Grand Duke Of Russia Vyacheslav

Diagnoses

Personal

Notable

Romanov grand duke and the youngest son of Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaevich of Russia and his wife Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna. The English form of his first name is Wenceslas. Vyacheslav, who was nicknamed "Slava," was the baby of the family and a family favourite. He was tall and used to joke that, when he was dead, his coffin would be stuck in a doorway of the Marble Palace. This really happened after he died on 27 February 1879 in Saint Petersburg. At age sixteen, he complained suddenly of a splitting headache and violent illness. He lay with a Russian Orthodox icon on his pillow as his family surrounded him, urging him to breathe. He died within a week of brain inflammation. His mother later reported that she had seen the ghost of a white lady in the art gallery at Pavlovsk on the day before Vyacheslav became ill. She took the apparition as a portent of death. His brother Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia later recalled, as he walked in Vyacheslav's funeral procession, how much Vyacheslav enjoyed drawing funeral processions in great detail. Link to Wikipedia biography