Most royal children were brought up by nannies and servants so by the time Nikolai had grown up he lived a very independent life having become a gifted military officer and an incorrigible womanizer.

On December 11, 1874, the young Grand Duke was formally declared by a decree of the Emperor to be insane and incapacitated, the only Romanov dynast ever to be so, and his property was put under guardianship.

For a short period he was exiled to Orenburg and ultimately further to the newly conquered city of Tashkent in Central Asia where Nicholas lived until his death.

[1] Blackford, who was forced by the police to leave Russia immediately, later wrote about the affair in her book "Roman d'une Americaine en Russie" under the pseudonym Fanny Lear.

He lived to see the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, at which time he was eighth in the line of succession, never formally removed despite his alleged mental incapacity.

The February Revolution of 1917 set him free, and the former Grand Duke visited Saint Petersburg for the first time in 43 years, but soon returned to Tashkent, suffering with asthma.