A commander of the Imperial horse Guards, Grand Duke Paul loved his children, but as was customary at the time, he refrained from showing them spontaneous affection.

[4] Growing up without a mother and with a frequently absent father, Grand Duchess Maria and her brother Dimitri became very close, relying on each other for affection and companionship.

[11] The bomber had refrained from an earlier attack because he saw that Grand Duchess Elisabeth, 15-year-old Maria, and her younger brother Dmitri were in the carriage, and he did not want to kill women and children.

Planning to retire from court and to form a religious order, Grand Duchess Elisabeth decided to find a husband for her niece, along with the help of her cousin, Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden.

Shortly after Easter 1907, Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, the second son of King Gustav V of Sweden and Victoria of Baden, visited St Petersburg, and he was introduced to the 16-year-old Maria Pavlovna.

Pressed by her aunt to give a speedy answer, Maria agreed to the prince's proposal and found herself engaged to a man she had known for only few hours.

[17] From Peterhof, Maria Pavlovna went to Grand Duchess Elisabeth's rural estate Ilinskoe, near Moscow, where Wilhelm joined them for a month before he left on a cruise to the United States.

[19] In her book of memoirs, written more than 20 years later, the grand duchess made different claims: "I was using Wilhelm, in a sense, only to obtain my freedom".

[20] As the wedding day approached, she began to have doubts and wished to break off the engagement, but Princess Irene of Hesse, who was visiting her sister Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, persuaded her otherwise.

[24] He was Prince Lennart, Duke of Småland, later Count of Wisborg (1909–2004) In the autumn of 1910, Maria Pavlovna moved with her husband and their son to Oak Hill, a house she had built for herself outside Stockholm.

[25] Maria went hunting, attended horse races, practiced winter sports and even played field hockey on her sister-in-law, Crown Princess Margaret's team.

[25] Maria occasionally played with her son, who remembered sitting on her lap when they slid down a flight of steps on a large silver tray.

[29] When she returned to Stockholm, doctors alleged (falsely as it turned out) that Maria Pavlovna had a serious kidney ailment, and she was sent to Capri to recuperate in the winter 1913–1914.

[31] Decades later, she described the horror she had felt toward the Swedish royal family because of their unlimited support of Munthe as the main reason she fled them and filed for divorce from Prince Wilhelm.

"Relatives in both Russia and Sweden viewed a divorce as unavoidable, and on 13 March 1914, her marriage officially was dissolved, an action then confirmed by an edict issued by Nicholas II on 15 July 1914.

With Princess Helen of Serbia, the grand duchess was sent to the northern front, at Instenburg in East Prussia, under command of General Paul von Rennenkampf.

"[39] Maria signed a letter along with other members of the Imperial family, begging Nicholas II to reverse his decision to exile Dmitri to the Persian front.

[42] With her husband and her brother-in-law Prince Alexander Putyatin (1897-1954), Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna left Tsarkoie Selo in late July.

[41][42] Without traveling documents and fearing to be arrested at any stop, Maria Pavlovna, her husband and brother-in-law made their way by train during two nights and a day.

[41][45] After reaching Kishinev, Moldavia, they received an invitation from Queen Marie of Romania, Maria's first cousin, who had used Joseph W. Boyle to track them and bring them to safety.

[48] A couple of weeks later, she received the news that her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and half-brother Prince Vladimir Paley had been murdered with several other Romanov relatives in the summer 1918.

I knew the approximate price of jewels and dresses, but did not have the vaguest idea how much bread, meat and milk cost", she recalled in her book of memoirs.

[50] While in Paris in 1919, the grand duchess received a letter from her husband's parents telling her that one-year-old Roman had died of an intestinal disorder on 29 July.

[60] While she devoted all her energies to her work, Putyatin preferred to spend his time in the company of Russian officers, fast living and squandering money.

[63] Having suffered a defeat, but not surrendering, the grand duchess moved to London in the spring 1928 where she started selling Prince Igor, her own perfume, following in the footsteps of Chanel No.

[65] She then returned to Paris, sold her house in Boulogne, bade farewell to her stepmother and half-sisters, and in August 1929, sailed from Marseilles to the United States.

[55] They bonded over their shared interest in photography, and she got along with his wife, even though the grand duchess had been disappointed when her son renounced his royal status in order to marry a commoner in 1932.

[65] After 12 years living in the United States, she moved to Argentina with the intention of creating a line of cosmetics with friend Countess Elisabeth de Brunière, née Saroukhanoff, a Russian émigré who worked for Elizabeth Arden in Buenos Aires.

[64][70][71] In Argentina, Maria Pavlovna rented a small house with a garden in the Barrio Norte in Buenos Aires and devoted her spare time to painting, even managing to sell several of her works.

During the 1950s, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna stayed with friends or appeared unexpectedly in Mainau in the house of her son Lennart with her camera, easel and paints.