The Next-to-Last Imperial Romanov

Her father's study was familiar and comfortable. Nine-year-old Princess Vera Constantinovna would often sit with him as he wrote his poems and his plays under the pen name, "K.R." -- his initials, Konstantine Romanov. As the youngest of his nine children, he welcomed her presence on this summer day, a quiet moment away from the war that had taken his son Prince Oleg from them the year before.

Princess Vera Constantinovna (left) with her siblings and parents in 1905

via Wikimedia Commons

Suddenly, Vera became frightened, her beloved father was gasping for breath unable to speak. Panic-stricken, the little girl rushed to her mother, the former Princess Elizabeth of Saxe-Altenburg. Shoving aside heavy potted plants that blocked the nearest doorway, she ran from the room, but by the time Vera and Elizabeth returned, Grand Duke Konstantine Konstantinovich, grandson of Tsar Nicholas I and cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, was dead from a heart attack at the age of 64. His death in 1915 spared him the tragedy and struggles his family would face over the next several years.

As the youngest child and baby girl (her only other surviving sister, Princess Tatiana, was 16 years her senior), Princess Vera had lived a peaceful and sheltered life within the wealthy palaces of the Imperial Romanov Family. Just two years younger than Tsarevich Alexei and five years younger than Grand Duchess Anastasia, Vera was a frequent playmate of the Tsar's children. Their mother, Empress Alexandra was among her godparents, so she held a special place in the Imperial household. 

Like her Imperial cousins, Vera's mother was also German so she often found herself visiting family in Germany. In 1914, she was in Altenburg with her nearest brother, Prince George, and their parents when World War I started and they found themselves behind enemy lines. The German Empress Augusta Victoria intervened to allow them to return to Russia, where Vera's oldest brothers were already joining the fight. By the end of year, Prince Oleg was wounded and died from his wounds. Among his last words, he expressed happiness that his death would be good for Russia, "It will encourage the troops to know that the Imperial House is not afraid to shed its blood." With their father's unexpected death the following year, Vera's life soon began a rapid descent into uncertainty.

As the failing Russian war effort devolved into revolution, young Vera found herself behind enemy lines in her own country. For the first couple of years, Elizabeth and her younger children survived by selling family jewelry and heirlooms. As the Provisional Government began to fail, all protections for the Romanovs were lost. Elizabeth, Vera and George moved from their palace into an apartment while four of her adult brothers were imprisoned. In July 1918, three of the brothers were among the Romanovs assassinated at Alapaevsk with Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, the sister of Empress Alexandra. (For Elizabeth Feodorovna's story, see my post The Last of the Romanovs Part 3.) For the rest of her long life, Princess Vera was tormented by nightmares that she, like her brothers, was standing with her back to a pit waiting to be shot.

Princess Vera Constantinovna in 1926
via Wikimedia Commons

The murder of her sons at last convinced Elizabeth that she had to flee Russia. With an invitation from her distant cousin, Queen Victoria of Sweden, Elizabeth, Vera, and George traveled by boat through Finland to Sweden. Before long, however, the family could no longer afford to live in Sweden and were allowed to relocate to Belgium. Unfortunately, the group struggled with illness. Once the war had ended, Elizabeth returned to her birthplace in Altenburg. Suffering from tuberculosis, Vera was not able to join her for some time. But, their reunion would be relatively short-lived: Elizabeth succumbed to cancer in 1927 at the age of 62. Vera was not yet 21 years old, living alone in a foreign country with her brother, George. When he decided to move to the United States in 1929, Vera was truly on her own as another World War loomed. 

Vera was able to work as a translator at a prisoner of war camp but lost her job because the Nazis discovered that she was trying to help the prisoners. She remained in Germany throughout the war, but she faced even greater dangers as the Nazis began to lose and the Soviets started to invade Germany. A Romanov Princess would find no safety under the Soviet control of what soon be East Germany. Like thousands of other refugees, Princess Vera walked 150 miles to Hamburg in the Western zone. She once again put her language skills to work as a translator for a succession of different institutions over the next several years.

By 1951, she decided to leave Europe, moving to the United States, although her brother George had died there several years earlier. She worked in aid of Russian immigrants and refugees in New York for 20 years. For the next 30 years, she lived in peaceful retirement, dying on January 11, 2001 at the age of 94, reminding us that her playmates, Anastasia and Alexei, might well have survived into this century had they not been slaughtered as children in revolutionary Russia. Among the Romanovs who were able to escape Russia, Vera was the next-to-last to die. The last was her niece, Princess Catherine Ivanovna, who died at the age of 91 in 2007 in Uruguay.

Although she did not hold any particular awe for the glories of her family's imperial past (in fact, she thought it was odd that the Orthodox Church made saints of her "martyred" brothers and relatives), Princess Vera always treasured Russia in her heart, proclaiming, "I did not leave Russia. Russia left me."

For more about Princess Vera and her immediate family's escape from Russia, see my post The Last of the Romanovs Part 4.