Princess Olga Romanoff knows what it’s like to be cast out of the royal family.
The Russian Princess, who has lived in the UK for her entire life, is the grandaughter of King George V’s cousin, which makes her the Queen’s third cousin.
Princess Olga is also related to Prince Philip through her Danish great-great-grandfather, who married all his children into royal houses across the continent, and jokes: “We bred like rabbits”.
“The Queen used to take Charles and Anne to have tea with my grandmother and they apparently had beautiful manners and I had terrible manners,” says Princess Olga, who was lined up as a potential wife for the future King.
In 1918, Princess Olga’s grandmother was rescued by her cousin King George V and brought to England from Crimea after other members of their family, including great-uncle Tsar Nicholas II, were executed by communist revolutionaries.
But her family’s invitations to the palace were stopped by the furious Queen Mother because of her father’s choice of wife.
When her father was widowed he married Olga’s mother without asking permission of the Queen at the time, who was the Queen Mother.
“I believe that p***ed off the Queen Mother. So his invitations to the palace and all that dried up. The protocols were quite strict. A lot of that is a pile of poo and they thought of it as being a big thing then,” she tells presenter Alexander Armstrong on new ITV show The Queen and Her Cousins.
Alexander asks the princess whether she feels like her family legacy was taken away or blessed not to be part of the inner family.
“Definitely blessed. I would have made a lousy imperial princess,” she replies.
“You don’t want to scrub up every day. You want to be smelling of horse and you don’t want to have to be tarted up.”
Therefore, it may comes as a surprise that she has slammed Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle for discussing their issues in TV interviews.
When Alexander asks if there is still a fairytale story connected to royalty, Princess Olga says: “Yes and no.
“It all depends how many times they tell you about their problems on television. Which I’m afraid I’m not very keen on.”
On her view of the Sussexes, she replies “not great” before adding: “The Queen has never sat there and said about anything that makes her miserable, has she. She’s always got on with it.
“The most she ever said was the ‘Annus Horribilis’ which i thought was wonderful. I think a bit of mystique and all that is a very good thing.”
At one stage, Princess Olga was being touted as a potential partner for Prince Charles and featured in articles on the five foreign princesses that possibly could marry him.
“They were looking for a title, foreign, breeding and possibly because I was 17 and they were all young and virginity was good. That sort of ticked the boxes,” she says.
Princess Olga ended up marrying a commoner and now lives with her daughter and grandson at Provender House, which dates back to the 13th century.
With no riches to fall back on, they now run one wing of the imposing 30-room family home as a holiday home – and Olga now does the dirty laundry.
“I always said I would never ever do other people’s dirty washing, ever. But luckily, now that this is up and running it should bring in some income towards the £50,000 a year to keep the place,” she says.
The Princess takes Alexander round the exquisite house and shows him a signed photograph from Queen Mary, who was the Queen’s grandmother.
She says: “She had kind of upmarket kleptomania because she would go stay in somebody’s house and she’d be sitting on one of a dozen Sheraton chairs and she’d say ‘Oo, I do like this chair,’ And you’d be obliged to give her all twelve.”
Olga explains that eventually, people got wise to this so put their good belongings in the attic and brought rotten stuff down when Queen Mary visited.
In this brand-new documentary marking The Queen’s 95th birthday, Princess Olga agrees to go on a road trip with Alexander to track down more of her relatives.
Starting in Devon, they meet Lord Ivar Mountbatten and his husband James Coyle, who are the first openly gay couple in all of royal history.
Alexander also visits Victoria Pryor, who is the Queen Mother’s great niece and The Queen’s goddaughter.
The royal cousins share details about their most famous relative and reveal what it’s like to be part of this extraordinary family.
Sharing private letters, personal photos and rare memorabilia, they recount treasured memories for the first time and Alexander learns more about royal life in modern Britain.
As he takes viewers on a road trip through the country and the dynasties, Alexander reveals he may have uncovered a new cousin who can take their place in the royal family tree.