Prince Nicholas Felixovich Yusupov was born at the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg in 1883 to Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston and Zinaida Yusupova, the wealthiest heiress in Russia, only ten months after their wedding.

[3] With his first girlfriend Polya, he helped his younger brother perform as a cross-dressing singer in The Aquarium, a café in Saint Petersburg.

Felix remembered: "There was a gap of five years between my brother Nicholas and myself; this at first hampered our intimacy, but by the time I was sixteen we had become fast friends.

"[1]In the summer of 1907, Nicholas and his brother went to Paris where he met the famed courtesan Manon Loti, who he fell in love with.

[4] When he returned to Saint Petersburg, his mother Zinaida pressured him to marry, settle down and secure the family line.

Sometime after, Prince Nicholas met the Countess Marina van der Heyden (1889 - 1974), a new lady-in-waiting to Alexandra Feodorovna.

Countess Marina describes their first meeting in her memoir:“...When we were introduced to each other, the look of Nicholas expressed for a second, a frank admiration, Then he turned away and retired to the back of the room.

His sensual mouth was both ironic and sad.”[6]They soon started an affair, but their mothers objected to it because Marina was already engaged to Count Arvid Viktor Clemens von Manteuffel (1879-1930).

[1] On 22 April 1908, they said goodbye over dinner, and Marina married Count Arvid Ernestovich von Manteuffel the next day in front of 300 guests.

However, only a month later, she wrote to Nicholas: "My dear, dear Nikolai, You know, I thought that I would die when I left you, I cried so much that I could hardly hold a pencil … I love you so much that I won’t bear it if you forget me now …" Nicholas followed Marina to Paris, where she had gone on her honeymoon and the two met secretly at the Hotel Maurice.

"[7] Madame de Thèbes told Felix Yusupov that "a member of my family was in serious danger of dying in a duel.

[1] In his last letter to Marina, Prince Nicholas wrote: "I am not afraid of death, but it’s hard for me to die away from you without seeing you one last time."

She died in Monte Carlo in 1974, having written down her account of the affair which included love letters from and to Nicholas.