Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia before World War I broke out, Grand Duchess Anastasia visited her brother, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia, and his family in England. When many eagerly greeted the outbreak of war, after the Austrian ultimatum, she wrote to Tsar Nicholas II: ""I hope that the war will not happen and that we even can say ‘perhaps in a few days, we’ll all be together again'"". The conflict split her family. Her son was a reigning prince in Germany and her younger daughter was the Kaiser's daughter in law. On the opposite side, her brothers in Russia were fighting to defeat
Princess Marina Petrovna of Russia Princess Marina Petrovna of Russia Princess Marina Petrovna of Russia (11 March 1892 – 15 May 1981) was a daughter of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia and his wife, Grand Duchess Militza Nicholaevna, born Princess of Montenegro. A great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, she was born in Nice and grew up in the last period of Imperial Russia, mostly in Znamenka, her father's summer palace near Peterhof. Princess Marina was a gifted artist, showing talent for drawing and painting. She studied painting first with a teacher from the senior school in Yalta and then in St Petersburg