Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia

Biography

Michael Alexandrovich was born at the Anichkov Palace in Saint Petersburg in 1878, the youngest son of the future Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna, and grew up largely at Gatchina. Like most male Romanovs he trained for the army, serving in the Horse Guards Artillery and later in cavalry regiments. After his brother George died in 1899 he was heir presumptive to Nicholas II until the birth of Tsarevich Alexei in 1904, after which he was named a potential co-regent.

His private life caused repeated conflict with the emperor. Barred from marrying a cousin and then a commoner lady-in-waiting, he formed a relationship with the twice-married Natalia Wulfert, with whom he had a son in 1910. In October 1912 he married her secretly in Vienna. Nicholas responded by stripping him of his command, banishing him and taking control of his estates, and the couple lived in France, Switzerland and England until 1914.

At the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Russia and commanded the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division, winning the Order of St George, and later the 2nd Cavalry Corps during the Brusilov Offensive. Early in 1917 he urged his brother to accept a government responsible to the Duma. When Nicholas abdicated on 15 March 1917 in Michael's favour, Michael declared the next day that he would take the throne only if a Constituent Assembly offered it, and asked the country to obey the Provisional Government, which ended the monarchy in practice.

He was placed under house arrest by Kerensky's government in August 1917 and rearrested by the Bolsheviks in March 1918, who sent him into exile in Perm. On the night of 12-13 June 1918 local secret police officers took him and his secretary Nicholas Johnson into the forest and shot them, the first killing of a Romanov by the Bolsheviks. His remains have not been found; Russian prosecutors rehabilitated him in 2009.