Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia

Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia (; Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov; – 12 October 1938) was a son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, a grandson of Emperor Alexander II and a first cousin of Nicholas II, Russia's last tsar. He was also the uncle of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. Grand Duke Kirill followed a career in the Imperial Russian Navy serving for 20 years in the Naval Guards. He took part in the Russo-Japanese War, barely surviving the sinking of the battleship at Port Arthur in April 1904. In 1905, he married his paternal first cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who both defied Nicholas II by not obtaining his consent. They had two daughters and settled in Paris before they were allowed to visit Russia in 1909. In 1910 they moved to Russia. In World War I, Grand Duke Kirill was appointed Commander of the Naval Depot of the Guards in 1915. He achieved the rank of rear admiral in the Imperial Navy in 1916. During the February Revolution of 1917, Kirill marched to the Tauride Palace at the head of the Naval Guards and swore allegiance to the Russian Provisional Government. During the rule of the Provisional Governmental in the summer 1917, Kirill escaped to Finland, where his wife gave birth to the couple's only son. In exile, they lived for some years among his wife's relatives in Germany and, from the late 1920s, on an estate they bought in Saint-Briac, France.