He was two weeks old when he was enrolled in a military unit that was named after him: the 153rd Infantry Vakusnkii Regiment of HIH Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich.

[2] Sergei Mikhailovich was tall, reaching six-foot three,[1] and was the only among Grand Duke Michael Nicholaievich's children to inherit father's blue eyes and blond hair.

[5] Widely considered rude and moody, he was at the same time sincere, affectionate, loved simplicity and was easily accessible without class distinction.

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich was, unlike his brothers, interested in mathematics and physics, which coincided with his fondness for artillery.

[4] His only artistic inclination was choral singing, and he formed an amateur chorus of more than sixty voices, including some professional singers.

Beside his Grand Ducal allowance of 200,000 roubles a year, he received the income from vast personal states, which include a hunting lodge 60 miles (97 km) from St Petersburg.

He remained a bachelor, living in the household of his father, and later with his eldest brother on the Neva: the new Michaelovsky Palace in St Petersburg.

The halls and corridors were so vast that Sergei used a bicycle to visit his brothers Grand Dukes George and Nicholas Mikhailovich who lived in other wings of the large Palace.

When Nicholas II, then the Tsarevich, broke off with his mistress, the famous ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, he asked Sergei to take care of her.

The child, who became known within the family by his nickname Vova, received the name and patronymic of Vladimir Sergeivich, although no surname was made public until 1911.

Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich also had a relationship with Countess Barbara Vorontzova-Daskova, née Orlova (1870, Paris -1915, Petrograd), the widow of Count Ivan Illarionovitch Vorontzov-Daskov (1866–1897).

Alexander (1908, Switzerland – 1979, New York) was adopted by a friend of his mother, Sophia Vladimirovna Dehn, whose grandmother was a daughter of Tsar Nicholas I.

[11] After visits to Austria[12] and Germany in 1913 Sergei Mikhailovich reported to the Government of the feverish work of military factories of the central European powers, but his warning about an imminent war was not heeded by the Russian ministers.

[13][14] In the summer of 1914 just before the outbreak of World War I, Grand Duke Sergei was traveling near Lake Baikal when he fell ill with rheumatic fever in Chita.

A special commission launched an investigation on the matter and in January 1916, Grand Duke Sergei had to resign as head of the artillery department.

[14] He was increasingly pessimistic about the outcome of the war for Russia but he could not assert any influence over Nicholas II who only trusted his wife Alexandra Feodorova who disliked Sergei Mikhailovich and had listed him among her enemies.

The scandal over the bribes did not die down in the last period of Imperial Russia and Grand Duke Sergei spent nearly all his time at Stavka.

However, after twenty-two years of having a substitute of a family life with his mistress, he resisted pressure from his brother to break off all relations with Mathilde and her son.

He remained in the former Imperial capital during the period of the constitutional government, living with his brother Nicholas Mikhailovich in the New Michaelovsky Palace.

[21] After the successful Bolshevik coup of November 1917, the Petrograd newspapers published a decree summoning all male Romanovs to report to the dreaded Cheka, the secret police.

On 30 April, Grand Duke Sergei, his secretary, and the other Romanovs with them were transferred to Yekaterinburg by order of the Ural Regional Soviet.

[23] Although the captives were under the strict guard of the Red Army soldiers, they were allowed to walk in town, to talk to people and to go to church on feasts days.

[24] Preparing to spend a long time in Alapayevsk, they planted flowers and vegetable gardens near the school and spent many hours working there.

There exists an eyewitness account of the murders of the Romanov group in Alapayevsk, related by one of the local Bolsheviks, Vasisili Ryabov.

We entered through the unlocked door into the building where the women were sleeping, and woke them up, telling them quietly to get dressed at once, as they were to be taken to a safe place because of the possibility of an armed attack.

The White Army investigators had no medical or dental records, and eleven weeks in the mine had substantially altered the victims' physical appearance.

It contained her portrait; a ten kopek piece minted in 1869, the year of Sergei's birth, and was engraved with the words: 21 August Mala – 25 September.

[30] There was a funeral service for them on 19 October when the coffins were placed in the crypt of the cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Alapayevsk where they remained until July 1919.

The government of the USSR did not have any interest in the preservation of the Russian cemetery in Beijing and in the late 1980s the Chinese authorities converted it into a park.

[30] After the Communist regime collapsed, the mineshaft where the Grand Duke was killed with his relatives became a site of religious pilgrimage and an Orthodox chapel was built there.