It had been suggested to me back in 1993 that my son looked very much like the Tsarevich
It had been suggested to me, back in 1993, that my son looked very much like the Tsarevich. But I wasn't going to indulge in any flights of fancy about any of that There were other indications I was told that I had his mannerisms But I tried to be rational It wasn't easy. So when did it get personal? When did he link Alexei to himself? It is, he says, complicated In 1995, three things occurred The first is that he lost his job. Nikolai Chebotarev lived in Paris, Ireland and England and worked as a private secretary and UN diplomat. He died in 1987 and is buried in Holt in Norfolk.It seemed necessary to get back to the man in front of me.
This was that Alexei was flown down to the Caucasus and given a new identity as Nikolai Chebotarev. In 1918 he escaped by ship to the West, settling finally in the British Isles. He had a love affair with Princess Marina, the widow of the Duke of Kent and mother of the present Duke, and they had a son in 1947 or 1948. Obviously I couldn't miss that allusion."For two years, he pieced bits of the tale together. Eventually, he became convinced that the prince was really Alexei Romanov, the only son of the last tsar. Nicholas II and his wife and children had been murdered by Bolshevik guards 80 years ago, but Alexei's body had never been found. Over the years, mystery and myth have intertwined into a thousand theories and now another one was forming.
"We went back to my office for coffee and my agenda was to get finished as quickly as possible," he says. "He started up out of the blue about this mysterious Russian prince who lived during the last war at a large country house a few miles away He also mentioned that this prince was a haemophiliac. His story is extraordinary and all the more so because his previous life was invented for the word humdrum. He was brought up an only child just outside the village of Waringstown in Northern Ireland. He did a degree in history, got married, had two children and became a college principal.
Then, on 27 April 1993, he had lunch with a local museum curator. I think that's actually what it really is anyway."Given the circumstances, it seemed wise to avoid calling him any name at all. And if the Scots chose him as their king? Alexander IV, he said.The tsar turns out to have at least three names. He was born and brought up William Lloyd Lavery - his wife and friends call him Lloyd. He wrote the book under the name Michael Gray, which he plucked out of a hat But now he wants to claim his true identity "I should change my name My birth certificate is forged, anyway," he says His last name will be Romanov And the first name? "Michael," he says "Michael Romanov. He produced it and the name on his cheques is indeed HRH Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart of Albany.
Now I had been through a bit of this earlier in the week with the king who bridled at the idea, spread by the ignorant press, that his real name was Roger His name was Prince Michael of Albany, he said I asked to see his cheque book. The editorial director warned us that it is a complicated story. This is not true - it is an extremely and impossibly complicated story.Even the tsar's name is a problem, in that he doesn't seem to know exactly what it is. A TV documentary crew was on hand, as were the nation's press. That is vastly different."The tsar, on the other hand, has only just discovered his royal links.