DMITRI PAVLOVICH

He 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, Helen of Greece and Denmark, (second wife of Carol II of Romania), King Paul of Greece, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.As a result of his participation in Rasputin's assassination, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was banished from the Russian court and was sent to exile to the Persian war front. On 23rd December 1916/1917, Grand Duke Dmitri left Saint Peterburg never to return. At his arrival in Persia, he was welcomed by his officers as his reputation for the Rasputin assassination had made him popular. Within two months Nicholas II was forced to abdicate ending the rule of the Romanov dynasty. General Baratov asked Dmitri to leave since there were rumblings from the lower ranks, and his safety could not be guaranteed. In the summer of 1917, Dmitri left the Russian occupation zone moving to Tehran. Dmitri stayed briefly with General Meidel, then the head of the Persian Cossack Division, before being taken in by the British Minister to Tehran, Sir Charles Murray Marling, and his wife, Lucia. Through 1917 and most of 1918 Grand Duke Dmitri lived with the Marlings. Marling obtained an honorary commission for Pavlovich as a liaison officer with the British Mission and eventually persuaded the British Foreign Office in 1918 that he would become the next Emperor of Russia, gaining his admission to England. Marling and his family took Dmitri with them when they left Tehran for England at the end of 1918. During the long journey to England in a slow steamer, Pavlovich fell ill with typhoid fever in Bombay and nearly died. He had to recuperate in Cairo. In January 1919 he arrived in France via Egypt. He had kept an apartment at the Hotel Georges V, and in France, he learned of the tragic end of many of his Romanovs relatives.The Marlings took him to London where he was reunited with his maternal aunt Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna. She provided him with the money from the proceeds from the sale of his St Petersburg palace, which had gone through before the Bolsheviks seized power.