Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhranskaya
Encyclopedia
Leonida Georgievna, Grand Duchess of Russia, Leonida Georgiyevna Romanova (Леонида Георгиевна Романова) ( – 23 May 2010), wife of Vladimir Cyrillovich, Grand Duke of Russia, Pretender to the Russian throne. She was an active and outspoken advocate of the claims advanced by Vladimir and their daughter, Maria Vladimirovna, to be accepted as the legitimate Heads of the Romanov
dynasty and de jure sovereigns of the Russian Empire
.
, Russian Empire
as Princess Leonida Bagration of Mukhrani
(Russian: Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhranskaya; Georgian: Leonida Giorgis asuli Bagrationi-Mukhraneli), she was a daughter of Prince George Bagration of Mukhrani
and his Polish
wife Helena Sigismundovna, née Nowina Złotnicka (1886–1979). She descended patrilineally
from former Kings of Georgia
. Her mother’s family belonged to the untitled Polish aristocracy
, although one of Leonida's two lines of descent from Georgia's penultimate king Erekle II
(Heraclius II) is through her mother, a descendant of the king's daughter, Princess Anastasia, who married an Eristavi prince. The other ancestral line derives through the marriage of another of the king's daughters, Princess Tamara, to Ioane Bagrationi, 18th Prince of Mukhrani.
The Bagration
family's genealogy traces back at least to the medieval era in its male line and hundreds of years further back as rulers in the female line. Leonida's grandfather, Prince Alexander Iraklijevich, was born in 1853 in Georgia's historical capital Tbilisi
, then part of the Russian Empire
, and was killed by Bolshevik
s at Pyatigorsk
in 1918 during the Russian revolution. Fearing for their lives, the family took refuge in Constantinople
, then spent eight months in Germany before returning to Tbilisi, now capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, to re-claim a portion of property which, as émigré
s they risked losing to total confiscation
. Although the family made repairs to their home and Leonida would recall her grandfather's insistence that they continue to dine formally on silver plate to retain their sense of propriety, they were eventually deprived of all but two rooms of their old palace and subjected to harassment. Thanks to the intervention of Maxim Gorky
, who had enjoyed the patronage of the Bagrations, in 1931 they once again fled the Soviet Union, going into exile in Spain. The family moved to France
, where Leonida's grandmother and relations had already settled.
". They were married in Nice
, France, on 6 November 1934. Sumner Moore Kirby had been born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, the younger of two sons of Fred Morgan Kirby, a business partner of one of the F. W. Woolworth Company
heirs and his wife Jessie Amelie Owen. Leonida was his third wife, he having been married from 1925 to 1931 to Doris Landy Wayland, with whom he had a daughter, Gloria Price Kirby (born 1928). Kirby's second marriage, to Valentine Wagner, lasted from 20 January 1932 to 19 July 1934. Valentine Wagner's mother was born Princess Elisabeth Bagration, a member of the same family as Princess Leonida. Her father was Conrad Wagner. Kirby had no children of this marriage which, like his first and third marriages, was contracted civilly in Nice and dissolved there. Leonida and Sumner Kirby had one daughter, Helen Louise Kirby, born in Geneva
, Switzerland, on 26 January 1935. Their marriage was short-lived, they divorced after three years on 18 November 1937. Kirby died in a hospital at Leau, near the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
to which he had been deported from France after being arrested along with other U.S. and British civilians by the Vichy regime in 1944.
As war intensified, Leonida and her daughter relocated to officially neutral Spain
. In 1944, Leonida's brother, Prince Irakli
, also moved to Spain.
, Spain, where their hosts happened to be neighbors. Vladimir was staying with his aunt, the Infanta Beatrice de Orleans, first cousin of the murdered Tsarina Alexandra.
On 13 August 1948 Princess Leonida wed for the second time, marrying Vladimir Cyrillovich Romanov, who used the pre-revolutionary Russian title Grand Duke
, the style Imperial Highness
and claimed to be, from 1938 to his death, Head of the Russian Imperial House by virtue of being hereditary heir by primogeniture
to the throne of the Romanovs according to the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, as codified in 1906 and in force until overturned by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In 1783, the Treaty of Georgievsk
was signed through which the Kingdom of Georgia, while retaining its autonomy and its ancient monarchy was placed under the protection of the Russian Empire. In 1801 after the death of George XII
, the last King of Georgia, Tsar Alexander I of Russia
in violation of the treaty, annexed the kingdom of Georgia and the Bagration dynasty lost their throne. The Bagrations became a leading family of the Russian nobility, serving in the Tsar's army and at court in Saint Peterburg. The former ruling branch became extinct in the late nineteenth century, when it passed its succession rights to the branch to which Grand Duchess Leonida belonged, but this too is disputed. Joseph Stalin
's mother had been a laundress in the house of the Bagrations.
As his consort
she used the title Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna. By him, she had another daughter, Maria Vladimirovna, who claims to have succeeded her father upon his death in 1992.
In 1946 Leonida's brother, Prince Irakly
, married King Alfonso XIII's niece, Princess Doña María de las Mercedes de Baviera y Borbon
(1911–1953), obtaining Vladimir's recommendation that the Spanish pretender, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, accept the marriage as dynastic, which he did not. The Count of Barcelona, then Head of the Royal House of Spain, considered the issue of this marriage to be disqualified from the Spanish succession. The only son of this marriage was sponsored at his baptism by the Count of Barcelona but the latter's refusal to recognize his god-son as a Spanish dynast led to the Bagrations' alienation from the Spanish Royal Family according to Guy Stair Sainty
. In 1948 Vladimir, relying on his earlier advice on the Bagrations' historically royal status, chose to wed Leonida dynastically in Lausanne
, Switzerland.
. Although the princess descended from the Bagrationi dynasty
which had ruled as kings in Armenia and Georgia since the early Middle Ages, it had been deposed
and reduced to the status of Russian nobility for more than a century prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917. Leonida belonged to the senior surviving branch of that family, but the last Georgian king from whom she descended in the male line was Constantine II
who died in 1505, although other branches of the family continued to reign in the Caucasus
as late as 1810. Besides, according to the Almanach de Gotha, as per the decision of Emperor Nicholas II made in 1911, the Princess Tatiana Constantinovna of Russia had morganatically wed Prince Constantine Alexandrovich Bagration-Mukhransky, a member of the same branch
of the House of Bagration into which Princess Leonida would later be born. Because the Russian Empire
did not accord royal rank to the Bagrations at the time of the Russian Revolution, most Romanov dynasts in exile maintained that Leonida's daughter Maria Vladimirovna could not succeed to her father's claim to the Russian throne.
. She was also at Vladimir's side the following year when he collapsed and died following delivery of a speech in Florida
.
She visited her own ancestral land with her nephew Prince George Bagration of Mukhrani in 1995 when he first visited Georgia as a royal pretender to that country's abolished monarchy
. But she did not attend the much-publicized 2009 wedding of her grand-nephew, Prince David Bagration of Mukhrani
to the heiress of King George XII of Georgia
, celebrated at the restored Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi. Nor did she re-locate her home from western Europe to Russia, although she visited the country repeatedly following her husband's funeral and burial in Saint Petersburg
.
Wealth inherited by her elder, unmarried daughter Helen Kirby (styled by Vladimir's declaration as "Countess Dvinskaya"), helped Leonida, her second husband and younger daughter maintain homes in the north of France and in Madrid. There, both Maria Vladimirovna, who remains active as the claimant to the throne of the Romanovs in exile, and Maria's only son, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich (born in 1981, his father is Maria's ex-husband and distant cousin, Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia
), were reared.
. during the monarchy.
She has also used the title HIM The Dowager Empress Leonida and is often referred to as such on her daughter's official website. However, abroad she traveled under the title of Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna of Russia.
|-
Romanov
The House of Romanov was the second and last imperial dynasty to rule over Russia, reigning from 1613 until the February Revolution abolished the crown in 1917...
dynasty and de jure sovereigns of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
.
Early life
Born on 6 October 1914, in Tiflis, GeorgiaGeorgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
as Princess Leonida Bagration of Mukhrani
House of Mukhrani
The house of Mukhrani is a Georgian princely family, a collateral branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi of which it sprung early in the 16th century, and received in appanage the domain of Mukhrani located in Kartli, central Georgia...
(Russian: Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhranskaya; Georgian: Leonida Giorgis asuli Bagrationi-Mukhraneli), she was a daughter of Prince George Bagration of Mukhrani
George Bagration of Mukhrani
George Bragration of Mukhrani or Giorgi Bagration-Mukhraneli was a Georgian nobleman, and a titular head of the House of Mukhrani, a collateral branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi....
and his Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
wife Helena Sigismundovna, née Nowina Złotnicka (1886–1979). She descended patrilineally
Patrilineality
Patrilineality is a system in which one belongs to one's father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritance of property, names or titles through the male line as well....
from former Kings of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
. Her mother’s family belonged to the untitled Polish aristocracy
Szlachta
The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...
, although one of Leonida's two lines of descent from Georgia's penultimate king Erekle II
Erekle II
Erekle II was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi Dynasty, reigning as the king of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of Kartli and Kakheti from 1762 until 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakli...
(Heraclius II) is through her mother, a descendant of the king's daughter, Princess Anastasia, who married an Eristavi prince. The other ancestral line derives through the marriage of another of the king's daughters, Princess Tamara, to Ioane Bagrationi, 18th Prince of Mukhrani.
The Bagration
Bagrationi Dynasty
The Bagrationi dynasty was the ruling family of Georgia. Their ascendency lasted from the early Middle Ages until the early 19th century. In modern usage, this royal line is frequently referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, a Hellenized form of their dynastic name.The origin of the Bagrationi...
family's genealogy traces back at least to the medieval era in its male line and hundreds of years further back as rulers in the female line. Leonida's grandfather, Prince Alexander Iraklijevich, was born in 1853 in Georgia's historical capital Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, then part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, and was killed by Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s at Pyatigorsk
Pyatigorsk
Pyatigorsk is a city in Stavropol Krai on the Podkumok River, about from Mineralnye Vody. Since January 19, 2010 it has been the administrative center of the North Caucasian Federal District of Russia...
in 1918 during the Russian revolution. Fearing for their lives, the family took refuge in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, then spent eight months in Germany before returning to Tbilisi, now capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, to re-claim a portion of property which, as émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s they risked losing to total confiscation
Confiscation
Confiscation, from the Latin confiscatio 'joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury' is a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority...
. Although the family made repairs to their home and Leonida would recall her grandfather's insistence that they continue to dine formally on silver plate to retain their sense of propriety, they were eventually deprived of all but two rooms of their old palace and subjected to harassment. Thanks to the intervention of Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, who had enjoyed the patronage of the Bagrations, in 1931 they once again fled the Soviet Union, going into exile in Spain. The family moved to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where Leonida's grandmother and relations had already settled.
First marriage
In France, Princess Leonida met Sumner Moore Kirby (1895–1945), a wealthy "Pennsylvanian ProtestantPennsylvania Dutch Country
Pennsylvania Dutch Country refers to an area of southeastern Pennsylvania, United States that by the American Revolution had a high percentage of Pennsylvania Dutch inhabitants. Religiously, there was a large portion of Lutherans. There were also German Reformed, Moravian, Amish, Mennonite and...
". They were married in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, France, on 6 November 1934. Sumner Moore Kirby had been born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, the younger of two sons of Fred Morgan Kirby, a business partner of one of the F. W. Woolworth Company
F. W. Woolworth Company
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first successful Woolworth store was opened on July 18, 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store"...
heirs and his wife Jessie Amelie Owen. Leonida was his third wife, he having been married from 1925 to 1931 to Doris Landy Wayland, with whom he had a daughter, Gloria Price Kirby (born 1928). Kirby's second marriage, to Valentine Wagner, lasted from 20 January 1932 to 19 July 1934. Valentine Wagner's mother was born Princess Elisabeth Bagration, a member of the same family as Princess Leonida. Her father was Conrad Wagner. Kirby had no children of this marriage which, like his first and third marriages, was contracted civilly in Nice and dissolved there. Leonida and Sumner Kirby had one daughter, Helen Louise Kirby, born in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Switzerland, on 26 January 1935. Their marriage was short-lived, they divorced after three years on 18 November 1937. Kirby died in a hospital at Leau, near the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
to which he had been deported from France after being arrested along with other U.S. and British civilians by the Vichy regime in 1944.
As war intensified, Leonida and her daughter relocated to officially neutral Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. In 1944, Leonida's brother, Prince Irakli
Irakli Bagration of Mukhrani
Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli was a Georgian prince of the Mukhrani branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi....
, also moved to Spain.
Second marriage
According to her published memoirs, Leonida first met Vladimir Cyrilovich at a restaurant in France during World War II. But they did not see each other again for a few years, when both were making extended visits to Sanlúcar de BarramedaSanlúcar de Barrameda
Sanlúcar de Barrameda is a city in the northwest of Cádiz province, part of the autonomous community of Andalucía in southern Spain. Sanlúcar is located on the left bank at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River opposite the Doñana National Park, 52 km from the provincial capital Cádiz and...
, Spain, where their hosts happened to be neighbors. Vladimir was staying with his aunt, the Infanta Beatrice de Orleans, first cousin of the murdered Tsarina Alexandra.
On 13 August 1948 Princess Leonida wed for the second time, marrying Vladimir Cyrillovich Romanov, who used the pre-revolutionary Russian title Grand Duke
Grand Duke
The title grand duke is used in Western Europe and particularly in Germanic countries for provincial sovereigns. Grand duke is of a protocolary rank below a king but higher than a sovereign duke. Grand duke is also the usual and established translation of grand prince in languages which do not...
, the style Imperial Highness
Imperial Highness
His/Her Imperial Highness is a style used by members of an imperial family to denote imperial - as opposed to royal - status to show that the holder in question is descended from an Emperor rather than a King .Today the style has mainly fallen from use with the exception of the Imperial Family of...
and claimed to be, from 1938 to his death, Head of the Russian Imperial House by virtue of being hereditary heir by primogeniture
Primogeniture
Primogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings . Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females...
to the throne of the Romanovs according to the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire, as codified in 1906 and in force until overturned by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In 1783, the Treaty of Georgievsk
Treaty of Georgievsk
The Treaty of Georgievsk was a bilateral treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti on July 24, 1783. The treaty established Georgia as a protectorate of Russia, which guaranteed Georgia's territorial integrity and the continuation of its reigning...
was signed through which the Kingdom of Georgia, while retaining its autonomy and its ancient monarchy was placed under the protection of the Russian Empire. In 1801 after the death of George XII
George XII of Georgia
George XII , sometimes known as George XIII , of the House of Bagrationi, was the last king of Georgia from 1798 until his death in 1800...
, the last King of Georgia, Tsar Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
in violation of the treaty, annexed the kingdom of Georgia and the Bagration dynasty lost their throne. The Bagrations became a leading family of the Russian nobility, serving in the Tsar's army and at court in Saint Peterburg. The former ruling branch became extinct in the late nineteenth century, when it passed its succession rights to the branch to which Grand Duchess Leonida belonged, but this too is disputed. Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's mother had been a laundress in the house of the Bagrations.
As his consort
Queen consort
A queen consort is the wife of a reigning king. A queen consort usually shares her husband's rank and holds the feminine equivalent of the king's monarchical titles. Historically, queens consort do not share the king regnant's political and military powers. Most queens in history were queens consort...
she used the title Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna. By him, she had another daughter, Maria Vladimirovna, who claims to have succeeded her father upon his death in 1992.
In 1946 Leonida's brother, Prince Irakly
Irakli Bagration of Mukhrani
Irakli Bagration-Mukhraneli was a Georgian prince of the Mukhrani branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi....
, married King Alfonso XIII's niece, Princess Doña María de las Mercedes de Baviera y Borbon
Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria
Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria was the eldest son and child of Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria and his wife Infanta María de la Paz of Spain...
(1911–1953), obtaining Vladimir's recommendation that the Spanish pretender, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, accept the marriage as dynastic, which he did not. The Count of Barcelona, then Head of the Royal House of Spain, considered the issue of this marriage to be disqualified from the Spanish succession. The only son of this marriage was sponsored at his baptism by the Count of Barcelona but the latter's refusal to recognize his god-son as a Spanish dynast led to the Bagrations' alienation from the Spanish Royal Family according to Guy Stair Sainty
Guy Stair Sainty
Guy Stair Sainty, KC*SG is an art dealer and author on royal genealogy and heraldry.-Life and education:Guy Stair Sainty was born on 7 December 1950, the eldest son of Christopher Lawrence Sainty and his second wife Virginia Cade Stair. His father was Chief Engineer and Director of Carrier...
. In 1948 Vladimir, relying on his earlier advice on the Bagrations' historically royal status, chose to wed Leonida dynastically in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
, Switzerland.
Controversy
The Grand Duke's marriage to Leonida Bagration remained controversial; some considered it to be morganaticMorganatic marriage
In the context of European royalty, a morganatic marriage is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage...
. Although the princess descended from the Bagrationi dynasty
Bagrationi Dynasty
The Bagrationi dynasty was the ruling family of Georgia. Their ascendency lasted from the early Middle Ages until the early 19th century. In modern usage, this royal line is frequently referred to as the Georgian Bagratids, a Hellenized form of their dynastic name.The origin of the Bagrationi...
which had ruled as kings in Armenia and Georgia since the early Middle Ages, it had been deposed
Deposition (law)
In the law of the United States, a deposition is the out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes. It is commonly used in litigation in the United States and Canada and is almost always conducted outside of court by the...
and reduced to the status of Russian nobility for more than a century prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917. Leonida belonged to the senior surviving branch of that family, but the last Georgian king from whom she descended in the male line was Constantine II
Constantine II of Georgia
Constantine II , of the Bagrationi dynasty, was a king of Georgia since 1478. Early in the 1490s, he had to recognise the independence of his rival rulers of Imereti and Kakheti, and to confine his power to Kartli....
who died in 1505, although other branches of the family continued to reign in the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
as late as 1810. Besides, according to the Almanach de Gotha, as per the decision of Emperor Nicholas II made in 1911, the Princess Tatiana Constantinovna of Russia had morganatically wed Prince Constantine Alexandrovich Bagration-Mukhransky, a member of the same branch
House of Mukhrani
The house of Mukhrani is a Georgian princely family, a collateral branch of the former royal dynasty of Bagrationi of which it sprung early in the 16th century, and received in appanage the domain of Mukhrani located in Kartli, central Georgia...
of the House of Bagration into which Princess Leonida would later be born. Because the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
did not accord royal rank to the Bagrations at the time of the Russian Revolution, most Romanov dynasts in exile maintained that Leonida's daughter Maria Vladimirovna could not succeed to her father's claim to the Russian throne.
Claimant's consort
Leonida accompanied her husband when he made his only visit to Russia in November 1991, following the implosion of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. She was also at Vladimir's side the following year when he collapsed and died following delivery of a speech in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
.
She visited her own ancestral land with her nephew Prince George Bagration of Mukhrani in 1995 when he first visited Georgia as a royal pretender to that country's abolished monarchy
Abolished monarchy
Throughout history, monarchies have been abolished, either through revolutions, legislative reforms, coups d'état, or wars. The twentieth century saw a major acceleration of this process, with many monarchies violently overthrown by revolution or war, or else abolished as part of the process of...
. But she did not attend the much-publicized 2009 wedding of her grand-nephew, Prince David Bagration of Mukhrani
David Bagration of Mukhrani
David Bagrationi of Moukhrani, David Bagration de Moukhrani y de Zornoza, or Davit' Bagration-Mukhraneli is a claimant to the headship of the Royal House of Georgia and to the historical thrones of Georgia, succeeding on the death of his father Jorge de Bagration on January 16, 2008.-Early...
to the heiress of King George XII of Georgia
George XII of Georgia
George XII , sometimes known as George XIII , of the House of Bagrationi, was the last king of Georgia from 1798 until his death in 1800...
, celebrated at the restored Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi. Nor did she re-locate her home from western Europe to Russia, although she visited the country repeatedly following her husband's funeral and burial in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
.
Wealth inherited by her elder, unmarried daughter Helen Kirby (styled by Vladimir's declaration as "Countess Dvinskaya"), helped Leonida, her second husband and younger daughter maintain homes in the north of France and in Madrid. There, both Maria Vladimirovna, who remains active as the claimant to the throne of the Romanovs in exile, and Maria's only son, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich (born in 1981, his father is Maria's ex-husband and distant cousin, Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia
Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia
Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia is a German businessman and member of the House of Hohenzollern, the former ruling imperial house of Germany and royal house of Prussia. From 1976 to 1986 he was known as Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich of Russia...
), were reared.
Death
Leonida Georgievna died on May 23, 2010, after her health had rapidly deteriorated. She requested to be buried next to her husband Vladimir Kirillovich in the Grand Ducal Mausoleum, Saint Petersburg. She was the last member of the Romanov family born on the territory of the Russian EmpireRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. during the monarchy.
Titles and styles
- Her Serene Highness Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhransky (23 September 1914–13 August 1948)
- Her Imperial Highness The Grand Duchess of Russia (13 August 1948 – 21 April 1992)
- Her Imperial Highness The Dowager Grand Duchess of Russia (21 April 1992 – 23 May 2010)
She has also used the title HIM The Dowager Empress Leonida and is often referred to as such on her daughter's official website. However, abroad she traveled under the title of Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna of Russia.
Ancestors
External links
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