PRINCESS ZINAIDA YUSUPOVA
Born on 2nd September 1861, in Saint Petersburg Russia, Zinaida Yusupova was a Russian noblewoman.
She was the second daughter of Countess Tatiana Ribeaupierre and Prince Nicholas Yusupov, Grand Master of the Ceremonies at the Court of Alexander II.
However, she became best known as the mother of Prince Felix Yusupov, the murderer of Grigory Rasputin…..
Of all the aristocratic families that comprised the Russian Court, the wealthiest and most important was without doubt, the Yusupovs.
The unexpected death of the eldest daughter Princess Tatiana, left the young Zenaida sole heir to the largest private fortune in Imperial Russia.
Tall and slender, with an exquisite, rose-leaf complexion, luxuriant black hair, and cornflower blue eyes, the young Princess soon became the toast of St. Petersburg Society.
Vivacious, intelligent, and exquisitely refined, Zenaide captivated all of those whom she met, and soon
became a muse for artists, such as Francois Flameng.
With her famed beauty, and enormous private fortune, she quickly found herself courted by eligible batchelors from noble families, across all of Europe.
Rather than making a grand match, she instead fell in love with the poor and socially unimportant, Count Felix Sumarakov-Elston, an officer in the Chevaliers Guards.
Felix was tall and handsome, with a dashing cavalry mustache and blue eyes.
Felix cut an attractive and dashing figure in St. Petersburg’s drawing rooms.
Zenaida fell hopelessly in love.
The marriage between Zenaida and Felix was an unlikely one.
Zenaida loved society, dinners, and balls, and used her vast fortune to assist struggling painters, sculptors, composers, and singers.
Count Felix cared little for such trivial things.
With a reputation for eccentricity and a mind fixated on his military career, he was a bold contrast to his refined wife.
Despite their differences, Zenaida and Felix were besotted with each other.
They managed to create a stable and lasting marriage, and remained touchingly devoted to each other for all of their lives.
Zenaida and her husband had two sons, Prince Nicholas, born in 1882, and Prince Felix, born in 1887.
While both boys had a starined relationship with their father, they adored their mother, with a passion.
Zenaida’s wealth and power could not protect her from the tragedies of life.
In 1907, her eldest son, the tall, dashing Nicholas, fell in love with Countess Marina Heyden, a woman of fiery temperament and undoubted beauty.
At the time, the Countess was already engaged to Baron Arvid Manteufel.
She engaged in a dangerous game, playing one lover against the other.
Disaster was inevitable…..
One early July morning, Nicholas and Manteufel faced each other across a deserted, dew-covered meadow on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.
Shots rang out and Prince Nicholas, just twenty-five, fell dead.
When Nicholas’ body was carried into the Moika Palace, his father was tearful, Zenaide collapsed over the stretcher, screaming over and over again, “Nicholas! Nicholas!”
The tragedy nearly broke the bereaving Zenaide.
She could not bring herself to even attend his funeral, and spent the next few years lost in a haze of tears.
Nicholas’s death left his twenty-one-year-old brother Felix, as sole heir to the family fortune.
Felix was a curious young man, tall, handsome, and cultured, with a pronounced eccentricity and a well-earned reputation as a dissolute, decadent aristocrat.
Felix had been sent to a military school, before he finished his education with a degree from Oxford University.
When he returned to Russia at the end of his three years abroad, he was quieter and more mature.
However, he had become addicted to opium and alcohol, and his indiscrete affairs with both men and women were legendary.
In February 1914, Felix wed Princess Irina Alexandrovna, the only daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna.
Ultimately, it would be Felix who lured Rasputin to the Moika Palace.
With Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich and several other conspirators, Felix cold-bloodedly murdered the mystic peasant.
Following the Russian Revolution, Zinaida, her husband, their son Felix and his wife Irina, left Russia and lived in Rome, in exile.
Then, in 1928, Count Felix died.
He had been unwell for some time, and his wife had bravely nursed him through his final illness.
Her husband’s death was a severe blow to Zenaida, and in her widowhood, she seemed to lose much of her fiery spirit.
She moved to Paris with Felix, Irina and their daughter, living in two rooms in a small house.
Zenaida’s last years were lonely ones, even though she was with her small family.
Zenaida suffered a stroke at the beginning of the 1930s, and she still missed her husband, dreadfully.
Despite the fact that she had cared little for the wealth her birth had bestowed upon her, she found it increasingly difficult to reconcile herself to life of exile in Paris.
A second stroke left Zenaida half-paralyzed and barely able to speak.
Unable to properly care for her, Felix reluctantly put his mother in a nursing home for Russian exiles.
It was here, far from the glittering world of palaces and extraordinary jewelry she had once known, that Princess Zenaide Yusupov finally died on 24th November 1939.
She was buried next to her husband in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, just outside Paris.
🥀 Princess Zenaide Yusupov c.1894
Francois Flameng.
