Within months of Nicholas Engalitcheff's 1916 divorce from Evelyn, his Chicago bride (read about their Chicago mansion) and wife of 18 years, the Russian prince found a new wife.

Mme. Melanie de Bertrand Lyteuil of Paris said she was an heiress, which was perhaps one way to get the prince's attention. She was described in the will of a well-to-do Frenchman as "his friend." However, it is possible she did not inherit what she expected, or what the prince was hoping for.

Shortly after they were married, the two were ensconced in New York City's Waldorf Astoria when the latest Princess E was accused of fraud for taking jewels that she had not paid for from a Parisian jeweler. The couple also was fighting a lawsuit for not paying their auto rental bills. In both cases the New York Times said the couple were "somewhat pressed for funds."

They divorced in 1933 and again, within months, Prince Engalitcheff had found another heiress in need of a title. He married Susanna Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch, who added one more last name and the title Princess to her moniker.

One of the turn-of-the century's most flamboyant and famous matrons, the oft-married Susanna was a high-society denizen whose every move was chronicled in the newspapers, especially when several of her more inconvenient husbands met untimely deaths.

She was nicknamed the "Silver Queen" as her first husband earned his fortune in silver mining, then conveniently died and left it all to his wife, a former seamstress. Upon marrying Prince Engalitcheff, she liked to be called "Her Royal Highness," which was, after all, somewhat shorter than her previous string of names.

When she first met the prince, she had recently been widowed, yet again, after two years of being married to a Serbian doctor. During that short marriage, it appears the doctor was very jealous, and Susanna decided to divorce him. She suggested he take an ocean voyage and that everything would be settled when he returned. On that trip, he was found dead, apparently by his own hand, and was buried at sea. Susanna received a telegram while lunching with her niece. She read it and continued her lunch.

When Susanna and Prince Engalitcheff married, the New York Times reported that he was 61 and that "she gave her age as 58." She was in fact, in her early 70s. The prince died at age 62. By one account, the couple were on an ocean voyage when the prince suddenly took ill and died. Like her previous husband, the doctor, the prince was buried at sea. (A New York Times article differs, however, and says he died alone in a hotel room, a version that has little comparable intrigue.)

By some accounts, her next two husbands were gold-diggers who spent her money lavishly. When Susanna died in 1942, she was nearly broke.