Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich
Photograph, 1912
Born	(1891-09-18)18 September 1891 Ilyinskoye [ru], Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	5 March 1942(1942-03-05) (aged 50) Davos, Grisons, Switzerland
Burial	Mainau, Lake Constance, Germany
Spouse	Audrey Emery ​ ​ (m. 1926; div. 1937)​
Issue	Prince Paul Dimitriievich Romanovsky-Ilyinsky
Names Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov
House	Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
Father	Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
Mother	Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (Russian: Великий Князь Дмитрий Павлович; 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, Marie of Edinburgh (consort of Ferdinand I of Romania), King George II of Greece, King Alexander of Greece, King Paul of Greece, 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 Nicholas Cavalry College [ru]. He was commissioned as a cornet in the Horse Guards Regiment. An excellent equestrian, he competed in the Olympic Games of 1912 in Stockholm.^[1] As a grandson of Tsar Alexander II in 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 peasant mystic and alleged warlock Grigori Rasputin, who was seen to have an undue and insidious 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 in 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.