Romanov grand duchess dies, aged 95

Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna, a senior member of Russia's Romanov dynasty, died yesterday aged 95 after a life that saw her marry a US industrialist and then the claimant to the Russian throne.

Born in 1914 three years before the Russian Revolution that ousted the Romanov imperial family, she was the last surviving member of the dynasty to be born in the Russian Empire. Leonida, known to some of her supporters as the Dowager Empress of Russia, was the widow of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, who until his death in 1992 was head of the Romanov dynasty and pretender to the Russian throne.

Grand Duke Vladimir was the great-grandson of Alexander II, the third-to-last Tsar of Russia.

The couple's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, is the current head of the Romanov dynasty.

"Leonida died overnight Sunday to Monday in Madrid. She will be buried, as she requested, next to her husband Vladimir Kirillovich in Saint Petersburg," Alexander Zakatov, the director of the Romanov dynasty's office, said.

Born in 1914 in Tbilisi in modern-day Georgia, Leonida was the last surviving representative of the Romanov family to have been born on the territory of the Russian Empire before the 1917 Revolution. Her first husband was an American magnate of Scottish origin, whom she married in 1934. The pair divorced in 1937 and in 1948 she married Grand Duke Vladimir.

She will be buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, the final resting place of her husband and where the remains of the Romanov Tsars including Nicholas II are interred.

The Romanov dynasty was ousted in the Russian Revol-ution of 1917 and many of its leading members, including the last Tsar Nicholas II, were subsequently murdered by the Bolsheviks.

The Russian Supreme Court in October 2008 formally rehabilitated Tsar Nicholas II, declaring that he and his family were unlawfully killed by Soviet authorities. But Russia has rejected calls from the dynasty to reopen a criminal probe into the execution of Nicholas II and his family.