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
Ivan V of Russia supreme ruler and Tsar of all of Russia. The struggle for power within the family had finally ended, and Peter was left to bring Russia into a new age of westernization. In 1730, more than 30 years after Ivan's death, his second surviving daughter Anna, Duchess of Courland was invited to the throne of Russia by the country's privy council. She ruled for more than 10 years, and was succeeded by Ivan's infant great-grandson Ivan VI, but a palace coup engineered in 1741, by Ivan's niece Elizabeth, resulted in the throne passing finally to the progeny of Peter the Great.