Princess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia - Exile From Russia

Exile From Russia

Xenia arrived at Ai-Todor where she joined her mother, husband and sister on 28 March 1917. At the end of November, Xenia wrote to her brother Nicholas in Tobolsk in Siberia, "The heart bleeds at the thought of what you have gone through, what you have lived and what you are still living! At every step undeserved horrors and humiliations. But fear not, the Lord sees all. As long as you are healthy and well. Sometimes it seems like a terrible nightmare, and that I will wake up and it will all be gone! Poor Russia! What will happen to her?" In 1918, while in Crimea, Xenia learnt that her brother Nicholas II, his wife and his children had been murdered by the Bolsheviks. Her last surviving brother, Michael, was also shot to death in 1918 outside of Perm.

While the Red Army was coming closer toward Crimea, Xenia and her mother Dowager Empress Maria escaped from Russia on 11 April 1919 with the help of Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom (née Princess Alexandra of Denmark), Dowager Empress Maria’s sister. King George V of the United Kingdom sent the British warship HMS Marlborough which brought them and other Romanovs from the Crimea over the Black Sea to Malta and then to England. Xenia and her mother were later joined by Xenia’s sister Olga. Xenia remained in Great Britain, while Dowager Empress Maria, after a stay in England, went with Olga to Denmark.