Person:Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (1)

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Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (; 18 September 1891 – 5 March 1942) was a son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia, a grandson of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and a first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (consort of Queen Elizabeth II).

His early life was marked by the death of his mother and his father's banishment from Russia after marrying a commoner in 1902. Grand Duke Dmitri and his elder sister Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, to whom he remained very close throughout his life, were raised in Moscow by their paternal uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia, a sister of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. His uncle was killed in 1905 and as his aunt entered religious life, Dmitri spent a great deal of his youth in the company of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family at the Alexander Palace as they viewed him almost like a foster son.

Grand Duke Dmitri followed a military career, graduating from the . He was commissioned as a cornet in the Horse Guards Regiment. An excellent equestrian, he competed in the Olympics games of 1912 in Stockholm. As a grandson of Tsar Alexander II on the male line, he occupied a prominent position as the Russian Imperial court, but he had little interest in his military career, leading instead a fast life. Through his friendship with Felix Yusupov, he took part in the assassination of the mystic peasant Grigori Rasputin, who was seen to have undue influence on the Tsar and his wife.

Banished to the war front in Persia, he escaped the Russian Revolution and emigrated to Western Europe. He lived briefly in England and during the 1920s in Paris, where he had a brief but notorious affair with the famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel. He also lived briefly in the United States. In 1926, he married Audrey Emery, an American heiress. The couple had a son before divorcing in 1937.

As the youngest Grand Duke to have survived the Russian Revolution, he was a prominent figure of the Russian community in exile, but he was not interested in politics, supporting instead the claim of his first cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia. By the outbreak of World War II, his health was already in decline and he died of tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland aged 50.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.