Petersburg and other cities across Russia, there are weddings every day," Peskov said. Indeed, the Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the Russian leader had not sent a congratulatory message to the royal couple. "I'm not sure he needs the Romanovs," he added. Putin," he said, noting Russian President Vladimir Putin was himself practically a monarch after more than two decades in power. He was slightly miffed that the wedding was pulling away his customers. Nearby, a man named Oleg was trying - and failing - to sell tickets for canal cruises to tourists. "This royal blood is too watered down," added Ivan to laughter and nods. "He's the great great great grand-nephew of Nicholas's third cousin?" "So let me get this straight," said Alexander. They tried - incorrectly - tried to suss out the grand duke's pedigree. The long-awaited royal atmosphere included goose-stepping soldiers, a parade of women in those English wedding hats, and dukes and duchesses of minor European royal families striding by.Īlexander and Ivan, two visitors from Siberia who happened on the scene, looked on in confusion. She converted to the Orthodox Church for the wedding and replaced her birth name Rebecca with Victoria Romanovna. Russians look on as Victoria Romanovna Bettarini arrives at St. "I wish George and his bride all the luck, but the rules are the rules," Bakov says in an interview with NPR.ĭespite taking up residency in Moscow three years ago, the grand duke insists he has no intention to impose his reign. "The hereditary laws of the monarchy in Russia are very strict," says Anton Bakov, head of the Russian Monarchy party, which backs a different distant Romanov as the rightful heir to the dynasty. The grand duke insists he's the hereditary crown prince of the Romanov dynasty - a claim challenged by some family members and Russia-based royal watchers. "My grandparents raised me on Russian history and culture and poetry. "My first language was Russian even though I was born in Spain and raised in France," Romanov said in a recent interview. Despite the imperial trappings of his wedding, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich is not the only Romanov descendant to claim to be heir to the dynasty. "Nicholas only had time to say, 'What?' before the bullets starting flying," says Olga Vdovichenko, 32, who guides local tours about the last czarist family.Īn honor guard parades around St. The czarist family - Nicholas, his wife and five children - were eventually banished to the city of Yekaterinburg and later executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in a merchant's cellar. It was in this city in 1917 that the last sitting Russian czar, Nicholas II, was overthrown - setting in motion a grim series of events. "We are trying to return to our roots." Even after their deaths, the Romanovs' story wound through the 20th century "In an age of 'cancel culture,' when everybody in the West tries to forget your own identity - your own history - Russia offers an alternative process," he added. A remembrance of eternal Russia - of sacred czars and patriarchs and (the) church," Dugin said in an interview with NPR. The clout of Russia's ultra-conservative movement was also on display - with the controversial "orthodox oligarch," Konstantin Malofeev, taking a prominent role in the ceremony and the nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin among prominent guests. The wedding of the grand duke and Bettarini was billed as the first royal marriage of a member of the imperial house of Romanov in Russia in over a century.
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