Early Life
Irina was born in Paris because her parents had been exiled for marrying without the permission of Tsar Nicholas II. Her parents' marriage was considered morganatic, meaning that her father had not married a woman of equal rank and their children took their mother's rank rather than their father's. Irina's mother was later granted the title of Her Serene Highness Princess Paley. The family was allowed to return to Russia during World War I.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Grand Duke Paul, who was too ill to register with the rest of the Romanov family, was under close observation by the new government. Irina later recalled how her father walked with her and her younger sister in the garden and talked about what his marriage had meant to him:
He spoke to us at length about all that he owed to our mother, all that she had brought to him which he had never known in his life before, and about all that she had been to him. He spoke while he walked, and this allowed him to overcome his reserve and his intense shyness. Did he sense then that he had not long to live? I am tempted to believe it and to think that he was asking us to take care of our mother when he could no longer be with her.
Both Irina's father and her brother Vladimir Pavlovich Paley were killed by the Bolsheviks. Irina, her mother, and her sister Natalia later escaped to France in 1920.
Read more about this topic: Irina Paley
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