Grand Duchess Vera Constantinovna of Russia - Last Years

Last Years

Grand Duchess Vera visited Russia often and was present with her daughters in May 1896 during the coronation ceremonies of Tsar Nicholas II. The elder of the twins, Elsa, was first engaged in January 1895 to Hereditary Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a grandson of Queen Victoria. The engagement was quickly broken off, and Elsa married a distant cousin, Prince Albert of Schaumburg-Lippe, brother of Queen Charlotte of Württemberg. The following year, Vera's other daughter, Olga, married her brother-in-law's younger brother, Prince Maximilian of Schaumburg-Lippe. Olga's fate was similar to Vera's; she had three children and within a few years of her marriage, she lost a child and her husband, becoming a widow at an early age and never marrying again.

Aged beyond her years, Grand Duchess Vera was now in poor health. Some authorities now speculate that she suffered from Sydenham's chorea or Saint Vitus Dance, a neurological movement disorder characterized by abrupt, involuntary movements.. In Stuttgart Vera was assigned an officer to follow her about, to make sure that if she had an attack she would not fall and injure herself.

By the turn of the century, Vera Constantinova appeared small and dumpy with a fat, round face. She wore her hair very short, which gave her a masculine look. Extremely nearsighted, she wore a pince-nez. She was considered rather eccentric, but she had a good sense of humor and her funny remarks were remembered by her nephews and nieces. She was well liked by her family.

After living in Württemberg for so long, she was at odds politically and religiously with her Russian relatives. Her political sympathies lay with Germany and she did not share the increasingly anti-German view of the Romanovs. Vera Konstantinovna was very religious, but had never understood the Orthodox faith and eventually abandoned it to convert to Lutheranism in 1909, to the consternation of the Romanov family. She then commissioned the building of a Protestant church on the grounds of Villa Berg.

In 1903, during the wedding dinner for Princess Alice of Battenberg to her nephew Prince Andrew of Greece in Darmstadt, Prince Christopher recalled "My brother George sat next to her, and at a pause in the proceedings, snatched off her tiara and put it on his own head. Everybody laughed, Aunt Vera included, although she vowed vengeance on the culprit. Her turn came, as she thought, a little later, when the bride and bridegroom started on their honeymoon. We were all gathered at the door, throwing rice at them, when someone knocked off poor Aunt Vera's glasses, which were smashed to atoms on the stone steps." An unfortunate man who happened to be standing next to the Grand Duchess, then became the object of her wrath. She knocked the man's hat off and began to hit him over the head with it.

Grand Duchess Vera Constantinovna suffered a stroke in October 1911 and she died in Stuttgart on 11 April 1912, aged fifty-eight.