[2] Kschessinskaya was born at Ligovo, near Peterhof, the youngest child of Adam-Felix Kschessinsky (Polish: Adam Feliks Krzesiński) and Julie Kschessinska.

Her Polish father arrived in St. Petersburg on 30 January 1853, one of five Warsaw mazurka dancers invited by the tsar, where he performed in the Mariinsky Theatre.

Kschessinskaya's graduation exam dance was the pas de deux from La Fille Mal Gardée, to the music of Stella Confidenta.

The maestro Marius Petipa did not consent to Kschessinskaya receiving such a title and although she possessed an extraordinary gift as a dancer, she obtained it primarily via her influence at the Imperial Russian Court.

However, Wolkonsky was forced to send in his resignation after clashing with Kschessinskaya when she refused to wear the panniers of an 18th-century costume in the ballet La Camargo.

The relationship continued for three years, until Nicholas married the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in 1894, shortly after the death of his father, Alexander III.

He considered it his duty to remain in Russia, even and especially after the Revolution, and would never leave his native land; he thus paid with his own life and the lives of his family for his faith in the Russian people.

"[3]: 21, 35–42 Scandals and rumours around her name developed and persisted as she engaged in a sexual relationship with two Grand Dukes of the Romanov family: Sergei Mikhailovich and his cousin Andrei Vladimirovich.

"[3]: 70–74 While Kschessinskaya could be charming and kind to colleagues, such as the young Tamara Karsavina, she was not afraid to use her connections with the tsar to strengthen her position in the Imperial Theatres.

She was known to sew valuable jewels into her costumes and came on stage as the Princess Aspicia in The Pharaoh's Daughter wearing her diamond encrusted tiaras and chokers.

[7] Another notorious incident occurred in 1906 when Kschessinskaya's coveted role of Lise in the Petipa/Ivanov production of La Fille Mal Gardée was given to Olga Preobrajenska.

[8] She claims in her memoirs that they turned it into a kind of pigsty; she went to court to recover it, only to receive death threats; once when she passed near the house, she saw Alexandra Kollontai in the garden wearing one of her overcoats.

Her home occupied by the Bolsheviks, Kschessinska wrote "And Petrograd was a nightmare world of arrests, the assassination of officers in the streets, arson, pillage".

Her students included Tatiana Riabouchinska, Pearl Argyle, Andrée Howard, June Brae, Margot Fonteyn, Pamela May, Harold Turner, and Diana Gould.