Use of the style and title HIH Grand Duchess of Russia
I think I've just read about five years worth of this thread, and I'd like to thank the many people who have posted interesting details about the Russian succession, the end of the Romanov dynasty, the fate of the Romanov family and its life in exile. I'm not uninterested in these things or the question of who is the putative heir to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
However, channeling here for Miss Manners, I think the use of the title "Grand Duchess" in connection with Maria Wladimirovna is a protocol error. If she were invited to the White House because of her charity work, say, she wouuld not be addressed as such. This title is not a piece of Romanov family property; it is short for "Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia," a position that was eliminated a while back. I'm fine with courtesy titles for the first generation of refugees, but the kids have to marry back into it. She has a title by marriage, but it is not "Grand Duchess."
If you don't have a system of constitutional monarchy to point to, you have no right to a title. Moreover, anybody who grants the title is making a political statement. Parenthetically I wondered how the former German nobility manage to keep their titles despite this objection, and it turns out it is done by automatically making the title part of the legal name of the person, as a matter of German law. However there are no legal privileges whatsoever, much less stipends.
I'd be happy to let the matter hang on the following question: What has Vladimir Putin ever addressed her as, or referred to her as in public? Does he ever use the title "Grand Duchess?" Pardon, but I can't visualize the words "Imperial Highness" passing his lips without a smirk there. What I really think is that he would never say such a thing.
However, Vlad's the de facto government of Russia, so I'm willing to be instructed by his call. After all, the tsarist system was always an absolute autocracy that never had any slightest taint of constitutional monarchy, so she is, as legitimately as any Romanov ever was, whatever he styles and titles her as.
That the remains of the former system are now talking to the new management should set all but the most hopelessly romantic teeth on edge.