After the fall of the Russian monarchy, he was put under house arrest in Petrograd by the provisional government in March 1917, but he managed to escape the former Imperial capital in September that year and joined his mother and younger brother in the Caucasus.

His father, Vladimir Alexandrovich, a brother of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, was a renowned patron of the arts; his mother, Maria Pavlovna, one of the greatest hostesses of Russian society.

[4] The four siblings spent most of their time at their parents villa in Tsarkoe Selo where they had a lot of freedom and were able to visit a park with a pond.

[11] Although loaded with wealth and privilege, Grand Duke Boris found his income insufficient and ran up a huge debt of nearly half a million rubles with his mother.

In 1901, Grand Duke Boris, age twenty five, had a liaison with a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Aumont-Lacroix, and had a son by her, born in Paris.

[6] As there was an unexpected delay in the expedition, he spent the holidays with his aunt Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna and his cousin Victoria Melita in their winter home in Nice.

On 1 August 1902, Grand Duke Boris arrived in San Francisco where he toured the city; attended the opera and went to a boxing match.

The grand duke was favorably impressed with the city's skyline and the modern use of electricity[18] Boris visited President Theodore Roosevelt at his estate Sagamore Hill, on the North Shore of Long Island.

[19] Jovial and increasingly stout, Boris was famous for his wild and unpredictable behavior, but eventually these excesses began to lose their appeal.

Kuropatkin, taking part in combat[22] On the morning of 31 March 1904, while galloping from the heights of Dacha Hill on the rim of Port Arthur, he witnessed the sinking of the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk in which more than 600 men died; his brother Grand Duke Kirill was among the few survivors.

He was made colonel and in April he represented Russia at the Turin World Fair and the Fine Arts Exhibition in Rome during the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Italy's unification.

[22] On 22 June 1911, he represented his cousin Tsar Nicholas II at the coronation of Britain's King George V in Westminster Abbey.

Even during the war Grand Duke Boris gave many parties at his luxurious mansion, furnished in the English style, which at night was a gathering place for the "golden youth" of St. Petersburg.

The grand duke was famous for his hospitality, cheerful disposition, passion for entertainment, gourmet cuisine and excellent wines.

[25] By the summer of 1916, Grand Duke Boris fell in love with Zinaida Sergeievna Rachevskaya (1896–1963), the daughter of Colonel Sergei Alexandrovich Rachevsky, who had died in 1904 commanding the fortifications at Port Arthur.

To get out of his predicament, Boris quickly arranged Zinaida's marriage to Peter Eliseev, a military officer from a prestigious family who accepted the deal in exchange for the grand duke payment of his gambling debts.

[29] This marked the fall of the Russian monarchy and Boris was one of the few members of the Romanov family who went to Mogilev to pay final respects to Tsar Nicholas II.

Disguised, with the help of Englishman Albert Stopford and a caretaker, Boris retrieved the money and jewels from the secret safe in his mother's bedroom.

In September 1917, he joined his mother and younger brother Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich in Kislovodsk, a spa and resort town in the Caucasus.

[35] He lived in a villa with his brother, but their mistresses were placed in separate houses, because Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna would not acknowledge their existence.

[37] For the next year they lived quietly away from danger,[36] but in August 1918 Boris and his brother Andrei were arrested in the night after a systematic search of their villa.

[39] On 26 August 1918, armed with false papers stating they were on a mission for the soviets,[40] Boris and Andrei escaped heading for Kabarda, where the chief Circassian tribe, the Kabards, lived on the north slope of the mountain.

[40] Kislovodsk was captured by the White Army and the Bolsheviks fled in late September, allowing the two brothers to return to the city on 6 October.

[42] Boris and his siblings were reunited in exile in September 1920, at Contrexéville in the south of France, by the death of their mother Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.

With the money from the emeralds, and from an account with an American bank which he had opened prior to the Revolution,[45] Boris bought a chateau, "Sans Souci", in Meudon near Paris, living comfortably with his wife.

[48] His brother, Grand Duke Kirill, wanted to restore the Russian monarchy and in 1924 proclaimed himself czar-in-exile, but Boris was largely uninterested in politics.

During World War II, Boris and Zinaida were at their villa in Biarritz when German troops occupied Paris in June 1940.

At the end of 1942, during the German occupation, they sold their estate in Meudon, and moved to a house in the Rue de la Faisanderie in Paris.

[49] Nonetheless, there was a large turnout for the funeral, held at St Alexander Nevsky Russian-Orthodox Cathedral in Paris, where his body was placed in the crypt.

"If you'd only throw in Harry Thaw, Tod Sloan, Abe Hummel, and Grand Duke Boris it would be really chic, — a real salon!”