Gabriel and his brother Prince Ivan, born a year earlier, were the first to suffer the effects of the reforms of Emperor Alexander III, his father's cousin, who decreed that in the name of economizing the state budget, only the children and grandchildren of the reigning sovereign would bear the title of grand duke.

[1] Gabriel was three days old when Tsar Alexander III issued a manifesto announcing his title as a Prince of the Imperial Blood with the style of Highness.

[2] Grand dukes received 280,000 gold rubles annually from the imperial treasury, which guaranteed a comfortable life.

His father, a respected poet, was a first cousin once removed of Tsar Nicholas II, and one of the wealthiest members of the Romanov family.

[4] Their health improved in the temperate climate, and the boys enjoyed their time spent on the beaches and in short tours around the peninsula.

[4] Gabriel was brought up strictly; he and his siblings were taught to speak pure Russian without a mixture of foreign phrases, and they had to memorize prayers.

[1] The best writers and musicians were invited to Pavlovsk and the Marble Palace, and Grand Duke Konstantin devised a programme of lectures for his children, providing a good education for them.

On 19 January 1908 Gabriel Constantinovich took his oath of allegiance to Nicholas II in a ceremony held in the church of the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.

[1] Unlike his serious and reserved brothers, Gabriel was much more social, and began to associate with an aristocratic crowd considered fast by the standards of the day.

[7] He appealed to his aunt, Olga, Queen of the Hellenes, to intercede on his behalf, and she went to see Nicholas II requesting permission for his nephew to marry, but the emperor flatly refused.

[7] Through the twists and turns of the years that followed, Prince Gabriel remained passionate in his devotion to the dancer, determined that one day he would overcome the obstacles and marry her.

The two lived together for a long time, and in 1916 Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, seeing the sincerity of their feelings, decided to help them get married even though it was considered a misalliance.

After the overthrow of the Russian monarchy in the February Revolution of 1917, Prince Gabriel asked his mother for permission to marry Antonina Nesterovskaya, but she did not give him her consent.

A morganatic union would have never been allowed under the reign of Nicholas II and Gabriel kept his marriage secret from both his mother and his uncle Dimitri Konstantinovich, who only later learned of the wedding.

Gabriel had asked his cousin Prince Alexander of Leuchtenberg (who himself intended to marry morganatically), to find a priest to bless the wedding secretly.

[9] After the successful Bolshevik coup of November 1917, the Petrograd newspapers published a decree summoning all male Romanovs to report to the Cheka, the secret police.

[10] Until the last, Gabriel recalled, Dimitri was the cheerful favorite uncle of his childhood, telling him jokes, attempting to raise the spirits, and bribing prison guards to carry hopeful messages to his nephew's cell.

In the early hours of 28 January 1919, his relatives at Shpalernaya prison were executed by firing squad at the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Their circle included the renowned Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka, who painted a famous portrait of Gabriel in 1927.

[13] Antonina, having considered then rejected the idea of opening a ballet school, instead turned to the world of couture, and established her own fashion house.

[13] When Antonina received important or wealthy clients, especially American millionaires, they were quickly whisked to a salon where, surrounded by the trappings of imperial Russia, they were entertained by Gabriel Constantinovich himself, who seemed to relish the experience.

[14] Visitors later recalled that the prince frequently spent hours with them, often lecturing them on members of the extended family and using his photographs and paintings as visual aids to a vanished era.

In Paris, they often mingled with other Russian émigrés, including Prince Felix Yussupov, and his wife, Princess Irina Alexandrovna, and Grand Duke Andrew Vladimirovich, by then married to Mathilde Kschessinskaya.