Nicholas II

It is known as the 'royal disease', and for very good reason. The bleeding disorder haemophilia B was unwittingly introduced into the royal families of Europe by Queen Victoria, before nine of her descendants died from the disease. They included her youngest son Prince Leopold, who died a week short of his 31st birthday. But, had Leopold been alive today, there would have been fresh hope thanks to recent news that, after successful trials, a gene therapy once billed as the 'world's most expensive drug' is now being made available to treat the condition. The most significant of the royal haemophiliac deaths was that of Alexei (right, with his father), the much longed-for male heir of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra ('Alix'), who was Queen Victoria's favourite granddaughter. She increasingly sought solace in the mysticism of the Russian orthodox church and would eventually fall under the spell of Grigori Rasputin, the lank-haired, evil-smelling peasant with magnetic eyes. As well as relieving the Empress's emotional suffering, he had a calming influence on Alexei and was believed to help ease the boy's symptoms. In Spain, Queen Victoria Eugenie - granddaughter of Queen Victoria and great-grandmother of King Felipe VI - gave birth to two haemophiliac sons. The first, Alfonso (inset), Prince of Asturias, was heir apparent to the throne of Spain. He died aged 31.

As he turns 82 today, Prince Michael of Kent will likely be celebrating in a low-key fashion with close family. In recent months he and his wife Princess Michael (right, with her husband in 2022) have been supporting their daughter Lady Gabriella Windsor (pictured left with her father on her wedding day) after the death of her husband Thomas Kingston in February. In the weeks after her tragic loss, Lady Gabriella moved back in with her parents at their Kensington Palace apartment. Her father is the first cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth, the brother of the Duke of Kent, a grandson of King George V and a cousin-twice-removed of Russia 's last Tsar, Nicholas II. In his younger years, Prince Michael was a competitive rower and bobsledder and was even on the reserve list for Britain's bobsleigh team (inset, competing for Great Britain in 1971) at the 1972 Winter Olympics. But unlike his daughter's impeccable public image, Prince Michael - who bears a striking resemblance to Tsar Nicholas - has hit the headlines for the wrong reasons in the past.

Video showed a fire purportedly on a vessel in Sevastopol's Sukharnaya Bay after explosions were heard in the annexed Crimean naval port. One report from Ukrainian Telegram channel Crimean Wind suggested the world's oldest active naval vessel had been hit, the 109-year-old Kommuna, built in the reign of the last Tsar, Nicholas II.