoyed boasting about the murder of Rasputin while on the ship. One of the British officers noted that Irina "appeared shy and retiring at first, but it was only necessary to take a little notice of her pretty, small daughter to break through her reserve and discover that she was also very charming and spoke fluent English". From there, they traveled to Italy, then by train to Paris. In Italy, lacking a visa, Felix bribed the officials with diamonds. In Paris, they stayed a few days in Hotel Vendôme before going on to London.

In 1920, they returned to Paris and bought a house on the Rue Gutenberg in Boulogne-sur-Seine, where they lived most of their lives. The Yussupovs founded a short-lived couture house called Irfé, which was called after the first two letters of the names Irina and Felix. Irina modeled some of the dresses the pair and other designers at the firm created. The Yussupovs became renowned in the Russian émigré community for their financial generosity. This philanthropy, plus continued high living and poor financial management, extinguished what remained of the family fortune. Their daughter was largely raised by her paternal grandparents until she was nine and was badly spoiled by them. Her unstable upbringing caused her to become "capricious," according to Felix. Felix and Irina, raised mainly by nannies themselves, were ill-suited to take on the day to day burdens of child-rearing. Irina's only child adored her father, but had a more distant relationship with her mother.

Later the family lived from the proceeds of a lawsuit they won against MGM for making a 1932 movie called Rasputin and the Empress. In the movie, the lecherous Rasputin seduces the Tsar's only niece, called "Princess Natasha" in the film. In 1934, the Yussupovs won a large judgment against the movie studio.Yussupov also sued the Columbia Broadcasting System in a New York court in 1965 for televising a play based upon the Rasputin assassination.The claim was that some events were fictionalized, and that under a New York statute Felix's commercial rights in his story had been misappropriated. The last reported judicial opinion in the case was a ruling by New York's second highest court that the case could not be resolved upon briefs and affidavits but must go to trial. Youssoupoff v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 19 A.D.2d 865 (1963). According to an obituary of CBS's lawyer, CBS eventually won the case. New York Times, Sept. 6, 1983 (death of Carleton G. Eldridge Jr.). Felix also wrote his memoirs and continued to be both celebrated and infamous as the man who murdered Rasputin. For the rest of his life Yussupov was haunted by Rasputin's murder, and suffered from nightmares. However, he also had a reputation as a faith healer.

Irina and Felix, close to one another as they weren't to their daughter, enjoyed a happy and successful marriage for more than fifty years. When Felix died in 1967, Irina was grief-stricken and died herself just three years later.