Russian Royalty. He was a son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia and Grand Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a grandson of Tsar Alexander II and a first cousin of Nicholas II, Russia's last Tsar. He followed a career in the Russian navy serving for twenty years in the Naval Guards. He saw action in the Russo-Japanese War, barely surviving the sinking of the battleship Petropavlovsk at Port Arthur in April 1904. In 1905, he married his paternal first cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who had only recently divorced her first husband Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, in defiance of Tsar Nicholas II prohibition. In retaliation, the Tsar stripped Kirill of his offices and honors, also initially banishing the couple from Russia. They had two daughters, Maria and Kira, and settled in Paris, France before being allowed to visit Russia in 1909. In 1910 they moved to Russia, when Nicholas II recognized their marriage. During World War I, he was appointed Commander of the Naval Depot of the Guards in 1915 and the following year he achieved the rank of rear admiral in the Imperial Navy. During the February Revolution of 1917, he swore allegiance to the Russian Provisional Government. In the summer of 1917, he escaped to Finland (then part of the Russian Empire) where his wife gave birth to the couple's only son, Vladimir. In exile, they lived for some years among his wife's relatives in Germany, and later on an estate they bought in Saint-Briac, France. With the murder of his cousins Tsar Nicholas II and Grand Duke Michael, he assumed the headship of the Imperial Family of Russia and, as next in line to the throne as the Guardian of the Throne in 1924. In 1926 he proclaimed himself emperor in exile and worked for the restoration of the monarchy for the rest of his life, but his claims were contested by some factions of the monarchy movement. He wrote a book of memoirs, "My Life in Russia's Service", published after his death at the age of 62. Originally interred at Glockenberg Cemetery in Coburg, Germany, in 1995 his remains, along with those of his wife, were moved to the St. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia, the royal burial location for the Romanov family.