He escaped the fate of many of his relatives that were killed by the Bolsheviks by fleeing to his parents' estate in Crimea, where he was under house arrest with a large group of family members and got married after a couple of years.

At Biarritz, he joined his great uncle King Edward VII of the United Kingdom at the Palace Hotel.

Prince Andrei joined the Russian navy and served under his father Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia.

Just before the Russian revolution, he was the only member of his family to accompany the Empress Alexandra and her four daughters on their last visit to the churches of Novgorod.

[5] At the fall of the Russian monarchy with the February Revolution in 1917, Prince Andrei moved with his siblings and their parents to his father's property in Crimea, Ai-Todor.

She was a daughter of Fabrizio Ruffo, Duke of Sasso-Ruffo, and Princess Natalia Alexandrovna Mescherskaya (a descendant of a famous family of the Stroganovs), and distantly related to the Romanovs.

[4] During this time they could not contact Prince Andrei's uncle, the last reigning Emperor, Nicholas II of Russia, who was being held in captivity in internal exile.

For a time Prince Andrei was imprisoned along with his parents, grandmother the Dowager Empress, and a large number of other Romanov relatives, at Dulber, a palace in Crimea that belonged to Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia.

In December 1918, Prince Andrei left Russia with his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, and his father, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich aboard the Royal Navy ship HMS Marlborough in order to attend the Paris Peace Conference.

For a time he lived in the French Riviera in a property that belonged to his aunt Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia.

They later moved to Hampton Court, where his mother Grand Duchess Xenia had a grace-and-favour residence named Wilderness House.

They were living there during World War II when Elisabetta, already near death from cancer, died following an air raid in October 1940.

[4] Over the years he came to enjoy his role as an English country squire, opening church fetes and sporting charitable causes, particularly in the village where he lived.

His nephew, the Marquess of Milford Haven, appointed him as president of the Chaine des Rotisseurs for London and the Home Counties.