Felix Yusupov

Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarókov-Elston (Russian: Фéликс Фéликсович Юсýпов; Saint Petersburg, March 11^Jul./ March 23, 1887^greg.-Paris, September 27, 1967), was a Russian nobleman famous for his role in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. A member of the imperial family by marriage, he went into exile in Paris after the fall of the Romanovs with the 1917 Revolution.

Biography

Prince Felix Yusúpov sitting next to his mother, father and elder brother Nikolai.

Son of Count Felix Felixovich Sumarókov-Elston, Governor of Moscow and Princess Zinaida Yusupova (who belonged to the Yusupov family), one of the richest women in the world. The death of his older brother Nicolás de él in a duel made him the potential heir to an immeasurable wealth of money, property, jewelry, art objects and other assets. During his youth he led a dissipated life, alternated with periods of mysticism.

From 1909 to 1912 he studied at Oxford University, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club and established the Oxford Russian Society.

In 1914 he married Princess Irina Alexandrovna Románova, niece of Tsar Nicholas II, with whom he had a daughter, Princess Irina Félixovna Yusúpova. During their honeymoon, World War I broke out and the princes were arrested in Berlin, so Irina had to ask her cousin, Princess Cecilia of Prussia, to intercede for them with her father-in-law, Emperor Wilhelm II. from Germany. The emperor denied the request. Given this, Félix's father appealed to the Spanish ambassador in Germany and got the princes to return to Russia through Denmark and Finland.

Upon his return to Russia, Felix converted one of the wings of the Moika Palace into a hospital for war wounded. However, despite his concerns, he avoided entering the military by taking advantage of the law that exempted only children from serving.

In 1915 their only daughter was born, Princess Irina Félixovna Yusúpova, who after the Revolution would marry Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Sheremétiev in French exile.

The Assassination of Rasputin

He became famous for his part in the assassination of Rasputin in 1916, along with Deputy Vladimir Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, and other conspirators.

Prince Felix Yusupov with his wife and little daughter in 1916.

In addition to his well-arranged marriage to Princess Irina, some versions pointed out that Yusupov would probably have been bisexual (there is no proof of this), in the same way as the rumors of Grand Duke Dmitri.

It should be remembered that throughout his life, the monk Rasputin tried to seduce both women and men as well, since he had multiple contacts with this circle of aristocrats.

In December 1916, Felix Yusupov approached Rasputin hoping he would "cure him of his illness," but the monk tried to seduce him. Offended by the prince and also influenced by the Duma deputy Vladimir Purishkevich, who feared the dangers that the monk's disastrous influence had on the government of Tsar Nicholas II (the possibility of a separate peace with Germany was rumored), it was decided to plan the murder in his palace.

Rasputin was murdered in the Yusupovs' Moika palace by being tied up and thrown into the Neva River after he refused to die, even though he had been poisoned, shot four times, and beaten with an iron rod.

Exile

Felix Yusúpov and Irina Aleksándrovna, 1915.

Confined to his estate in Kursk for the murder of Rasputin, he was able to return to Petrograd in 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, but the persecution unleashed in 1918 against the Romanovs forced him to leave Russia with his wife and daughter.

When the tsar was assassinated, the Yusupovs returned to the Moika palace before leaving for the Crimea. However, some time later they returned to recover a million dollars in jewelry and two Rembrandt paintings, the only thing they kept from their immense fortune and that helped them survive in exile.

Arriving in the Crimea, the family boarded the British warship HMS Marlborough, which they took from Yalta to Malta. From Malta they went to Italy (where Felix had to bribe with diamonds for the passports) and then to Paris. They settled for a time in London, but then returned to Paris, where they bought a house in Boulogne-sur-Seine.

In Paris, his generosity to Russian exiles became legendary. He wrote an autobiography, titled Lost Splendor.

In 1934, Felix and his wife were awarded £25,000 in damages after winning a lawsuit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the British courts for invasion of privacy and libel. The lawsuit was for the MGM film Rasputin and the Tsarina, from 1932. Years later, in 1965, Yusupov sued the Columbia Broadcasting System in the courts of New York, but this time he lost the lawsuit.

After Yusupov published his Memoirs (in which he detailed Rasputin's death) in 1953, he was sued alongside Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich by Rasputin's daughter Maria in a court of law. court of Paris for $800,000. She accused the princes of murder, but the French court dismissed her claim on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over a political assassination that took place in Russia.

Félix Yusupov died in the city of Paris, France on September 27, 1967, at the age of 80 and was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian cemetery.

Wrote The End of Rasputin (1927) and Memoirs (1953).

Ancestors