Grand Duke Vyacheslav Konstantinovich of Russia

Grand Duke Vyacheslav Konstantinovich
Born	(1862-07-13)13 July 1862 Warsaw, Warsaw Governorate, Congress Poland
Died	27 February 1879(1879-02-27) (aged 16) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Burial	Grand Ducal Mausoleum
House	House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
Father	Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia
Mother	Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg

Grand Duke Vyacheslav Konstantinovich of Russia, (13 July 1862 – 27 February 1879), was a Romanov grand duke and the youngest son of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia and his wife Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg. The English form of his first name is Wenceslas.

Biography

Vyacheslav, who was nicknamed "Slava," was the baby of the family and a family favorite. He was tall and used to joke that, when he is dead, his coffin would be stuck in a doorway of the Marble Palace. It really happened so when he died. At age sixteen, he complained suddenly of a splitting headache and violent illness. He lay with a Russian Orthodox icon on his pillow as his family surrounded him, urging him to breathe. He died within a week of brain inflammation. His mother later reported that she had seen the ghost of a white lady in the art gallery at Pavlovsk on the day before Vyacheslav became ill. She took the apparition as a portent of death. His brother Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia later recalled, as he walked in Vyacheslav's funeral procession, how much Vyacheslav enjoyed drawing funeral processions in great detail.^[1]

Orders and decorations

•  Württemberg: Grand Cross of the Württemberg Crown, 1874^[2]

Ancestry

Notes

References

• Pchelov, E.V. (2003). The Romanovs: history of the dynasty. Archive. Moscow, OLMA-PRESS. ISBN 5-224-01678-9
• Zeepvat, Charlotte (2004). The Camera and the Tsars. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-3049-7