Morganatic Marriage - Russia

Russia

Paul I of Russia promulgated a strict new house law for Russia in 1797, eliminating the sovereign's right to designate the heir to the throne, but requiring that dynasts be born of authorized marriages. In 1820 a new law also stipulated that only children of Romanovs born of marriages with persons of equal status, i.e. members of a "royal or sovereign family", could transmit succession rights and titles to descendants. Alexander III forbade Romanov morganatic marriages altogether by issuance of ukase #5868 on 24 March 1889 amending article #63 of the Statute on the Imperial Family in the Pauline laws. By ukase #35731, dated 11 August 1911, Nicholas II amended the amendment, reducing application of this restriction from all members of the Imperial Family to grand dukes and grand duchesses only. This decree allowed marriages of the princes and princesses of the Blood Imperial with non-royal spouses, on the conditions that the emperor's consent be obtained, that the dynast renounce his or her personal succession rights, and that the Pauline laws restricting succession rights to those born of equal marriages continue in force.

An early victim of the Pauline laws was Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, grandson of Catherine the Great, and viceroy of Poland. On 20 March 1820 his marriage to Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was annulled to allow him to morganatically wed his longtime mistress, Polish noblewoman Countess Joanna Grudna-Grudzińska, in Warsaw on 24 May 1820, who was elevated to the title "Princess Łowicza" upon marriage, which produced no children.

One emperor, Alexander II, married morganatically in 1880. Princess Ekaterina Mihailovna Dolgorukova, Alexander's second bride, had previously been his long-term mistress and the mother of his three legitimised children, the Princes and Princesses Yurievsky.

Beginning a novel tradition, one of that couple's daughters, Princess Olga Aleksandrovna Yurievskaya (1873–1925), in 1895 married the child of an 1868 morganatic marriage in the House of Nassau, George, Count von Merenberg (1871–1965). His mother was a daughter of renowned author Alexander Pushkin but, despite being of noble birth, could not in 1868 dynastically marry the younger brother of a then-exiled Duke of Nassau. The count filed a futile suit to establish that his morganatic status in Germany should not exclude him from succession to the throne of Luxembourg after the last male of the House of Orange, King William III of the Netherlands, died in 1890 and it became apparent that the House of Nassau faced the imminent extinction of its male members, as well, upon the eventual death of Grand Duke William IV. Olga's brother, Prince George Aleksandrovich Yurievsky (1872–1913), in 1900 wed Countess Alexandra von Zarnekau (1883–1957), daughter of the morganatic marriage of the Russo-German Duke Constantine Petrovich of Oldenburg with Agrafena Djaparidize. Merenberg's sister, Sophia (1868–1927), likewise contracted a morganatic marriage in 1891, with Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia, whose cousin, Emperor Nicholas II banished them to England, unwittingly saving the couple from the maelstrom of the Russian Revolution which proved fatal to so many Romanovs. She and her children were made Counts de Torby, her younger daughter, Countess Nada (1896–1963) marrying, in 1916 Prince George of Battenberg, future Marquess of Milford Haven and scion of the House of Battenberg, a morganatic branch of the grandducal House of Hesse which had settled in England and inter-married with descendants of Queen Victoria.

Less fortunate among the Romanovs was Grand Duke Paul Aleksandrovich, who went into exile in Paris to marry a commoner, Olga Valerianovna Karnovich in 1902. Paul returned to serve in the Russian army during the First World War, and Nicholas II rewarded his uncle's loyalty by elevating Olga and her children as Princess and Princes Paley in 1915. Paul's patriotism, however, had sealed his fate, and he died at the hands of Russia's revolutionaries in 1919. One of his daughters, Princess Irene Pavlovna Paley (1903–1990), married in exile in 1923 her cousin, Prince Theodor Aleksandrovich of Russia, (1898-1968.

Nicholas II forbade his brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, from marrying twice-divorced noblewoman Natalya Sergeyevna Wulfert (née Sheremetevskaya), but the couple eloped abroad in 1911. The Tsar refused his brother's request to grant the bride or their son, George Mikhailovich (1910–1931) a title, but legitimated George and incorporated him into the Russian nobility under the surname "Brassov" in 1915: nonetheless he and his mother used the comital title from 1915, only being granted a princely prefix in exile by Cyril Vladimirovich, Grand Duke of Russia in 1928. In the throes of the First World War, Nicholas II allowed his sister Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia to end her loveless marriage to her social equal, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, and quietly marry commoner Colonel Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky. Both Michael's and Olga's descendants from these marriages were excluded from the succession.

After the murder of Nicholas II and his children, the Imperial Family's morganatic marriages restricted the number of possible heirs. Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich, Nicholas's cousin, proclaimed himself as Emperor in exile. Controversy accompanied the marriage of his son Grand Duke Vladimir Cyrillovich to Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Mukhransky, a descendant of the Royal House of Georgia. After the annexation of Georgia in 1801 Leonida's family were deemed ordinary nobility in Imperial Russia rather than royalty, leading to claims that her 1948 marriage to Vladimir (who, however, also belonged to a deposed dynasty by then) was unequal. As a result, some factions within Russia's monarchist movement do not support the couple's daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, as the rightful heir to the Romanov dynasty (see Line of succession to the Russian throne for further details of the controversy).