George Mikhailovich, Count Brasov

George Mikhailovich, Count Brasov (Георгий Михайлович, граф Брасов; 6 August 1910 – 21 July 1931) was a Russian noble and a descendant of the House of Romanov through a morganatic line.

George was born in his mother's Moscow apartment on Petersburg Road, near Petrovsky Park.

His parents were Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia and his mistress, Natalia Sergeyevna Wulfert.

Grand Duke Michael was the youngest son of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and Empress Marie (formerly Princess Dagmar of Denmark), and a brother of Emperor Nicholas II.

At the time of George's birth, Natalia was still legally married to her second husband, army officer Vladimir Vladimirovich Wulfert.

Wulfert and Grand Duke Michael had served in the same regiment, The Dowager Empress's Life Guard Cuirassier Regiment, known as the Blue Cuirassiers, stationed at Gatchina near Saint Petersburg.

After the scandal that arose from Michael's affair with Wulfert's wife, Wulfert was transferred to Moscow, and Michael was transferred to the Chernigov Hussars at Orel.

Michael and Natalia feared that her husband would try to claim custodial rights over George, and had instituted divorce proceedings, but the divorce was only finalised after George's birth.

It was said that Wulfert was bought off with a bribe of 200,000 roubles, and the date of the Wulferts divorce was back-dated, so that George was recognised as Natalia's illegitimate son, though inheriting her noble status, rather than the legitimate child of Wulfert's.

George was baptised on 22 September 1910 at the Church of St Basil of Caesarea in Moscow, by Father Peter Pospelov, and named after his late uncle, Grand Duke George Alexandrovich of Russia, who had died in 1899.

His godparents were Aleksei Matveev and Margaret Abakanovich.

Matveev was the husband of George's maternal aunt, Olga, and Abakanovich was a family friend who was married to Michael's adjutant.

Abakanovich was absent, and George's half-sister, Natalia Sergeyevna Mamontova, Natalia's daughter from her first marriage, stood proxy.

On 13 November 1910, Emperor Nicholas II decreed that the boy would be known as George Mikhailovich Brasov, with the surname taken from one of Michael's estates: Brasovo near Orel.

Grand Duke Michael was second in the line of imperial succession after his nephew, Tsarevich Alexei, but Alexei suffered from hemophilia and it was feared that he would not live long enough to inherit the throne.

Under Russian House Law, Michael, as a member of the imperial family, could not marry without the consent of the ruling monarch, Nicholas II.

Nicholas would not grant permission for Michael to marry Natalia, however, because Natalia was twice divorced and not of royal blood.

In 1912, Alexei suffered a life-threatening hemorrhage in the thigh and groin while the family was at Spala, Poland.

Michael feared that Alexei would not survive, which would make him heir and the possibility of his marriage to Natalia even more remote.

Consequently, Michael decided to marry Natalia anyway.

They married in a Serbian Orthodox Church in Vienna on 16 October 1912.

A few days later, George, his newly-wed parents, and Natalia's daughter from her first marriage met up in Cannes.

From there, Michael wrote to his mother and brother to inform them of the marriage.

The imperial family was shocked, seeing it as a betrayal of duty, especially as it was done while the Tsarevich was so close to dying.

Michael and his family were exiled from Russia.

They stayed in grand hotels in Cannes, Paris, Chexbres, Bad Kissingen and London before settling in England in September 1913.

In the fall of 1914, at the start of World War I, Grand Duke Michael requested permission to return to Russia to rejoin the army, which was fighting on the Eastern Front.

Nicholas II granted his request and George and his family returned to live in a villa at 24 Nikolaevskaya, Gatchina, that Michael had bought for Natalia.

(Natalia was not permitted to live at any of the imperial palaces.) George's English governess, Miss Rata, accompanied them to Russia, after marrying Michael's head groom, Mr. Bennett.

Michael became a general and earned a Cross of St. George, the highest military award, for action in the Carpathian mountains.

Michael wrote to Nicholas asking him to legitimise George so, he argued, that the boy would be provided for in the event of Michael's death at the front.

Six months later, Nicholas legitimised George by decree, and created him a count.

George and his descendants would, however, be excluded from the order of succession.

By 1915, Mrs Bennett was pregnant, so she left the family's service and was replaced by her friend and fellow Englishwoman, Margaret Neame.

George's father remained at the front until September 1916, but he was invalided from October with stomach ulcers, and the family spent the winter in the Crimea as Michael recuperated, and then spent Christmas at Brasovo.

The Christmas holiday was cut short, however, when a guest's child contracted diphtheria and died.

At risk of infection, the family evacuated the estate by snow-bound sleigh ride.

It was the last time any of them would see Brasovo.

New Year 1917 was spent back at Gatchina.

During the February Revolution two months later, Nicholas II abdicated for himself and his son and nominated Michael to succeed him.