At age 16 Prince Felix posed for the painter Valentin Serov in 1903. That portrait, above, is now on display at the St. Petersburg Museum.
Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov (1887-1967) was an immensely wealthy* Russian aristocrat, prince and count best known for masterminding the assassination of Rasputin and marrying the niece of Czar Nicholas II. He was exceptionally handsome and participated in homosexual affairs throughout his married life. His wife put up with it, so long as she was “the only woman”. It was reported that Felix liked to dress up in drag as a teenager, until his parents found out and put a stop to it.
*The Yusupov family was far wealthier than the Romanoffs; they had four palaces in St. Petersburg and three in Moscow, out of a total of nearly forty residences located throughout Russia and eastern Europe.
Below: the Baroque Theatre inside the Yusupov "Moika" palace in St. Petersburg.
In December 1916 Felix and several co-conspirators lured Rasputin to Felix’s St. Petersburg “Moika” palace, poisoned him, shot him and threw him off a bridge into the Malaya Nevka River. Felix and his cronies were not charged with the murder. The prince, exiled during the revolution, lived out his life in Paris, where he died at age 80.
In her 2017 book*, Princess Olga Andreevna Romanov wrote that Prince Felix was bisexual, and that he and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich (a Romanoff) were lovers for a time. The Grand Duke was a first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (British Queen Elizabeth II’s consort). The Grand Duke was also one of Felix’s co-conspirators in the assassination of Rasputin.
*"Princess Olga: A Wild and Barefoot Romanov" 2017. 200 pages, hardcover only.
The aristocracy of Russia were great benefactors of the arts in Tsarist times. Many ballet dancers, both male and female, had generous patrons and sex favors in exchange for cash was not unheard of. The ballet companies were in part financed by these liaisons.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, perhaps Putin will go the way of Rasputin. As the aristocracy did away with Rasputin in Imperial Russia, the oligarchs of Russia today will do away with Putin. :)
It is interesting that Putin is a near homonym to Ras-putin.
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