Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich was the sixth child and fifth son of HIH the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich ‘Sandro’ and HIH the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna. His parents were paternal first cousins once removed. Consequently, Prince Rostislav was the great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas I, also the great-great-grandson of the same Tsar Nicholas I, the grandson of Tsar Alexander III and the nephew of Tsar Nicholas II. During the Russian Revolution Prince Rostislav was imprisoned along with his parents and grandmother the Dowager Empress at Dulber, in the Crimea. He escaped the fate of a number of his Romanov cousins who were murdered by the Bolsheviks when he was freed by German troops in 1918. He left Russia in 1919 aboard the Royal Navy ship for Malta, where they spent nine months before moving to England and later settling in Cannes, France.
Family
Rostislav was married three times. He married first Princess Alexandra Pavlovna Galitzine on 1 September 1928 in Chicago. They had one child before divorcing in 1944. She remarried to Lester Armour.
Prince Rostislav Rostislavovich.
Rostislav married Alice Eilken on 24 November 1944. The couple had one child before they divorced on 11 April 1951.
Prince Nicholas Rostislavovich the owner of a direct mail business.
Rostislav married Hedwig Maria Gertrud Eva von Chappuis on 19 November 1954. No children were born of this marriage. It is often alleged that Rostislav's marriage with Princess Alexandra Galitzina would have been morganatic. However, holds that it was as acceptable dynastically as the Bagrationi marriage of Vasili's cousin, Vladimir Kirillovich. Since the extinction of the Korecki family in the 17th century, the Golitsyns have claimed dynastic seniority in the House of Gediminas. The Gediminids were a dynasty of monarchs of Grand Duchy of Lithuania that reigned from the 14th to the 16th century and Emperor Peter I had permitted the Golitsyns to incorporate the emblem of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into their coat of arms.
Title and style
His Highness Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich of Russia
''N.B. After the Russian revolution members of the Imperial family tended to drop the territorial designation “of Russia” and use the princely title with the surname Romanov.
