Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent — royal with roots in the Russian Empire
Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark was born in Athens on 13 December 1906, the youngest of the three daughters of Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia. On both sides her family led back to Russia. Her father was a son of King George I of Greece and Queen Olga, who had been born a Russian grand duchess at Pavlovsk. Her mother was the only daughter of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, a son of Emperor Alexander II, and so a first cousin of Nicholas II.
Elena Vladimirovna was born at Tsarskoye Selo in 1882 and brought to her marriage the customary dowry of a Russian grand duchess, a million roubles. Marina grew up in a household where Russian was spoken alongside Greek, and as a child she visited her mother's family at the imperial court. She spoke Greek, Russian, French and German, and English with an accent that contemporaries remarked on; she and her sisters were said to have invented a private mixture of Greek and Russian for their secrets.
The revolution of 1917 ended that world. Several of her mother's relatives were killed, and political upheaval in Greece sent her own family into exile. They spent much of the 1920s in Paris in reduced circumstances, where her mother worked for Russian émigré charities.
In 1932 she met Prince George, the fourth son of King George V and her second cousin, and they married at Westminster Abbey in November 1934, when he was created Duke of Kent. She was the last foreign-born princess to marry into the British royal family. They had three children: Prince Edward, born in 1935, Princess Alexandra, born in 1936, and Prince Michael, born in July 1942. Seven weeks after Michael's birth the Duke of Kent was killed in a military air crash in Scotland.
As a widow she carried out a full round of public duties and became one of the best-known figures of the royal family, noted for her elegance; from 1961 she was president of the All England Lawn Tennis Club and presented the trophies at Wimbledon. She died at Kensington Palace on 27 August 1968, aged sixty-one.
Her Russian inheritance passed to her children. Her younger son, Prince Michael of Kent, learned Russian, provided DNA for the identification of the remains of Nicholas II's family and attended their burial in St Petersburg in 1998. Through her father she was also a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Tracing the roots — Tsarskoye Selo (mother)
Her mother, Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna, was born at Tsarskoye Selo, a granddaughter of Emperor Alexander II and a first cousin of Nicholas II. Marina spoke Russian and as a child visited her mother's family at the imperial court.
Daughter of Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna (1882–1957), born at Tsarskoye Selo, a granddaughter of Alexander II and first cousin of Nicholas II.
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Tsarskoye Selo (mother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.