Template talk:Pretenders to the Russian throne since 1917

Prince Nicholas

As far as any mainstream source is concerned, Maria is head of the Romanovs, end of story. Here are some examples:

• "Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, is the current head of the Romanov dynasty" (The Telegraph, 2011)
• "But most monarchists and monarchist historians consider Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna....to be the legitimate head of the house" (Royalty Who Wait, Olga Opfell, p. 71, 2001)
• "Head of the Romanov Dynasty Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna" (RIA Novosti, 2010)
• "Maria, the new head of the Romanov Imperial House" (St. Petersburg Times, 2010) ("new" after her mother died, nothing to do with Nicholas)

The last time Prince Nicholas was mentioned in the Moscow Times was 1997. There is no mention of him on the Web site of the St. Petersburg Times. Their archive goes back about ten years and mentions Maria six times. The top Russian monarchist organization, Russian Imperial Union-Order, supports Maria. The only major monarchist organization that opposes her is The All-Russian Monarchist Center. They have nothing to do Nicholas, but rather argue that the Romanov claim lapsed with the of death of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich in 1992. In short, Nicholas is an obscure claimant getting entirely WP:UNDUE attention in this template. It is time to pull him out. Kauffner (talk) 13:01, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

"New" after her mother. What a reliable source that clearly is then! Prince Nicholas is certainly not obscure there are many 'mentions' of him. He is almost 90 I very much doubt he would be as active as Maria and show up in the news every month. I wouldsay someone like Rosairo Poidimani, 'Duke of Braganza' is obscure and would not deserve a mention in a template like. Prince Nicholas is not in that category. - dwc lr (talk) 16:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Nicholas certainly gets a significant number of mentions in the media, although not in recent years. But it's not usually in the context of his being a pretender or head of the Romanovs. Gotha and the Romanov Family Association don't qualify as WP:RS. It's not about genealogy or succession law, but recognition by the public, in the media, and by scholars. Kauffner (talk) 17:17, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Its not appropriate to make definiate statements in a template like this, and arbitrarily dismiss the merits of a claim when there is no opportunity to discuss the various claims. There is a well known dispute and two claimants to the headship of this family. - dwc lr (talk) 20:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

If Nicholas is excluded from Wikipedia as the main rival of Maria Vladimirovna for the claim to the defunct Russian throne and/or to headship of the deposed dynasty, expect near constant edit wars and serious talk page accusations that Wikipedia is biased in this matter. I agree that undue weight is applicable here (although efforts to apply it have had limited success, being thwarted by all kinds of alternative interpretations of competing claims as evidenced at Talk:Line of succession to the former Russian throne/Archive 1 where such protracted arguments have usually been "resolved" by petering out in exhaustion rather than by consensus). It is one thing to weigh Google hits as a factor in choosing article names and another to allow them to determine content in Wikipedia's NPOV coverage of the issues. While I agree that the Kennedy Gotha is a discredited source (and the original Justus Perthes version, a venerable full-bore almanac only a fraction of whose content consisted of dynastic/noble data, was a RS but stopped publishing in 1944 -- treating Nicholas in its final edition as non-dynastic) and that the Romanov Family Association is irrelevant because its bylaws explicitly bar it from endorsing any claimant to the throne, there remain reputable sources which take differing positions on the rivals' claims. Some do, explicitly or implicitly, uphold Nicholas's claim as compared to that of Maria's -- most notably Robert Massie in The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (which had been excerpted in The New Yorker prior to publication in '95) and by Nicolas Enache in La Descendance de Pierre le Grand, Tsar de Russie, 1983. Moreover, in the return of most Romanov descendants to Russia for the ceremonial reburial in July 1998 of Nicholas II and his family (now Orthodox saints), attended by President Boris Yeltsin, there was open competition between Nicholas and Maria for pride of place, influence and public profile which Nicholas Romanovich won hands down. Maria Vladimirovna, her mother and son -- although present in St. Petersburg -- actually withdrew from participation on a pretext, the unseemly spat evoking dissension among monarchists and a flurry of coverage. Also, the nature of the succession dispute is key to understanding Nicholas's prominence in it: Few seriously argue that he is a stronger genealogical or legal claimant than Maria, rather he is treated (by monarchists and non-monarchists alike who take an interest in the matter) as a foil to Maria's claim, which is opposed with an articulate vehemence akin to that of French Legitimists toward the House of Orléans or the Carlists toward the Isabelline Bourbons: the objections are as much ideological as dynastic and more moral than legal. I agree that Nicholas is much less an independently "viable" candidate than Maria because the relevant nuance here is fundamentally "pro-Maria vs. anti-Maria", but Nicholas (a self-avowed republican, whose animus quintessentializes the rivalry) has exploited that resentment (helped by the Vladimirovichis' high-handed public relations blundering) to become the focus of articulate opposition to Maria Vladimirovna. Her story as pretender is incomplete without his. FactStraight (talk) 22:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)