The Witches of St. Petersburg

Epilogue

Militza, Peter, Stana and Nikolasha and all their children survived the 1917 Revolution. They escaped off the beaches of the Crimea with some of their fortune, rescued by the British on HMS Marlborough in April 1919 along with Prince Felix Yusupov, his wife Princess Irina, plus his parents Princess Zinaida Yusupova and her husband Count Felix Yusupov, as well as Grand Duchess Xenia and her mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna.

After a somewhat protracted journey where they were deposited in Greece while the others continued on to Malta, all four of them and their children ended up living in the South of France where Grand Duke Nikolai eventually died in 1929, followed by Grand Duke Peter in 1931 and Grand Duchess Anastasia in 1935.

Militza lived on, only to become caught up in the Second World War. She left France for Italy to stay with her sister, Queen Elena. But the situation became very unstable and as the King and Queen went into hiding, Militza ended up seeking refuge at the Sacré Coeur nunnery at the top of the Spanish Steps. A few months later she managed to escape to the Vatican where she received sanctuary within the walls of Vatican City for three years. Eventually she escaped, along with her sister Elena and the rest of the Italian Royal Family, to Alexandria, Egypt, where she lived along with a myriad of other deposed royals including King Zog of Albania, as a guest of King Farouk of Egypt. Grand Duchess Militza died in Alexandria in September 1951, aged 85.

Several days after his murder, the body of Rasputin was found with a gunshot wound to the forehead. It was pulled out of the river from under the ice at Petrovsky Bridge. His lungs were said to be full of water, as if he had, in fact, drowned and his hands had freed themselves from the cord that tied them and were raised as if he had been scratching at the ice, trying to get out.

We hope you enjoyed this book.

Acknowledgements

About Imogen Edwards-Jones

An Invitation from the Publisher