Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova, the morganatic wife of Emperor Alexander II

Who would be interested in some princess Dolgorukova (was there little princess in Russia?), If not for the great love that intertwined her fate with the life of Emperor Alexander II? Not a favorite, who would twist the Tsar as she wanted, Catherine Mikhailovna became his only love, created him a family that he loved and cherished.

The first meeting

Princess E. M. Dolgorukova was born in 1847 in the Poltava region. There, in the estate of her parents, when she was not yet twelve, she first saw the emperor. Moreover, he gave the girl a walk and a long conversation.

And a forty-year-old adult was not bored in the company of a child, and he was amused by the simplicity of communication. Later, two years later, after learning about the disastrous material situation of Prince Dolgorukov, he helped ensure that both sons of the prince were educated by the military, and both princesses were assigned to the Smolny Institute.

Second meeting

Ekaterina Mikhailovna, Princess Dolgorukova, studying in Smolny, got a good education. The institute of noble maidens taught languages, secular manners, housekeeping, music, dancing, drawing, and very little time was devoted to history, geography, literature. On the eve of Easter in 1865 the emperor visited the Smolny, and when he was presented to a seventeen-year-old princess, he remembered her, strange as it may sound, but even stranger that in the future she had not forgotten.

And the girl was in the prime of young and innocent beauty.

The third meeting

After graduating from the institute of noble maidens, Ekaterina Mikhailovna lived in the house of her brother Mikhail. She loved to walk around the Summer Garden and dream that she would meet Alexander II. And her dream came true. They met by chance, and the emperor told her a lot of compliments. She, of course, was embarrassed, but from that time on they began to walk together. And there it was not far and to the words of love. While the novel was developing platonic, Ekaterina Mikhailovna took a deeper understanding of her situation and flatly refused to marry: all young people seemed uninteresting to her.

And the girl decided her fate herself. She wanted to make a lonely man happy, like the Emperor was.

Family of Alexander II

The Empress Maria Alexandrovna was a cold and dry person in her home environment. Alexander Nikolayevich did not have a family warm hearth. Everything was strictly regulated. He did not have a wife, but the Empress, not children, but the Great Princes. The family strictly abided by etiquette, and liberties were not allowed. The case of the elder son of Tsesarevich Nicholas who is dying of tuberculosis in Nice is terrible. The patient changed the time of daytime sleep, and Maria Fyodorovna stopped visiting him, because during her wake she had walks according to the schedule. Did such a family need a middle-aged man who wants a man's warmth? The death of the heir, with whom he was close, became a great blow to the emperor.

Secret family

An open and defiant public opinion, which then developed not in her favor, Catherine Mikhailovna Dolgorukova surrounded the aging, but still full strength and ideas of the Sovereign with warmth and affection. When their connection began, she was eighteen, and her lover was thirty years older. But nothing, except the need to hide from others, did not overshadow their relationship. Maria Fyodorovna, who was sick with tuberculosis, did not get up anymore, and the entire Romanov family expressed an extremely negative attitude towards the young woman, especially the heir, Tsesarevich Alexander. He himself had a very strong and friendly family, and he refused to accept and understand his father's behavior. He so clearly expressed his dislike that Alexander II sent his wife, whom he considered Catherine Dolgoruky, first to Naples, and then to Paris. It was in Paris in 1867 that their meetings continued. But not a single step of the emperor went unnoticed. Behind him was the French police. Their extensive correspondence, full of genuine passion, has survived to this day. Ekaterina Mikhaylovna Dolgorukova was an ardent lover and did not skimp on tender words. This, apparently, was not enough for Alexander Nikolayevich in his frozen and constrained official family.

Ekaterina Mikhaylovna Dolgorukova and Alexander 2 nd

The one that the Emperor promised at the first opportunity to make his wife a wedding, had to show a woman's patience and wisdom. She humbly waited for this happy day for her fourteen years. At them with Alexander during this time four children were born, but one of sons, Boris, died the baby. The rest grew up, and the daughters got married, and the son George became a military man, but died at forty-one, having survived his crowned father for many years.

Morganatic wedding

The Empress was not yet dead when Alexander Nikolayevich moved his family to the Winter Palace and settled right above the rooms of Maria Feodorovna. They whispered in the palace. When Maria Feodorovna died in 1880, before the end of official mourning, less than three months later, a modest, almost secret wedding took place. And in five months Ekaterina Mikhailovna was granted the title of Svetlaya Princess Yuryevskaya, their children also began to wear this name. Alexander Nikolaevich was distinguished by fearlessness, but he feared attempts at life, for he did not know how this would affect the Yuryevsky family. In the name of the princess and her children were laid over 3 million rubles, and five months later he was killed by the Narodnaya Volya. His last breath was taken up by a deeply grief-stricken Catherine Mikhailovna.

Existence in Nice

She was recommended to leave the country, and she and the children went to the southern coast of France.

At the villa, the Most Serene Princess lived memories. She kept all the clothes of her loved one right up to her home gown, wrote a book of memories and died in 1922, forty-one years after the death of her beloved wife and lover. At 33, she lost her husband, and the rest of her life was true to his memory.

On this we finish the description of life, which was held by Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova. Her biography is both happy and bitter at the same time.