Prince Constantin Radziwill

 

Prince Constantin Radziwill (1850-1920) was born into an important aristocratic Polish-Lithuanian family. He had numerous royal titles and bloodlines as well as a surfeit of prime European real estate, but not much cash in the bank. Consequently, he married a wealthy woman whose family made a fortune in prestigious upper-class gambling, including the establishment of the Casino de Monte-Carlo and the Hotel de Paris with the royal family of Monaco. 

Although married with children, Radziwill's homosexual activity was widely known (an open secret), and he was infamous for employing 12 strapping house boys (known as "footmen", ahem...), to whom he awarded extravagant gifts of jewelry. As well, he was a close friend of writer Marcel Proust, the French influencer who was himself conflicted over his own sexuality, i.e. a practicing homosexual who was homophobic in many of his writings. 

Over the centuries the Radziwell family was on a par with royalty. They owned 23 palaces, over 400 towns, in excess of 2,000 estates, and more than 10,000 villages. Evidence of their cultural influence was the fact that they hosted Beethoven, Goethe, Paganini and the like. The Radziwill Palace in Warsaw now serves as the Presidential Palace of the Republic of Poland.

The Radziwill family held influential musical salons at their various properties in Vienna, Paris, Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin, etc. The family supported pianist-composer Frederic Chopin financially, and the pianist was a frequent house guest of Antoni Radziwill, himself an accomplished cellist. Chopin dedicated compositions to the Radziwills and gave piano lessons to Antoni's daughter Wanda.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis had a brother-in-law who was a Radziwill. Prince Stanislaw Radziwell was married to Jackie's "socialite" sister, Lee, with whom he fathered two children. Their Swiss-born son Anthony, a broadcast journalist, served as best man at the 1996 wedding of his cousin John F. Kennedy Jr and Caroline Bessette. Tragically, Anthony (1959-1999), the nephew of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, died of cancer at the age of forty.

Felix Felixovich Yusupov

 

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.