My Dear Brother!
With enormous sadness of heart, We received last night at 7 o’clock the sorrowful news of the death of the adored Sovereign Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, My Benefactor.
While hastening to share with You the heavy sorrow that has befallen Us, I consider it my duty to inform You that, along with this letter to You, I have also sent a letter to Her Imperial Majesty, Our Beloved Mother, containing a declaration of my firm resolve to renounce My right to the succession to the Imperial Throne of All the Russias on the basis of the Imperial decree of 2 February 1822, which was was written in Our Late Sovereign Emperor’s own hand and given to Me, which itself was a reply to My letter to His Imperial Majesty declaring My renunciation of My rights to the succession to the Imperial Throne, and which was also shown to Our Mother both for Her Imperial Majesty’s assent and Her personal confirmation; and I request Our Beloved Mother, to make all this known publicly, as is fitting, for the purpose of putting this, My resolute will, into effect.
Having set this forth, I consider it therefore an absolute duty to request humbly that Your Imperial Majesty favor Me by accepting My loyalty oath first before all others, and by allowing Me to declare that I entertain no desire for new honors or titles, limiting myself only to the title of Tsesarevich, which I was awarded for my service to Our late Father.
It would be forever My one and only happiness, if Your Imperial Majesty would favor Me by accepting My profoundest respect and boundless devotion, in witness thereof I present as a pledge My more than thirty years of faithful service and vigorous zeal to the Sovereign Emperors, of blessed memory, My Father and My Brother; and as I served them, so shall I not cease to continue My service to Your Imperial Majesty and to Your Progeny in My present duty and place unto My last days.
I am, with profoundest respect, Most Gracious Sovereign, Your Imperial Majesty’s most faithful subject!
Constantine Pavlovich
Warsaw, 26 November 1825