Princess Vera Constantinovna; Descendant of Czar

Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia, 94, great-granddaughter of Czar Nicholas I. Constantinovna had lived in New York since 1951 and worked for charitable organizations, including the Tolstoy Foundation. She was active in the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile, which was formed by members of the Romanoff royal family and their supporters who fled Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Constantinovna, the youngest of nine children of Grand Duke Constantine and Princess Elisabeth of Saxen-Altenburg, escaped to Sweden with her mother and a brother in 1918. After that, she remained a stateless refugee, never taking any foreign citizenship. Her great-grandfather Czar Nicholas I ruled Russia from 1825 to 1855. According to the Romanoff Family Laws of Succession, Constantinovna theoretically inherited the legitimate claim to the Russian throne in 1989. On Jan. 11 in Valley Cottage, N.Y.