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Michael De Torby
Count Michael Mikhailovich de Torby (8 October 1898 in Wiesbaden – 25 April 1959 in London) was the son of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia (1861–1929) and his morganatic wife Countess Sophie of Merenberg (1868–1927). The great-grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia and Alexander Pushkin. Biography Count Mikhail Mikhailovich de Torby was the youngest child and only son of Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich and his morganatic wife Countess Sophie von Merenberg. The marriage was not only morganatic but also illegal under the Imperial house law House law or House laws (''Hausgesetze'') are rules that govern a royal family or dynasty in matters of eligibility for succession to a throne, membership in a dynasty, exercise of a regency, or entitlement to dynastic rank, titles and styles. P ...s and caused a scandal at the Russian court. The Grand Duke was forbidden to return to Russia for life so he moved to England. Mikhail was educated at Eton College. A gifted art ...
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House Of Romanov
The House of Romanov (also transcribed Romanoff; rus, Романовы, Románovy, rɐˈmanəvɨ) was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova, was married to the First Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. The house became '' boyars'' (the highest rank in Russian nobility'')'' of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later of the Tsardom of Russia under the reigning Rurik dynasty, which became extinct upon the death of Tsar Feodor I in 1598. The Time of Troubles, caused by the resulting succession crisis, saw several pretenders and imposters (False Dmitris) fight for the crown during the Polish–Muscovite War of 1605–1618. On 21 February 1613, a '' Zemsky Sobor'' elected Michael Romanov Michael I (Russian: Михаил Фёдорович Романов, ''Mikhaíl Fyódorovich Románov'') () became the first Russian tsar of the House of Romanov after the Zemskiy Sobor of 1613 elected him ...
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Leopold, Grand Duke Of Baden
Leopold (29 August 1790 – 24 April 1852) succeeded in 1830 as the Grand Duke of Baden, reigning until his death in 1852. Although a younger child, Leopold was the first son of Margrave Karl Friederich of Baden by his second, morganatic wife, Louise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg. Since Luise Karoline was not of equal birth with the Margrave, the marriage was deemed morganatic and the resulting children were perceived as incapable of inheriting their father's dynastic status or the sovereign rights of the Zähringen House of Baden. Luise Karoline and her children were given the titles of baron and baroness, in 1796 count or countess von Hochberg. Baden gained territory during the Napoleonic Wars. As a result, Margrave Karl Friederich was elevated to the title of Prince-Elector within the Holy Roman Empire. With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, he took the title Grand Duke of Baden. Hochberg heir Since the descendants of Charles Frederick's first marriage ...
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Frederick William, Prince Of Nassau-Weilburg
Frederick William, Prince of Nassau-Weilburg (25 October 1768, The Hague – 9 January 1816, Weilburg) was a ruler of Nassau-Weilburg. He was created Prince of Nassau and reigned jointly with his cousin, Prince Frederick Augustus of Nassau-Usingen, who became Duke of Nassau. Frederick William died in January 1816, only two months before his cousin. Both men were succeeded by Frederick William's son, William. Family Frederick William was the eldest surviving son of Karl Christian of Nassau-Weilburg and Princess Wilhelmine Carolina of Orange-Nassau. Wilhelmine Carolina was a daughter of William IV, Prince of Orange and Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange. Anne was in turn the eldest daughter of George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Ansbach. Marriage and children On 31 July 1788 in Hachenburg, Frederick William married Burgravine Louise Isabelle of Kirchberg (Hachenburg, 19 April 1772 – Vienna, 6 January 1827). The groom was almost twenty years old and the bride o ...
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Frederica Of Baden
Princess Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina of Baden (12 March 1781 – 25 September 1826) was Queen of Sweden from 1797 to 1809 as the consort of King Gustav IV Adolf. Life Early life Frederica of Baden was born in Karlsruhe in the Grand Duchy of Baden on 12 March 1781, as the daughter of Karl Ludwig of Baden and Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt. Frederica, in her family known as ''Frick'' (Frique), was given a conventional and shallow education by a French-Swiss governess in Karlsruhe, and has been described as intellectually shallow.Fredrika Dorothea Wilhelmina
urn:sbl:14445, '' Svenskt biografiskt lexikon'' (article by Sten Carlsson), retrieved 2016-03-26.
Already as a child, she was described as a beauty, but ...
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Gustav IV Adolf Of Sweden
Gustav IV Adolf or Gustav IV Adolph (1 November 1778 – 7 February 1837) was King of Sweden from 1792 until he was deposed in a coup in 1809. He was also the last Swedish monarch to be the ruler of Finland. The occupation of Finland in 1808–09 by Russian forces was the immediate cause of Gustav's violent overthrow by officers of his own army. Following his abdication on 29 March 1809, an Instrument of Government was hastily written, which severely circumscribed the powers of the monarchy. The "Instrument" was adopted in 1809 on 6 June, the National Day of Sweden now as well as in his time. It remained in force until replaced in 1974. The crown, now with strictly limited powers, passed to Gustav's uncle Charles XIII, who had no legitimate children; this want of heirs set into motion the quest for a successor, who was found the following year in the person of Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, the first monarch of the present royal family. ch 37 pp 203-19 Early life Gustav Ado ...
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Louise Caroline Of Hochberg
Countess Louise Caroline von Hochberg, born Geyer von Geyersberg (26 May 1768 in Karlsruhe – 23 June 1820, Karlsruhe), from 1787 Baroness von Hochberg, from 1796 Countess of Hochberg, was the second wife of the Margrave and later Grand Duke Charles Frederick of Baden. Her descendants eventually ascended the grand ducal throne and reigned until 1918. Origin Countess Louise Caroline Geyer von Geyersberg was the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Heinrich Philip Geyer von Geyersberg (1729-1772) and his wife, Countess Maximiliana Hedwiger von Sponeck. The latter was the niece-in-law of Leopold Eberhard, Duke of Württemberg-Montbéliard. Louise Caroline descends from a family of Lower Austria surnamed ''Geiger''; Walther Geiger, a postal administrator in Vienna, being ennobled in the Holy Roman Empire, along with some collateral relatives, in 1595. In 1625 Emperor Ferdinand II authorised them to add the noble suffix "von Geyersberg". Sometime after 1675 Louise Caroline's g ...
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Charles Frederick, Grand Duke Of Baden
Charles Frederick (22 November 1728 – 10 June 1811) was Margrave, Elector and later Grand Duke of Baden (initially only Margrave of Baden-Durlach) from 1738 until his death. Biography Born at Karlsruhe, he was the son of Hereditary Prince Frederick of Baden-Durlach and Amalia of Nassau-Dietz (13 October 1710 – 17 September 1777), the daughter of Johan Willem Friso of Nassau-Dietz. He succeeded his grandfather as Margrave of Baden-Durlach in 1738 and ruled personally from 1746 until 1771, when he inherited Baden-Baden from the Catholic line of his family. This made him the Protestant ruler of a state that was overwhelmingly Catholic, however the Imperial Diet permitted this because the Elector of Saxony had converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism and had been permitted to retain control of the Protestant body of the Imperial Diet. Upon inheriting the latter margraviate, the original land of Baden was reunited. He was regarded as a good example of an enlightened de ...
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Louise Of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Luise Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie; 10 March 1776 – 19 July 1810) was Queen of Prussia as the wife of King Frederick William III. The couple's happy, though short-lived, marriage produced nine children, including the future monarchs Frederick William IV of Prussia and Wilhelm I, German Emperor. Her legacy became cemented after her extraordinary 1807 meeting with French Emperor Napoleon I at Tilsit – she met with the emperor to plead unsuccessfully for favorable terms after Prussia's disastrous losses in the Napoleonic Wars. She was already well loved by her subjects, but her meeting with Napoleon led Louise to become revered as "the soul of national virtue". Her early death at the age of thirty-four "preserved her youth in the memory of posterity", and caused Napoleon to reportedly remark that the king "has lost his best minister". The Order of Louise was founded by her grieving husband four years later as a female counterp ...
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Frederick William III Of Prussia
Frederick William III (german: Friedrich Wilhelm III.; 3 August 1770 – 7 June 1840) was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, when the Empire was dissolved. Frederick William III ruled Prussia during the difficult times of the Napoleonic Wars. The king reluctantly joined the coalition against Napoleon in the . Following Napoleon's defeat, he took part in the Congress of Vienna, which assembled to settle the political questions arising from the new, post-Napoleonic order in Europe. His primary interests were internal – the reform of Prussia's Protestant churches. He was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of Churches. The king was said to be extremely shy and indecisive. His wife Lo ...
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Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea Of Württemberg)
Maria Feodorovna (russian: Мария Фёдоровна; née Duchess Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg; 25 October 1759 – 5 November 1828 S 24 October became Empress consort of Russia as the second wife of Emperor Paul I. She founded the Office of the Institutions of Empress Maria. Daughter of Duke Frederick Eugene of Württemberg and Princess Friederike of Brandenburg-Schwedt, Sophie Dorothea belonged to a junior branch of the House of Württemberg and grew up in Montbéliard, receiving an excellent education for her time. After Grand Duke Paul (the future Paul I of Russia) became a widower in 1776, King Frederick II of Prussia (Sophie Dorothea's maternal great-uncle) and Empress Catherine II of Russia chose Sophie Dorothea as the ideal candidate to become Paul's second wife. In spite of her fiancé's difficult character, she developed a long, peaceful relationship with Paul and converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1776, adopting the name ''Maria Feodorovna''. Du ...
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Paul I Of Russia
Paul I (russian: Па́вел I Петро́вич ; – ) was Emperor of Russia from 1796 until his assassination. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III and Catherine the Great, although Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov.Aleksandr Kamenskii, ''The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Searching for a Place in the World'' (1997) pp 265–280. Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for most of his life. He adopted the laws of succession to the Russian throne—rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian Empire. He also intervened in the French Revolutionary Wars and, toward the end of his reign, added Kartli and Kakheti in Eastern Georgia into the empire, which was confirmed by his son and successor Alexander I. He was ''de facto'' Grand Master of the Order of Hospitallers from 1799 to 1801 and ordered the construction of a number of Maltese thrones. Paul's pro-German sentiments and unpredictable ...
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Natalya Pushkina
Natalia Nikolayevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (russian: link=no, Наталья Николаевна Пушкина-Ланская; 8 September 1812 – 26 November 1863) ( Goncharova) (Гончарова), was the wife of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin from 1831 until his death in 1837 in a duel with Georges d'Anthès. Natalia was married to Major-General Petr Petrovich Lanskoy from 1844 until her death in 1863. Prior to marriage Natalia (Natalya) Goncharova was born on 8 September 1812 (27 August 1812 Old Style) in Karian village in Tambov Governorate (in present-day Znamensky District, Tambov Oblast), where her family lived during the occupation of Moscow by the forces of Napoleon. Her father, Nikolay Afanasievich Goncharov, a scion of the family of paper manufacturers from Kaluga, was pronounced demented in 1815; the household was managed by his wife, Natalia Ivanovna Zagriajskaya, an imperious lady with connections within Muscovite nobility. Her ancestors included Petro Do ...
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