How a descendant of Russian tsars became a sailor in the British navy

Prince Andrei Andreevich Romanov was born in 1923 in Great Britain, where his parents had fled from Russia during the Civil War. He was the great-grandson of Emperor Alexander III and the grandnephew of Nicholas II.

"My grandmother (Nicholas II's sister, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna) brought all her servants to England. With her were her lady-in-waiting, her cook and many other people. And they all settled in Windsor, where the king provided them with a house," the prince recalled.

The boy's godfather was the heir to the throne, Prince Edward of Wales. The prince spent his entire childhood and youth at Windsor Castle, where he studied and played with the children of the royal family, including the future Queen Elizabeth.

And, in 1942, Andrei Andreevich volunteered for the British Navy. He refused an officer's commission and served as a common sailor on the light cruiser ‘Sheffield’. The ship provided cover for Allied cargo ships delivering weapons to Murmansk. Thus, the prince became the first Romanov to visit Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. Ironically, until 1917, the city was named Romanov-na-Murmane.

In the years that followed, the prince visited his ancestral homeland on numerous occasions, where he exhibited his paintings and participated in events associated with the Romanov dynasty. He was the first member of his distinguished family to visit the site of Nicholas II's execution in Yekaterinburg.