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Book Review #63: The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
Title: The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
Author: Helen Rappaport
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: The world's richest princesses would have been so much happier if they were middle class.
Thoughts: To read this account, you would think that the last generation of Romanovs were completely innocent, totally sheltered middle class children instead of the beneficiaries of one of the richest, most oppressive monarchies in the world.
To be fair, they're kind of both.
Nicholas and Alexandra were about as temperamentally unsuited to be autocrats as one might imagine. Pretty much everyone would have been better off if Nicholas had been a country gentleman. So their girls were raised in almost complete isolation from the glittering Russian court.
But this book does little to acknowledge the underlying reasons why the monarchy was toppled. So sympathetic it is to its subjects that any sense of proportion is lost. Their eventual captors twirl their mustaches. Which undoubtedly they did--workers had fairly good motivations for jeering at the fallen royal family, after life in crippling poverty, ruthless oppression, and a devastating war that was essentially over family politics. None of which is particularly acknowledged.
But it's a good insight into the worldview of the doomed aristocrats. And the sense of doom is palpable. At several points, one of the girls might have escaped by marrying out of the family. Each time, they refuse, wanting to stay in Russia. And so they do, for the remainder of their shortened lives.
Frustratingly, we do not see that remainder. The author had previously written a book about the last two weeks of the Romanovs. She dithers in the introduction over how much to repeat herself. In the end, she basically decides not to repeat herself much at all--the book cuts off abruptly, with a short postscript about what happened to some of the other people mentioned after the Revolution. If one did not know what had happened, one might guess that there was a tragedy but have no idea what. It's self-indulgent and egotistical. If she had kept writing at the same pace, she might have been able to cover the events of the final days in four or five pages, which would have greatly improved the book for everyone who had not read her previous work.
Author: Helen Rappaport
Genre: Biography
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: The world's richest princesses would have been so much happier if they were middle class.
Thoughts: To read this account, you would think that the last generation of Romanovs were completely innocent, totally sheltered middle class children instead of the beneficiaries of one of the richest, most oppressive monarchies in the world.
To be fair, they're kind of both.
Nicholas and Alexandra were about as temperamentally unsuited to be autocrats as one might imagine. Pretty much everyone would have been better off if Nicholas had been a country gentleman. So their girls were raised in almost complete isolation from the glittering Russian court.
But this book does little to acknowledge the underlying reasons why the monarchy was toppled. So sympathetic it is to its subjects that any sense of proportion is lost. Their eventual captors twirl their mustaches. Which undoubtedly they did--workers had fairly good motivations for jeering at the fallen royal family, after life in crippling poverty, ruthless oppression, and a devastating war that was essentially over family politics. None of which is particularly acknowledged.
But it's a good insight into the worldview of the doomed aristocrats. And the sense of doom is palpable. At several points, one of the girls might have escaped by marrying out of the family. Each time, they refuse, wanting to stay in Russia. And so they do, for the remainder of their shortened lives.
Frustratingly, we do not see that remainder. The author had previously written a book about the last two weeks of the Romanovs. She dithers in the introduction over how much to repeat herself. In the end, she basically decides not to repeat herself much at all--the book cuts off abruptly, with a short postscript about what happened to some of the other people mentioned after the Revolution. If one did not know what had happened, one might guess that there was a tragedy but have no idea what. It's self-indulgent and egotistical. If she had kept writing at the same pace, she might have been able to cover the events of the final days in four or five pages, which would have greatly improved the book for everyone who had not read her previous work.