Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster


Natalia Ayesha Grosvenor, Dowager Duchess of Westminster is the widow of The 6th Duke of Westminster. The Duchess will assume the style of Her Grace Natalia, Duchess of Westminster or Her Grace The Dowager Duchess only upon the marriage of her son. At the time of her husband's succession to the title, there were four Duchesses of Westminster, the current Duchess, Sally Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster and Viola Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster.

Marriage and children

On 7 October 1978, Natalia Phillips married Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster
They had four children:
As Duchess of Westminster, Natalia has presided over the remodelling of the traditional family seat, Eaton Hall, and has been closely involved in the redesign of its formal gardens and park. She also takes an interest in the family's fine art collection.
The Duchess is a director of Alex Moulton Bicycles.
She is patron of a number of charities based in the north west, near the family home in Cheshire, including:
From October 1997 to October 2007, she was Patron of the Chester Childbirth Appeal.
The Duchess is one of the Duke of Cambridge's six godparents.

Royal kinship

She is the youngest of five children of Lt.-Col. Harold Pedro Joseph Phillips and his wife, Georgina Wernher. Her eldest sister is Her Grace Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn, and another sister is Marita Crawley, who wrote the libretto for the opera The Poet and the Tsar about their great-great-great-grandfathers, Alexander Pushkin and Emperor Nicholas I of Russia. Natalia is one of three godmothers to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Her family have long been close to the British Royal Family, being distantly related to both Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. They are also descendants, through non-Catholic marriages, of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, in whose Protestant descendants is vested the right of succession to the British throne according to the Act of Settlement 1701.
They also descend from Pushkin, the Russian author and nobleman, as well as from his African great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was a tribal chief that was taken from his home in his youth and who later became both a protégé of Peter the Great and a nobleman himself.
The sisters' maternal grandmother was born Countess Anastasia de Torby, younger morganatic daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mihailovich of Russia by his wife Countess Sophie von Merenberg, morganatic daughter of Prince Nikolaus of Nassau by his wife :File:Pushkinana.jpg|Natalia Aleksandrovna Pushkina, Pushkin's younger daughter.
Lady Zia's sister Countess Nadezhda de Torby was the wife of Prince George of Battenberg, elder maternal uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh. The Torby sisters were third cousins of the prince through their common ancestor, Tsar Nicholas I. Natalia's paternal grandparents were Col. Joseph Harold John Phillips and his wife Mary Mercedes Bryce, whose niece Janet Mercedes Bryce married The 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, Nada Mountbatten's son.