Grand Duchess Leonida Romanov, Last Romanov Born in Russian Empire, Dead at 95

Grand Duchess Leonida Georgiyevna Romanov, the last member of the Russian royal family born before the 1917 Revolution, died late Sunday in Madrid, Spain, RIA-Novosti reported. She was 95.

Leonida had requested to be buried in Petropavlovsk Cathedral in St. Petersburg next to her late husband, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich Romanov, the great-grandson of 19th-century Tsar Alexander II.

The Moscow Patriarchate expressed its condolences on Monday: “Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna, who had lived a very dramatic, complicated and long life, never forgot Russia,” archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who is in charge of the Russian Orthodox Church's relations with society, said.

She will be buried in Russia near Duke Vladimir, in St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul Cathedral. The date of the burial has not yet been set. Chaplin said the decision to bury the late grand duchess in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where many other members of the Romanov family are buried, was “natural and right.”