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Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters
Feb. 6th, 2015 09:24 amI'm still on a major biography kick.
The Romanov Sisters is a detailed look of the lives of Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, who had the initial luck and later massive misfortune, to be the daughters of Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia.
As the daughters of the tsar, they lived surprisingly simple, extremely sheltered lives until the outbreak of World War I – and even later. Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, were not fond of Russian aristocratic society (the dislike was mutual, and was a minor cause of the Russian Revolution), and were terrified, with reason, of assassination attempts. They therefore kept their children, for the most part, behind walls of guards, in palaces furnished largely in simple, middle class style.
Which is not to say that the girls were completely isolated: they had tutors and governesses, and their mother's attendants, and a few selected relatives and occasional playmates. They also interacted with the sailors on the family yacht – one decided exception to the more middle class lifestyle. The two older girls even ended up falling for a couple of the highly ineligible sailors, who, of course, couldn't possibly return the feelings. From the pictures, I'm pretty sure that this was mostly because the sailors in question were pretty hot, and Olga and Tatiana were, in that sense, perfectly normal teenagers, but Rappaport makes a convincing case that this was also because they simply didn't have the chance to meet that many men, eligible or not. There's several heartbreaking cases of the girls begging to hear about "normal" lives, or indeed anything outside their palaces. They read books, certainly; they talked to those they could, but it was not enough. The details of Olga's first real love are especially heartbreaking. On the one hand, I was glad that she at least had the chance to fall in love – something no other biography I've read of the Romanovs detailed. On the other hand, it went nowhere.
And, well, they also had Rasputin, the Russian mystic who, their mother believed, had miraculous healing powers. Rappaport doesn't dwell on him, probably because so many other books do, possibly because at the time, quite a few people were questioning his intimate access to the Grand Duchesses, especially since they had very limited access, intimate or not, to other people, and because Rasputin was known to sleep around a lot. People drew the obvious conclusions. Rappaport, who combed through diaries, memoirs and letters, does not, but also ignores the small issue that if something had happened there, the girls probably would not have said much. In any case, they did mourn his death, if only because by then it was obvious to the two oldest girls, at least, that something was badly, badly wrong in Russia, and the family was in danger. If Rasputin could be attacked and killed, they certainly could be.
By then, World War I had been raging for years. It had a profound effect on all four daughters, but mostly the oldest two: discussions of their potential marriages abruptly ended, and Olga and Tatiana went to work as nurses, in hospitals on palace grounds. Maria and Anastasia were too young, but visited the soldiers to entertain them. For the first time, the girls made real friends, and a bit of the protective bubble they lived in was shattered. Olga was apparently not all that well emotionally suited for this career, but Tatiana was: there's a hint here that had things gone differently, she could well have funded and managed hospitals, or pursued a successful career as a nurse. Among the most upsetting parts of the book are arguably those discussing the intelligent, capable, Tatiana: I kept thinking, every few pages, what a waste.
The most aggravating parts of the book, however, almost all have to do with their mother, Alexandra. Even the most sympathetic biographies of Alexandra – and this isn't one of them – struggle with her. It's odd, since on the surface, she should be sympathetic – an initially sweet, shy, deeply private girl who was terrified of her public responsibilities, who later found herself mother to a disabled son stricken with hemophilia – a disease she had passed down to him. She herself suffered from multiple chronic illnesses. It should be a deeply sympathetic story.
It isn't, because it's also a story of "Disabled mother keeps ignoring everyone and really screwing up." As someone who suffers from chronic fatigue, I completely understood Alexandra's inability to perform many of her public duties. I could also see part of the problem here – Alexandra refused to fall into the role of the disabled angel of the household, who never complains but continues to inspire others (this was a big Victorian thing) and I admire her for that. I also completely understand her wish for privacy. But the counter to this is simple: if you want to be a completely private person, you cannot marry the Emperor of Russia. And Alexandra went far beyond not performing many of her public duties: she ended up not performing any of them. She created unnecessary enemies. She ignored well meant advice from relatives and friends, eventually dropping all friends who were not essentially sycophants.
And of course, she continually took advice from Rasputin – except for the one time when it really counted. Rasputin advised Nicholas and Alexandra not to enter World War I. As wrong as he was about so many other things, he was completely correct about this. Russia was not ready for a war with Germany.
Fortunately, after the first few chapters, the book mostly focuses on the girls, sparing me some aggravation – while also making me grit my teeth occasionally over Alexandra's parenting. She had a gift for inspiring guilt trips in her daughters, and she also encouraged them to tell her all about their little crushes – which sounds lovely, except that these were also men that Alexandra would never have allowed the girls to marry. These sailors had no noble rank whatsoever, and Alexandra supported Nicholas, after all, when he exiled his brother just for marrying a woman who was only a countess. So this tends to come across as….I don't know, wrong.
But the rest of the stuff – the petty gossip, the clothes, the complaints from tutors and governesses, the first love affairs, the ongoing and growing sense of doom – is all surprisingly mesmerizing. Rappaport has a strong sense of narrative, and the illustrations just add to the pathos.
What struck me most about reading the book right now, however, is a small point not intended by the author: that is, the information that right after the first Russian Revolution (the February one) the Provisional Government offered to send the four Grand Duchesses into safety and exile. They might well have made it. Hostility focused on the tsar and his wife, not their children; Olga and Tatiana had arguably even gained some goodwill by working as nurses throughout the war. They had wealthy relatives throughout the world, who later took in other relatives and even some of the courtiers. (One of Alexandra's ladies-in-waiting, for example, ended up in a grace and favour apartment at Hampton Court.) And although Nicholas apparently considered making changes, Russian law prior to the Revolution barred them as heirs to the throne, making them less of a political threat than other (male) Romanovs – for instance, Nicholas' brother, Michael, eventually shot by the Bolsheviks in June 1918, in part to prevent royalist forces from putting Michael on the throne. Many other Romanovs escaped.
But not the girls. Why?
Because when the offer of safety and exile came, they were too sick with measles to be moved.
By the time they recovered, it was too late. The four girls were forced to join their parents in what was, for all intents and purposes, prison in Siberia, if a prison that still had some servants. They were rarely able to leave their house, though they did write frequent letters complaining of boredom.
And a little over a year later, they were murdered along with their parents.
Rappaport, of course, wrote the book before the Disneyland measles outbreak, and none of it is meant as a cautionary tale about vaccinations. Still, reading it, I couldn't help but think of the alternatives, of what could have happened, but didn't.
Because measles.
The lessons of history.
The Romanov Sisters is a detailed look of the lives of Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, who had the initial luck and later massive misfortune, to be the daughters of Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia.
As the daughters of the tsar, they lived surprisingly simple, extremely sheltered lives until the outbreak of World War I – and even later. Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, were not fond of Russian aristocratic society (the dislike was mutual, and was a minor cause of the Russian Revolution), and were terrified, with reason, of assassination attempts. They therefore kept their children, for the most part, behind walls of guards, in palaces furnished largely in simple, middle class style.
Which is not to say that the girls were completely isolated: they had tutors and governesses, and their mother's attendants, and a few selected relatives and occasional playmates. They also interacted with the sailors on the family yacht – one decided exception to the more middle class lifestyle. The two older girls even ended up falling for a couple of the highly ineligible sailors, who, of course, couldn't possibly return the feelings. From the pictures, I'm pretty sure that this was mostly because the sailors in question were pretty hot, and Olga and Tatiana were, in that sense, perfectly normal teenagers, but Rappaport makes a convincing case that this was also because they simply didn't have the chance to meet that many men, eligible or not. There's several heartbreaking cases of the girls begging to hear about "normal" lives, or indeed anything outside their palaces. They read books, certainly; they talked to those they could, but it was not enough. The details of Olga's first real love are especially heartbreaking. On the one hand, I was glad that she at least had the chance to fall in love – something no other biography I've read of the Romanovs detailed. On the other hand, it went nowhere.
And, well, they also had Rasputin, the Russian mystic who, their mother believed, had miraculous healing powers. Rappaport doesn't dwell on him, probably because so many other books do, possibly because at the time, quite a few people were questioning his intimate access to the Grand Duchesses, especially since they had very limited access, intimate or not, to other people, and because Rasputin was known to sleep around a lot. People drew the obvious conclusions. Rappaport, who combed through diaries, memoirs and letters, does not, but also ignores the small issue that if something had happened there, the girls probably would not have said much. In any case, they did mourn his death, if only because by then it was obvious to the two oldest girls, at least, that something was badly, badly wrong in Russia, and the family was in danger. If Rasputin could be attacked and killed, they certainly could be.
By then, World War I had been raging for years. It had a profound effect on all four daughters, but mostly the oldest two: discussions of their potential marriages abruptly ended, and Olga and Tatiana went to work as nurses, in hospitals on palace grounds. Maria and Anastasia were too young, but visited the soldiers to entertain them. For the first time, the girls made real friends, and a bit of the protective bubble they lived in was shattered. Olga was apparently not all that well emotionally suited for this career, but Tatiana was: there's a hint here that had things gone differently, she could well have funded and managed hospitals, or pursued a successful career as a nurse. Among the most upsetting parts of the book are arguably those discussing the intelligent, capable, Tatiana: I kept thinking, every few pages, what a waste.
The most aggravating parts of the book, however, almost all have to do with their mother, Alexandra. Even the most sympathetic biographies of Alexandra – and this isn't one of them – struggle with her. It's odd, since on the surface, she should be sympathetic – an initially sweet, shy, deeply private girl who was terrified of her public responsibilities, who later found herself mother to a disabled son stricken with hemophilia – a disease she had passed down to him. She herself suffered from multiple chronic illnesses. It should be a deeply sympathetic story.
It isn't, because it's also a story of "Disabled mother keeps ignoring everyone and really screwing up." As someone who suffers from chronic fatigue, I completely understood Alexandra's inability to perform many of her public duties. I could also see part of the problem here – Alexandra refused to fall into the role of the disabled angel of the household, who never complains but continues to inspire others (this was a big Victorian thing) and I admire her for that. I also completely understand her wish for privacy. But the counter to this is simple: if you want to be a completely private person, you cannot marry the Emperor of Russia. And Alexandra went far beyond not performing many of her public duties: she ended up not performing any of them. She created unnecessary enemies. She ignored well meant advice from relatives and friends, eventually dropping all friends who were not essentially sycophants.
And of course, she continually took advice from Rasputin – except for the one time when it really counted. Rasputin advised Nicholas and Alexandra not to enter World War I. As wrong as he was about so many other things, he was completely correct about this. Russia was not ready for a war with Germany.
Fortunately, after the first few chapters, the book mostly focuses on the girls, sparing me some aggravation – while also making me grit my teeth occasionally over Alexandra's parenting. She had a gift for inspiring guilt trips in her daughters, and she also encouraged them to tell her all about their little crushes – which sounds lovely, except that these were also men that Alexandra would never have allowed the girls to marry. These sailors had no noble rank whatsoever, and Alexandra supported Nicholas, after all, when he exiled his brother just for marrying a woman who was only a countess. So this tends to come across as….I don't know, wrong.
But the rest of the stuff – the petty gossip, the clothes, the complaints from tutors and governesses, the first love affairs, the ongoing and growing sense of doom – is all surprisingly mesmerizing. Rappaport has a strong sense of narrative, and the illustrations just add to the pathos.
What struck me most about reading the book right now, however, is a small point not intended by the author: that is, the information that right after the first Russian Revolution (the February one) the Provisional Government offered to send the four Grand Duchesses into safety and exile. They might well have made it. Hostility focused on the tsar and his wife, not their children; Olga and Tatiana had arguably even gained some goodwill by working as nurses throughout the war. They had wealthy relatives throughout the world, who later took in other relatives and even some of the courtiers. (One of Alexandra's ladies-in-waiting, for example, ended up in a grace and favour apartment at Hampton Court.) And although Nicholas apparently considered making changes, Russian law prior to the Revolution barred them as heirs to the throne, making them less of a political threat than other (male) Romanovs – for instance, Nicholas' brother, Michael, eventually shot by the Bolsheviks in June 1918, in part to prevent royalist forces from putting Michael on the throne. Many other Romanovs escaped.
But not the girls. Why?
Because when the offer of safety and exile came, they were too sick with measles to be moved.
By the time they recovered, it was too late. The four girls were forced to join their parents in what was, for all intents and purposes, prison in Siberia, if a prison that still had some servants. They were rarely able to leave their house, though they did write frequent letters complaining of boredom.
And a little over a year later, they were murdered along with their parents.
Rappaport, of course, wrote the book before the Disneyland measles outbreak, and none of it is meant as a cautionary tale about vaccinations. Still, reading it, I couldn't help but think of the alternatives, of what could have happened, but didn't.
Because measles.
The lessons of history.