in a passionate kiss, and finally, Tony gives up on Mary and decides to marry Mabel. Igor Kuragin Prince Igor Kuragin (; played by Rade Sherbedgia) is a former Russian nobleman forced into exile as a result of the 1917 Revolution. As a powerful and extremely wealthy noble with palaces and thousands of acres of land, he and Violet met in Saint Petersburg in 1874 while she and her husband, the then Earl of Grantham, were in the retinue of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Though both Prince Kuragin and Violet were married, they fell in love and attempted to run away together, but did not succeed. During the Revolution many years later, Prince Kuragin and his wife, Princess Irina Kuragina, were arrested by the Bolsheviks and separated. Though Prince Kuragin was subsequently released, he learned that his wife had been exiled a year before. Left virtually penniless, he makes his way to England and settles in York, where he receives aid from a charity for émigré Russian refugees. Through Lady Rose MacClare, who is one of the helpers, he learns of her relationship to Violet and that the Dowager Countess still lives at Downton. He joins his fellow former nobles on an outing to Downton in the spring of 1924. At Downton Abbey, he meets Violet again, who is shocked by his reappearance and what has happened to him. Violet attempts to find the whereabouts of Princess Irina through Lord Flintshire, who is her nephew-in-law, and eventually receives a letter from Lord Flintshire saying the Princess may have fled to Wan Chai, Hong Kong, where she might be working as a nurse. Unlike many Russian aristocrats after the Revolution, Prince Kuragin does not appear to be an anti-Semite; when he meets Atticus Aldridge and realises his family fled Odessa due to the Tsar's anti-Jewish pogroms, he tells Atticus that he is "not proud of why they chose to go." Historical figures Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of York The Archbishop of York and future Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang (Michael Culkin) marries Lady Mary Crawley and Matthew Crawley in the spring of 1920. He also comes to Downton Abbey for dinner later that year. Dame Nellie Melba Nellie Melba (Kiri Te Kanawa) gives an operatic performance at the Abbey in 1922, where Cora intervenes to ensure she is treated as a guest of the family rather than a member