June 1914: The Imperial yacht of the Romanovs, escorted by several units of the Russian Navy, departs Odessa to cross the Black Sea.
Upon arrival at the Romanian port of Constanta, Czar Nicholas and his family are greeted effusively by King Ferdinand and Queen Marie. Marie and the Tsarina Alexandra are first cousins; like George V of England and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, they are grandchildren of Queen Victoria.
Ostensibly this is a friendly visit between cousins who happen to rule over -- ahem -- friendly neighboring states. In fact there is another agenda. Marie would very much like to marry off her erratic eldest son Carol, Romania's Crown Prince. Carol is 21 years old; a spoiled and sulky youth, he is growing into an intelligent but extraordinarily self-indulgent young man.
Marie wantsCarol to marry the Grand Duchess Olga Romanov. The oldest daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, Olga is 19 years old that summer. (1) Like mothers since the beginning of time, Marie hopes that marriage will steady her difficult son; unlike most mothers, she is a queen, and there are also dynastic considerations. Czar Nicholas has only one son, and the prince is a feeble hemophiliac. Nicholas and Alexandra are both in their forties and unlikely to produce additional children; the prince, their youngest child, is already ten years old.
If Carol marries Olga and the union proves fertile, their son could be second in line for the throne of Russia. (2) (Could. On one hand, the Romanovs did not accept Salic descent. On the other, the formal rules of descent were subject to being overruled by the Tsar, and both the next male heirs after the Crown Prince had major problems.) So Marie could conceivably find herself, not only Queen of Romania, but grandmother of the next Tsar of Russia.
So. The royal yacht arriveds, the families greet each other. There is a lunch, a reception, a marvellous dinner, a ball, and...
...and: nothing. Carol had decided to have one of his moods. He was sarcastic and unpleasant. Olga was at first nonplussed, then distant and withdrawn. The crown prince and the Grand Duchess were given numerous opportunities to spend time together. It was hopeless. Olga made some stilted small talk, Carol smirked, and then they ignored each other.
The Romanovs were mildly disappointed; Marie, almost frantically so. But there was no getting around it. The Romanovs got back onto their yacht and sailed home. Just a few weeks later, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo.
All this is what happened OTL. So the POD, obviously: Carol decides that being a Grand Duke (in addition to being King of Romania, of course) might be amusing.
After all, it will get him out from under his imperious mother. And it's not as if he can't continue his various extracurricular activities; Nicholas may be a prudish old stick, but the Romanovs generally have not been noted for restraint and decorum. And spending an Imperial dowry is sure to be good fun.
So Carol sets out to charm the Grand Duchess. It's universally agreed that he could charm when he wanted to. Olga is thawed by his advances, and one thing leads to another.
Royal courtships could drag on for years back then, but I suspect that the outbreak of war, plus the driving personality of Queen Marie, would close the deal fairly quickly. So the royal couple are married at Christmastime of that year.
Now. Assume for argument's sake that one royal marriage is not enough to derail WWI. For the next four years, things go much as iOTL. Romania joins the war and is swiftly defeated. Russia collapses into Revolution and civil war.
But when the rest of the royal family goes to Ekaterinburg, Olga will be safe in Bucharest.
Assume that the union proves fertile. (3) There's a 50% chance that Olga is carrying the hemophilia gene on one of her X chromosomes, meaning a 25% chance that a son would inherit it. [flips coin] Nope, she's clean. So by 1920 there's probably a little Hohenzollern - Saxe-Coburg - Romanov prince or two.
In the long run, the marriage is likely to prove difficult, if not outright hellish. Surviving accounts describe Olga as intelligent and brave, but also furiously hot tempered. She's not likely to get along well with the feckless, self-indulgent and cowardly Carol. He, in turn, is just the sort who'd begin treating her badly once her family was out of the picture. A royal divorce is by no means out of the question -- after all, Carol divorced Princess Helen of Greece OTL.
Okay, now what?
-- Romania may become a major center for White Russian emigration and activity. (This does nothing for Romanian relations with the new USSR, not that these were great OTL.) Instead of being spread widely and thinly from Manchuria to Edinburgh, Whites may gather in Bucharest. Any results from this?
-- Will the existence of a Romanov heir have any significant effect on interwar politics in Europe? On the Soviet Union? Recognizing the USSR means rejecting the claims of Olga's children; how hard would this be for, say, Great Britain to do?
-- Marie, one suspects, would throw herself quite strongly into the role of Protector of the Last Romanovs. It's entirely possible that she allies with her daughter-in-law against her wretched son; they're cousins, after all, and there's a certain similarity of temperament. Marie-Carol relations may deteriorate even faster than iOTL, with possible odd internal effects on Romania.
-- Assume that WWII plays out much as iOTL. OTL young Prince Mihai, Carol's teenage son, waited out the Soviet invasion and tried to keep a coalition government going until 1947. TTL, Olga and her children will certainly flee if they can. Where, and what effect might this have?
-- Finally, assume for argument's sake that Olga's son is generally accepted as a legitimate Romanov heir. (Perhaps Czar Nicholas names him as such, either instead of or in addition to Duke Michael.) I don't for a moment think that a Romanov restoration after 1991 is likely, but would his existence have any other impact on post-Soviet Russia?
There's more, but that should do for now. Thoughts?
Doug M.
(1)
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/gds.html.
Olga is thought to have been the most intelligent of the Romanov princesses, but also the hottest-tempered.
(2) Officially, the Romanovs followed the Pauline Law of 1796, which insisted on strict male primogeniture. But Peter III, among others, inherited the crown from his grandfather through his mother. And the Orthodox Church did not insist on strict male primogeniture; and then OTL, Nicholas would violate the Pauline Law by appointing his younger brother, the Grand Duke Michael, as heir even though son Alexy was still alive.
(3) It probably would. Olga came from a family of five children, and Carol one of six, and OTL Carol was certainly fertile.
There is the issue that they're second cousins... actually somewhat closer than that, because their mutual great-grandparents, Victoria and Albert, were also first cousins to each other. (Phew.) But the relationship probably wasn't too close to affect cofertility.