In addition to the glamor, the symbolism counts. Just over 100 years after Red October, and the subsequent Bolshevik fury that led to the killing of Tsar Nicholas II along with his wife and five children, the first imperial marriage of a Romanov descendant, the Grand Duke George Mikhailovich.
Next to the 40-year-old heir to the throne, on the altar of the Cathedral of St. Isaac, was the new (Italian) bride Rebecca Virginia Bettarini. Around, a large group of nobles and VIPs, as befits the occasion, indeed quite unique. With the fall of the Soviet Union, in fact, the Orthodox Church regained power and prestige within Russian society and Nicholas II was declared a saint and martyr. Vladimir Putin blessed and accompanied the return of faith to his homeland and does not hide his sympathy for a religion understood as instrumentum regni. So everything is held.
George was born in Madrid to Grand Duchess Maria Romanova and Prussian Prince Francis William of Hohenzollern and spent most of his life in Spain and France before visiting Russia for the first time in 1992 with his grandfather the Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich .
A journey that the heir to the throne recalled as “full of emotions”. His mother is the granddaughter of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, a first cousin of Nicholas II who fled Russia during the revolution and declared himself emperor in exile. George worked in the European Parliament and the European Commission and was an advisor to the director of the Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel. The Romanov scion met Rebecca in Brussels during her time in the European Parliament.
Daughter of the Italian ambassador to Belgium, Roberto Bettarini, the future ‘Tsarina’ has a past as a writer and lobbyist and now heads the Russian Imperial Foundation. In deference to the Russian imperial tradition, Bettarini converted to the Orthodox faith last year and took the name of Victoria Romanovna.
The choice of St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, is of course not accidental. “This city was the first place in Russia we went back to,” the Grand Duke told the St. Petersburg newspaper Fontanka. “It’s a place very, very close to the family.”
Among the 1,500 guests were around 50 royals from various European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria and Spain. The guest list also included Sarah Fabergé and Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.