The Grand Duchess of Russia Olga Alexandrovna
The Grand Princess was born in 1882 as the youngest of six children born to Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna (née Princess Dagmar of Denmark). The Grand Princess managed to flee Russia after the resolution together with her second husband, Nikolai Kulikovsky and eventually settled in Canada.
See also the article The Unfaiding Light of Charity. Grand Duchess Olga As a Philanthropist And Painter at the history internet magazine History-gatchina.ru, as well as the website of Grand Princess Olga's Memorial Fund.
Ballerup Museum in Pederstrup, Denmark has a permanent exhibition containing around 100 oilpaintings and watercolours made by the late Grand Princess. She lived in Ballerup from 1930 to 1948.
The grand princess is buried at York Cemetery in Toronto, Canada, something I missed out on during my visit in 2008.
*Paul Gilbert used "Grand Duchess" in the subject title of the press release I received last night, which is why I have used it rather than "Grand Princess" in the subject title of my blog article.
The article was updated on 26 November 2010 at 11.15 (link corrected).
This Grand Duchess v. Grand Princess issue seems very artificial to me. At first glance, it is easy to buy the argument that "grand princess" is a better translation since knyaz is prince and veliky knyaz should thus be grand prince. But Arturo Beeche makes a very strong case for "grand duke/duchess" in the introduction to the new Eurohistory book The Grand Dukes. The fact is, the Russian Imperial family and court at the time used the term grand duke when speaking/writing in English. It was even included in the guidance issued to diplomats accredited to St. Petersburg. To retroactively re-translate the term a century later seems like a distortion of history, in my humble opinion.
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