Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia - World War I

World War I

The Yussupovs were on their honeymoon in Europe and the Middle East when World War I broke out. They were briefly detained in Berlin after the outbreak of hostilities. Irina asked her first cousin, Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia to intervene with her father-in-law, the Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to permit them to leave, but offered them a choice of three country estates to live in for the duration of the war. Felix's father appealed to the Spanish ambassador and won permission for them to return to Russia via neutral Denmark to Finland and from there to St. Petersburg

Felix converted a wing of his Moika Palace into a hospital for wounded soldiers, but avoided entering military service himself by taking advantage of a law exempting only-sons from serving in the war. He did enter the Cadet Corps and took an officer's training course, but had no intention of joining a regiment. Irina's first cousin, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, whom she had been close to when they were girls, was disdainful of Felix: "Felix is a 'downright civilian,' dressed all in brown, walked to and fro about the room, searching in some bookcases with magazines and virtually doing nothing; an utterly unpleasant impression he makes -- a man idling in such times," Olga wrote to her father, Tsar Nicholas II, on 5 March 1915 after paying a visit to the Yussupovs. Felix and Irina's only daughter, Princess Irina Felixovna Yussupova, nicknamed Bebé, was born on 21 March 1915. "I shall never forget my happiness when I heard the child's first cry," her father wrote. Irina liked her name and wanted to pass it on to her first child. Her mother Xenia was so worried over the delivery that Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna said it was almost like Xenia was giving birth instead of Irina.