He took part in World War I, but was away from real combat, spending most of the conflict at Russia's General Staff headquarters or in idle time in ceremonial positions in Saint Petersburg.

In February 1917, shortly before the fall of the Russian monarchy, Grand Duke Andrei left Saint Petersburg to join his mother in Kislovodsk in the northern Caucasus.

[3] His father, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, a brother of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, was a renowned patron of the arts.

[4] Andrei's mother, Grand Duchess, Maria Pavlovna, née a Princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, was one of the greatest hostesses of Russian society.

[5] Both parents doted on their four surviving children: Andrei, his two eldest brothers, Kirill and Boris, and their younger sister, Grand Duchess Elena.

[8] The children also accompanied their parents in many of their travels abroad to France, Germany and Italy, staying in Coburg, Paris, Berlin and Schwerin.

[14] Kschessinska, the Prima Ballerina Assoluta of the Mariinsky Theatre, was the eldest among the three most prominent dancers of her generation at the Imperial Russian Ballet, along with Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina.

[14] She subsequently began a long time affair with Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia, Nicholas and Andrei's first cousin once removed.

[20] Grand Duke Sergei was devoted to the child, looking after mother and son until his exile and subsequent execution following the fall of the Russian monarchy.

The building, located at 28 English embankment, previously belonged to Baron Pavel von Derviz, a Russian railway magnate of noble German descent.

[21][22] After the Baron's death, his son inherited the mansion, and in 1889, enlisted the architect Alexander Krasovsky (1848–1918), who would work for Nicholas II in the Winter Palace, to remodel it in the Florentine style.

He was an honorary member of the Russian Imperial Fire prevention society and chairman of the committee for the construction of a memorial to Emperor Alexander II in St. Petersburg.

[22] Fearing the onset of tuberculosis, he was sent to recuperate in the Crimea, staying in a palace owned by his cousin Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich.

With the outbreak of World War I, Grand Duke Andrei joined the staff at the headquarters of the Northwestern front fighting against Germany.

[22] By 1916, Grand Duke Andrei joined other members of his family in political intrigues against the Empress who was in charge of the government in Saint Petersburg while Nicholas II was away at Russia's war military headquarters.

[28][29] In December 1916, the Assassination of Rasputin, in which Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Yusupov took part, divided the Romanov family further.

[15][29] As Andrei's ambitious mother intrigued against Empress Alexandra, Nicholas II ordered the Grand Duchess to leave Saint Petersburg for a time.

[29] After a short personal interview with Nicholas II, on 16 January 1917, Grand Duke Andrei left for Kislovodsk, a spa resort town in the Caucasus.

[31] The diaries of Grand Duke Andrei, written while he was in the army in the North-Eastern Front (1914–1915) and in Petrograd (1916–1917), have survived at the State Archives of the Russian Federation.

[34] During the period of the provisional government Grand Duke Andrei, his brother and mother lived mostly undisturbed in Kislovodsk, protected by local Cossacks.

[32] Commissar Leshchinsky, the Bolshevik commander sent to execute them, had once been a struggling artist in Paris before the war whom Boris had assisted by purchasing some of his paintings.

On the evening of 23 September, Grand Duke Andrei, his brother Boris and Colonel Von Kube returned to the city on horseback, accompanied by Kabardian nobles who had protected them.

Andrei asked permission to marry Kchessinska from his brother Grand Duke Kirill and from Empress Maria Feodorovna, widow of Tsar Alexander III, the senior members of the Romanov family; both gave their consent.

[48] Kchessinska, who was of Polish descent, was Catholic, but they were married in a simple ceremony in the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Michael Archangel in Cannes on 30 January 1921.

[49][50] To have cash flow and maintain his standard of living, Andrei sold the jewel collection that he inherited from his mother, and he mortgaged Villa Alam.

[50] Mathilde dissipated their remaining wealth, including her own valuable jewel collection, at the gambling tables of Monte Carlo—the remainder was lost in the crash of 1929.

Her students included some of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time: Margot Fonteyn, Alicia Markova, André Eglevsky, Tatiana Riabouchinska and Tamara Toumanova.

[56] Although uninterested in politics, he continued to actively support a number of organization; he headed the Guard association, the Russian Historical and Genealogical Society in Paris and he was an honorary chairman of the union of Izmaylovsky Regiment.

[57] At the outbreak of World War II, under the threat of a German bombing of Paris, Grand Duke Andrei and his family moved to Le Vésinet.

[65][66] Actor Grigory Dobrygin portrayed Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich in Matilda, a Russian biopic from director Alexei Uchitel released in 2017.