Princess Victoria Malta and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia

On 8th October 1905, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha married her second husband, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia.

The two cousins first met in 1891, while attending a family funeral. Before long, the two wished to marry. However, Victorias mother was against the idea of her daughters marrying Russian Grand Dukes and, on top of this, Kirill’s religion – Russian orthodoxy – was strongly against marriage between first cousins, making a marriage between the two almost impossible.

While Victoria was grieving the love that couldn’t be, her grandmother – Queen Victoria – had another suiter in mind; another of Victorias cousins, Grand Duke Ernst Louis of Hesse (son of Princess Alice). Although Victoria wasn’t over her past heartbreak, she felt that she had no choice to accept his proposal and the two got married three years later in May 1894.

At first, their marriage appeared happy and within a year Victoria gave birth to their only surviving child, Princess Elizabeth. However, Victoria soon began avoiding her new duties as Grand Duchess. Instead of visiting elderly relatives, she much preferred holding lavish parties. Ernst naturally became frustrated with his wife’s disregard of her role and soon arguments began between the two. These arguments soon turned violent, with Victoria throwing objects at Ernst and smashing china plates against walls.

During the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, Victoria was reacquainted with her old love, Kirill and two flirted throughout the celebrations. However, Victoria was still with Ernst. Over the next few years, their relationship drastically deteriorated until they eventually got divorced in December 1901.

With her new freedom to remarry, Victoria regained hope of a match between her and Kirill. However, this time it was his mother that put a barrier in the way by suggesting that Kirill marry someone else and keep Victoria as his mistress.

Then, when war broke out between Russian and Japan, Kirill, who was a senior member of the Russian navy, was sent to fight on the frontline. While he was away, Kirill’s ship was blown up. Fortunately the Geand Duke managed to survive. Although he was against the match, Tsar Nicholas II gave Kirill special permission to travel to coburg so that he could recover by Victorias side. 

Following Kirills brush with death, the couple were even more determined to tie the knot, which they finally achieved on 8th October 1905. Unlike Victoria’s first wedding, the ceremony was only attended by a small handful of people, including Victorias mother, sister, a close friend and a few servants. 

Together the couple had three children and a reasonably happy marriage.Unfortunately Tsar Nicholas was against the match and relinquished all of Kirills Russian titles, along with dismissing him from the navy. However, these were later reinstated when Kirill became third in-line to the Russian throne. 

Despite spending years fighting together, Victorias opinion of Kirill changed when his sister informed her of his Parisian affairs. While Victoria was naturally angry and understandably never forgave her husband, she wanted to protect her children and never filed for divorce. 

©️Queen.Victoria.Roses 2024

I hope you enjoyed reading today’s post. If you would like receive email updates about my newest articles, please feel free to subscribe to my website using the box below. If you enjoyed today’s article and would like to support my work going forward, please consider donating to my Ko-fi page, which helps me to fund my website subscription. Thank you x

This article is the intellectual property of Queen.Victoria.Roses and should not be COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances unless permission is given by the author