GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE ON HIS DAUGHTER’S BAGRATION MARRIAGE

In 1911, Prince Constantine Bagration of Moukhrani, a member of what had by then become the senior line of the Bagration royal house of Kartli, one of the two main branches of the former Georgian royal dynasty, married a member of the Russian Imperial House, Princess Tatiana of Russia, a daughter of Grand Duke Constantine of Russia.

At the time of their engagement in 1910, Princess Tatiana’s father, Grand Duke Constantine, in his diary entry of Tuesday, November 30, 1910, described the conversation his wife had with Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra in respect of the impending marriage:

  “…My wife was invited for tea with Their Majesties at Tsarskoe Selo. Having returned from there to Pavlovsk, she told me that the Empress had reacted with more leniency than the Emperor about Tatiana’s intentions. They both told my wife that they would not look on her wedding with Bagration as morganatic in view of the fact that he, like the members of the House of Orléans, is a descendant of a once-ruling dynasty. The Emperor even said that T[atiana] would not lose her annual stipend from the Office of Apanages. The Emp[ress] found it unnecessary to wait until the end of the year, but my wife, citing my views on the matter, countered that it was necessary to wait so that both were quite sure of their feelings..”

Source:  Ella Matonina, editor, Zagadka K.R.: Iz dnevnikov velikogo kniazia K.K. Romanova  (Diaries of Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich), November 30, 1910 entry, Moscow (1994, no. 2): 174.