Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley was the granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II and first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. Born in 1905 in Paris, her exiled family moved back to Russia just a few years before the revolution. After the Tsar abdicated in 1916, the Paleys were placed under house arrest, and Natalia's brother Vladimir was arrested. Vladimir was executed the day after the Tsar and his immediate family were shot in 1918. Her father was arrested and killed later. Meanwhile, Natalia and her sister Irina escaped, riding a cattle car, then a horse-drawn sleigh, then walking the last miles to the Finnish border. Their mother joined them the next month.
Natalie Paley moved from Finland to Sweden to France, where she married a French fashion designer and became a model, then moved to the US to become a Hollywood actress. Read up on the adventurous life of this Russian princess at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company
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