of our failure on me, we did not make any progress" Maria wrote. In the spring of 1912, she received her brother Dimitri who came to Sweden to take part in the Olympic games. In 1913, they were reunited again when she went to Russia to attend the celebrations for the 300-year anniversary of the Romanov family. At a court ball in Moscow, the two danced seven dances in a row and the Tsar sent an equerry to separate them. When she returned to Stockholm, doctors alleged (falsely as it turned out) that Maria Pavlovna had a serious kidney ailment, and she was sent to Capri to recuperate in the winter 1913–1914. She had been there the previous winter as a companion of her ill mother in-law, the Queen of Sweden. She later claimed that the Queen's personal physician Axel Munthe made sexual advances on her, so she decided not to return to Capri. Instead, she stopped in Berlin where her brother joined her. They continued for Paris. She wanted her father's help to obtain a divorce. Decades later she described the horror she had felt toward the Swedish royal family, because of their unlimited support of Munthe, as the main reason she fled them and filed for divorce from Prince Wilhelm. At age 22 she felt the future looked hopeless and noted that in her diary: "A terrifying thought – year after year with this young geezer and surrounded by that idiotic family! My God!" Relatives in both Russia and Sweden viewed a divorce as unavoidable and, on 13 March 1914, her marriage was officially dissolved, an action then confirmed by an edict issued by Nicholas II on 15 July 1914. Maria left her son behind in Sweden under his father's custody. He was raised primarily by his paternal grandmother and saw his mother rarely in the years thereafter. In an interview as an adult, Lennart said his relationship with his mother was distant. In Paris, Grand Duchess Maria re-established ties with her father, who had provided her with three half-siblings. Maria Pavlovna studied at a painting school, and then traveled to Italy and Greece. In the spring 1914, age twenty four, Maria Pavlovna returned to Russia. She lived near her younger brother Dmitri, to whom she was intensely attached. Troubled by her strong need for him, Dmitri distanced himself somewhat from his sister, hurting her terribly. Few months