Interview with Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, Head of the Russian Imperial House

[Music] the head of the russian imperial house her imperial highness the grand duchess maria vladimirovna was born in madrid she is the only daughter of the late head of the russian apparel house his imperial highness grand duke vladimir kirilovich and his most august spouse her imperial highness grand duchess following the tradition of the romanov imperial family the grand duchess was brought up in the orthodox faith and to have devotion to the interest of russia she reached the age of dynastic majority when she turned 16 so in 1969 the grand duchess took the prescribed oath of allegiance of loyalty to her fatherland and her august father her imperial highness studied at oxford university in addition to russian the grand duchess is learned in english french and spanish she also speaks and reads german italian and arabic her first visit to russia was in april 1992 to attend the funeral of grand duke vladimir quirovich in st petersburg since that time her imperial highness has made many return trips carrying on the duties of her father in her speeches she constantly emphasizes that she is ready to respond to a call from the people but that under no circumstances does she wish monarchy to be imposed on the russian people against their will maria vladimirovna is also in the line of succession to the british throne thank you very much for being with us my pleasure uh thank you well uh first of all uh the imperial house uh the russian appeal house is fighting for the rehabilitation of nicholas ii and his family and the family that was executed back in 1918 well if we put it into the historic context for example was never rehabilitated by the firm justice why uh why does your family want this rehabilitation and do the saints need rehabilitation at all well that's a question that you often ask obviously you can't have anything better than having a saint in the family nevertheless according to our constitution it's a constitutional right and therefore i think that to show the rest of the world that we abide to these laws um i think it's only fair and if you had a member of your family that died when everybody thought that he was a murderer or public enemy and after his death after a certain time all of a sudden one finds out that this is not the case you would like that your family name and that your grandfather uncle aunt or whoever it was uh name be regulated but mostly it isn't a political issue uh i'm not asking for any uh compensations out of it i said it right from the beginning it's not a political issue it's really so that uh the image of russia uh will be once again up to its standards and that people all over the world will really believe uh in russia and um to what it abides to to laws and that it's a fresh new uh russia that makes a new start is not afraid of anything and now it's it's otherwise the terror has never ended the imperial highness but uh maybe it's another question often asked to you but the supreme court i know has so far denied uh even to even to discover the case because they say uh nicholas ii he was never convicted he was even never officially charged exactly exactly so i mean if it would have been maybe more difficult had there be laws against them now and we would have to re-look into that but nevertheless the order was given from above um just because he was a member of that family like all the other or many other uh members of our family were just um assassinate because of it so i think it's uh just uh fair that if any uh russian or foreigner that lived in russia and suffered from this uh persecution be rehabilitated that's all uh obviously up till now it is all minor technicalities they just go round the pond the whole time and obviously um there's still people that do not have the stamina uh the understanding uh how important this case is for russia maybe we sign treaties we do very important things that seem surface very important and sometimes these little minor things will give the credibility uh to a country that maybe those treat these do not always give because they always think ah yeah we're signing today but tomorrow we never know whether they'll comply to them now let's look at some facts concerning the last days and the tragic death of the last russian emperor in a story by spotlight's elena dimitra as its son nicholas ii was forced to abdicate in 1917 he and his family were initially kept as prisoners near saint petersburg and then sent into exile beyond the euro mountains in the spring of 1918 the former moonlight's family was locked in the party house in nikaterenburg where they spent several months before they were murdered early in the morning of the 17th of july that tsar his wife children and a small retinue were gathered into one of the rooms of their prison house and shot the bodies were taken to forest soaked in acid and burned and the place of their burial was kept secret for a long time the remains of the family with the exception of two of the children alexei and maria were only found in 1991. the process of identifying the remains was a thorough one samples were sent to britain and the united states for dna testing british scientists said they were more than 98 sure that the remains were those of the emperor's family a christian burial ceremony was held in 1998 eighty years after the royal family's death the russian orthodox church canonized the murdered romanovs in july 2007 the remains of a boy and young woman were found nearly katrinburg a series of examinations have recently confirmed that the born fragments belong to russia's last royal family supposedly crown prince alexey and grand princess maria [Music] your imperial highness do you uh personally believe that the remains discovered in yet and the suburbs i really belong uh to to to your family to the less russian emperor in his family well yeah i right from the beginning even though that were found before we very much hoped that they would be but it doesn't mean that of course uh a family wanting it to be so cannot prove one way or the other and cannot influence this is a matter of people that are really professors doctors landed people in the matter that will have to make a decision plus of course we have to respect uh the church that obviously has made them into saints and cannot make the people believe and are in front of relics and sometime later say oh oops sorry we made a mistake as you well know uh science develops more and more and um like for instance in spain just last week what was believed to be a picture of goya for at least 200 years turned out to be not a fake but but uh something that has been painted so you know um science can uh it's not a matter that it makes a mistake but can believe for a certain time with the uh techniques and uh they have at that time but of course uh the church is something that eternal you know so they have to look much further and possibly take their time until good lord wants to prove us right one way or the other so so do you mean to say that that your family uh should wait until the church uh adopts the the authenticity of these remains that were buried in saint petersburg and only after that you may you may take it as a belief rather than the scientific uh result which may be a mistake is that what you're trying to well uh yeah you know i think we we have to accept what obviously the learned people will tell us and have the church package you know and otherwise i suppose uh we will have just to wait uh there's no rush really um as you said before the beginning what more can we ask if already members of our family have become saints martyrs and are recognized as such i think that's the most important um but to revere relics we cannot make mistakes and ask people that a bow in and pray in front of these relics and then all of a sudden we'll say oh i'm sorry we we made a mistake so that's why one has to understand the church position and wait until they are convinced or [Music] think that it's time to recognize them or not your imperial highness in the russian and internet there is an interesting project going on for quite a while now people are choosing what they call the face of russia they got 500 people to choose from all historic epochs and until a couple of days before until last week number one was joseph stalin and uh yesterday a day before yesterday suddenly changed and now number one uh the person leading in this list of the greatest russian leaders is nicholas ii and stalin is number two in the last 12 uh the people that will go to the certain final it's like a sporting event no uh actually actually uh nicholas ii peter the great uh he katarina the great the second and also uh ivan the terrible so so four uh former russian sorrows but still stalin and lenin number two and three how would you comment on that well i think it's um proof of how russia is evolving how now that they can get the um sufficient and the right information obviously people see that members of our family were not as bad as they were portrayed for many years and that obviously we cannot compare ourselves or nobody should to the good lord but i think that really i for our fathers loved their country and countrymen dearly and tried to do what they could to the best of their ability you must always put things into context uh when they lived and sometimes we tend to forget and to look around the world well i don't think they lived too well either so you know but that is something that pleases me to hear that people now have managed to get the sufficient information to value and to see what these people have done for their country your imperial highness memory of lesbian if i can ask you a personal question would it be hard for you personally to choose the face of russia out of 500 people you know i think the face of russia is the common russian man and woman not just one letter or i don't think so i think that every russian man and woman has all this legacy in them and they are the ones that have kept the candle alive for centuries and they are our hope so uh what you mean is like it would be better for example to take the poster of war you remember the your motherland is calling rodriguez and to call this a face of russia instead of choosing out of a uh possibly possibly because you know these faces come and go but the russians voted carries on there for stalin who is who is running number two in this contest do you think people are voting for things he did really and they're considering the things he did good or bad to the country or they're considering him just like another one of the leaders one of the size i think that's possibly it i think that many people though they realize how many mistakes he made or but i think they they really um are looking for again for a leader somebody that has the stamina uh to unite everybody and to give russia its splendor again and i think that that's what something that uh is very intrinsic to the russian character and the russian man and woman uh they were custom for many many centuries to have somebody energetic enough to be able to to to um unite everybody and march forward and build the future many people in russia including very famous people uh people of cultural politicians even today uh say that that monarchy is a very russian thing that's it still is in the soul of every russian uh person do you believe in that do you think that really monarchy is the way to rule this country and that it may be restored someday who knows i'm not a fortune teller i can only say that i think if you look around the world and if you study a little bit all the different possibilities it is the most flexible sort of system uh that can unite everybody that doesn't take and chooses one party or another it can unite everybody um and a little bit like in a football match the referee but it is true that to a certain extent it is very much also very deep in now russian uh personality um to have this uh be it a tsar or president we need but i don't think if you think about it we all need all over the world to have a father or mother figurehead somebody that we really believe that they care for us and like a father or a mother will not do something nasty for us and um this was very very true to russia even more maybe than any other place but i think that um yeah possibly that's that's what they're looking for but very interesting thing as a matter of fact all russian all russian uh communist leaders and later president yeltsin even they all played sort of a father no even even yeltsin was nearly openly called saddam but putin was the first who didn't play according to this rule he didn't like the image of being a king he was like just a manager of the country right and that worked so what do you think is the secret of his enormous popularity well i think that uh obviously he is a man of the 20th and 21st century with the stamina and he tried his [Music] possibilities and how he felt more at ease and he found this way well fair enough and it's wonderful and i hope that in his present role he will carry on helping the russian people and the new president uh will find also all that needs inside him to to to give all the love and care to this wonderful country your highness i know when i talk to a lot of people to a lot of russian immigrants a lot of russians living abroad and they all even they if even if they're settled in second third century they all think and like to talk about going back to russia settling back in russia in your family uh do you ever speak or think about returning to live in russia and under which circumstances do you think that that might that was always our dream and that's why we always kept our traditions our language sometimes it was difficult because there was not many people with whom to practice me for instance living in spain there were very few uh russians there so it was difficult in the states for instance russians were able to live in the little russian communities and keep also and in france germany but um it was something that was always a hope and that one day we would be able to to go back and in that faith we have carried on so i hope that one day we will be able to to to come back and be of some assistance in whichever role russia wants us to be in it when the time comes a role yes but there should be a role uh if you come back to russia yes it must be an uh it must i would feel better if um i knew what people would like on ana rather than just say oh well yeah i come and you said yeah i am and i think it'd be nicer for people to to to know that i'm ready to help them in whatever way they can and together of course with the help of many other people that would like to help me uh to do this but not as a political figure consider your life to be a mission yes absolutely absolutely um i was brought up like that i tried to pass it on to to my son and i'm very grateful to my parents that uh managed to uh create around me an atmosphere uh and the belief that though we lived nicely maybe abroad and i was born there that i did not belong to the country where i was living but that i belonged to russia and that that's home and that's where we would like to go back to [Music] you

Channel: The Romanov Royal Martyrs

Views: 214,005

Rating: 4.7416806 out of 5

Keywords: romanovs, romanov, romanov royal martyrs, Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, Royal Family, Romanov execution, Romanov dynasty, Romanov trailer, Romanov family, Romanoffs, Helen Rappaport, Four sisters, Last Tsar, Ekaterinburg, Olga Shirnina, Anastasia Romanov, Alexandra Feodrovna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Royalty, British Royalty, romanov family today, romanov family death, romanov coronation, romanov sisters, romanov jewels, romanov saints, romanov book, National Geographic

Id: HNxyXHtivi8

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020