Russian aristocrat and murderer Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was BOTD in 1891. Born in Moscow in the Russian Empire, he was the only son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich and Duchess Alexandra Georgievna. His mother died while giving birth prematurely to him, and he and his sister spent their early years in the household of his uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. In 1905, Dmitri’s father had an affair with and later married a commoner, and was banished from Royal circles. Duke Sergei was assassinated later that year, and Dmtri and his sister were raised in the Royal household, becoming a surrogate son to his cousin Tsar Nicholas II. Groomed for a military career, Dmitri graduated from the Nikolaevskoe Cavalry College, and took a commission in the Horse Guards Regiment. He became a talented equestrian, competing in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. During World War One, he served with the Life Guard Horse Regiment. Despatched to the East Prussian front, he was awarded the Order of St George for bravery during battle. Returning to Russia, he embraced a life of hedonism, spending his uncle’s inheritance, partying at his palaces in St Petersburg and Moscow, and becoming the lover of his cousin Prince Felix Yusupov. In 1916, they joined a conspiracy to assassinate the faith-healer Grigori Rasputin, whose influence over the Tsar’s family and Russian military policy had become a national scandal. Shortly before Christmas, they invited Rasputin to a party at the Moika Palace, poisoning and shooting him before dumping his body in the Nevka River. According to legend, they also castrated him, keeping his (enormous) penis as a trophy. Dmitri and Yusupov were sentenced to house arrest, but never brought to trial. Dmitri was banished from the Royal court and sent to the Persian war front, where he was welcomed as a national hero. He served for two months in 1st Caucasus Cossack Corps, until Nicholas’ abdication in 1917. Declining an offer from the Provisional Government to return to Russia, he fled to British-controlled Tehran. With the assistance of British diplomat Sir Charles Marling, Pavlovich immigrated to England in 1919. Reunited with his aunt Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna, who provided him with the proceeds of the sale of his St Petersburg Palace, he settled comfortably in London. The dismal weather, and refusal of the British Royal family to grant him an audience, prompted him to move to Paris in 1920. Quickly burning through his inheritance, he took a job with a Champagne manufacturer, and became a noted socialite, having affairs with opera singer Marthe Davelli and fashion designer Coco Chanel. (Davelli is reported to have told Chanel, “You take him; he is too expensive for me.”) In 1926, he married the American heiress Audrey Emery, with whom he had a son, settling in the south of France. Briefly considered as a candidate to for the Russian throne, he expressed disinterest in politics, supporting the campaign of his cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. In 1928, Yusupov published a sensationalised version of the murder of Rasputin; an infuriated Dmitri ended their friendship. After showing initial support for Russian nationalist causes, he became increasingly horrified at the rise of Fascism, publicly denouncing the Nazis and refusing Hitler’s invitation to lead exiled Russian nobles within the German army against the Bolsheviks. At the outbreak of World War Two, he retired to a sanitorium in Switzerland, dying there in 1942, aged 50.