Archduke Alexander to marry in September

@Alexander Habsburg

Archduke Alexander of Austria is engaged to marry Miss Natacha Roumiantzeff-Pachkevitch, daughter of Nicolas Pierre Roumiantzeff-Pachkevitch and Maria Meeuwissen, who was born in the Netherlands. 

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The fourth of five children of Archduke Carl Christian of Austria and Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg, Alexander Hector Marie Karl Leopold Marcus d'Aviano was born in Meyrin, Switzerland, on September 26, 1990.

Alexander is the last of five children to marry.

The couple was first introduced several years ago at Le Bal du Leman in Switzerland.

Numerous sources have referred to the bride-to-be as a countess.  She is not a countess. Her paternal family are not members of Russian noble families.

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 The last count Rumiantsevs  (Roumiantzoff)  died in 1838 with no male heirs.   Natacha's family uses a double-barreled surname including Pachkevich.  The Russian princely/countly title Paskevichs (with an S, not a C) is also extinct.

Several genealogists with access to Russian and French sources and documents have been doing their due diligence on a royalty forum that I joined many years ago.  It should be noted that Russian nobility titles extinct and extant are well-documented.  I am grateful for their superb research.  

It is plausible that the family history was created by Natacha's paternal grandfather Nicolas Roumiantzoff.  According to his memoir, Le Roum: le spahi of General de Gaulle, Nicolas writes that he was born on May 9, 1906 (Gregorian calendar) at Yankova, the family estate near Kyiv.  He said he was the son of "Count Alexander Petrovich Roumiantzoff Zadounaïsky Pashkevitch", and "Princess Hélène Vladimirovna Belskaya.   His father allegedly served as "captain of cavalry in the regiment of cuirassiers of the guard." 

According to his memoirs, Nicolas' baptism took place at the Kyiv Cathedral on December 6, 1906, in the presence of his godparents, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich and Grand Duchess Helen Vladimirova of Russia.   Helen could not have been present at the baptism as her third daughter, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, was born a week later in Athens.

Nicolas' mother died when he was young.  His father was killed during the Second Balkan War in 1913.  Nicolas wrote that his father, a general, died on the "field of honor."

After the start of the Russian Revolution, Nicolas and his grandmother fled to France and stayed with "distant Breton cousins," the Budes de Guébriant family, at their chateau in Brittany.

On October 30, 1947, Nicolas married in Paris to Pierette Adrienne Naudi (1918-2008).  

The surname Roumiantzeff-Pachkevitch has been used by the family since (at least) Nicolas became an adult. His French naturalization papers, marriage, and death registrations use the double surname.  He died at Val-de-Grâce, Paris on April 15, 1988.  

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 Natacha's title may be spurious, but one thing is certain, her grandfather was a war hero, a Compagnon de la Libération (1943), during the Second World War.  He served with Charles de Gaulle.

She has a dual bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing from the ISG Institut Supérieur de Gestion in Paris and an MBA from St Thomas Aquinas College in New York City.  

She worked as an events planner at the United Nations in New York for two years before returning to Europe.  Natacha is now an Executive Associate with FGP Swiss & Alps - Forbes Global Properties.

Alexander earned a BA in Practical Filmmaking from the Met Film School in London.  He later attended SOAS, University of London School where he received a diploma in Communicative Arabic and Media.  IN 2021 he finished an Executive master's degree in international Negotiation & Policy Making.  For the past two years, he has been working in Geneva at Gadd & Cie, S.A., as the Head of Distribution & Sales.

Natacha and her siblings were raised with a family history "embellished" by her grandfather, Nicolas.  The story is similar to the one concocted by Vjekoslav Nikola Antun Doimi de Lupis who in 1991 changed his surname to Louis Doimi de Frankopan Šubić Zrinski. He claimed he was a member of the Frankopan family, a princely family in Croatia.  The Frankopan family was extinct in the male in 1671.  

Louis' daughter Paola is married to Lord Nicholas Windsor.

 

https://www.forbesglobalproperties.com/members/fgp-swiss-alps

 https://www.ordredelaliberation.fr/fr/compagnons/nicolas-roumiantzoff

https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2020013816.html