Maurice Paléologue

[1] He and his siblings were later adopted by Zoe Văcărescu, Elisabeta's mother, who gave the children her Greek maiden name Paleologu.

[2] After graduating in law, Paléologue obtained a position with the French Foreign Ministry in 1880 and moved on to become Embassy Secretary at Tangiers in the Sultanate of Morocco and then in Beijing (China) and later in Italy.

There is agreement that he failed to inform Paris of exactly what was happening and the implications of the Russian mobilisation in launching a world war.

In January 1917 he warned Tsar Nicholas II of Russia that a government should be established that should enjoy the confidence of the Duma.

He also wrote several works on the history of Russia in the wake of World War I that included an intimate portrait of the last tsaritsa, Alexandra Fyodorovna.