Royalty in History

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azaleaqueen said:

Weren't Nicholas and Alexandra supposed to have been very much in love? Which has, from the beginning of royalty, been pretty unusual.

Oh, yes, very VERY much so! Say what you will about them as rulers, and you could say plenty, as a family, they were second to none-deeply devoted to one another and to their children. They actually shared a bed, in a world where it was the norm for married couples to have their own bedrooms, let alone beds!
I'm a HUGE Romanov buff, so I have tons of books and one of them is called A Lifelong Passion, and it's all letters, diary entries, journals, documents of the Romanovs and their associates. You should read the letters Nicky and Alix sent to one another. Even in their last days, they were calling each other little pet names, sending kisses and caresses, and were so incredibly devoted.

From the time they started courting until they died, they were deeply, passionately in love. And they were very attentive, devoted parents, Alix actually nursed all of her own children, something that probably horrified her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

The whole affair is just so very tragic, because under other circumstances, they would have been just another happy family, but were in a role entirely unsuited to them.

[Auroranorth]

You're so right, if they were around today they'd be the equivalent of Duke and Duchess of Gloucestershire, and totally unknown. Probably boring, but happy.

As rulers go though, Nicholas II was a bomb. What Russia needed then was Peter the Great, and they got a milquetoast with a hysterical wife.

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I'll join AuroraStar's request. Can't we make reccomendations about good books? Of course, not to drive this thread away of its subject, we could explain some points about them, and discuss a bit the topics.
I also love history books, and have some good ones.

I'm currently finishing a great biography of Alienor of Aquitaine, great character, even though what we really know of her is very little. This French book tries to present the distinction among historical facts (very few) and the legend around her.

[Cinchona]

Did anyone else here see the "Nicholas and Alexandra: At Home with the Last Tsar and His Family" exhibition? I caught some of it the last weekend it was in New Jersey. From what I've been able to find, it looks as though it closed last week in Cincinnati.

[aiders]

My mom and I are royalty history biography book nuts! I'd love to give some reccomendations. I'm staring at my bookshelf now and of course my three favorites would have to be Carolly Erickson's biography of Tsarina Alexandra, "Victoria's Daughters" by Jerrold Packard, and Antonia Fraser's "Marie Antoinette." I just started Flora Fraser's "Princesses" last night and it seems great so far.

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This isn't a book; it is a television program that you can get on DVD. The Lost Prince deals with George V (?) and his cousins, The Tsar and Tsarina of all the Russias, who come for a visit to his English Cottage with their lovely daughters and their sickly son. The characterizations of all the Royals are very intriguing. I especially like the way the last absolute monarch of Europe, the Tsar of Russia, waits on his Empress like a common footman (and I do mean footman---there is scene where he puts on her boots for her).

I've got a hold in the library on that book on the Princesses of George III by Miss Fraser. Her mother, Antonia Fraser, has written books on Mary, Queen of Scots
and on Six Wives of Henry VIII that are a good read. And Miss Antonia Fraser's mother, Elisabeth Longford, has written a biography of the
Duke of Wellington that is also a good read.

Those Frasers are a family of biographers.

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Chatchien said:

This isn't a book; it is a television program that you can get on DVD. The Lost Prince deals with George V (?) and his cousins, The Tsar and Tsarina of all the Russias, who come for a visit to his English Cottage with their lovely daughters and their sickly son. The characterizations of all the Royals are very intriguing. I especially like the way the last absolute monarch of Europe, the Tsar of Russia, waits on his Empress like a common footman (and I do mean footman---there is scene where he puts on her boots for her).

Ugh, did it really? That's just awful. Alix may have come off like a snob at times (though really it was just a mask for her shyness and insecurity), but I do not believe she EVER would have treated Nicky that way!

[MrsCatHead]

I think he would have gladly and lovingly helped her with her boots. They were intimate that way or so I gather.

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MrsCatHead said:

I think he would have gladly and lovingly helped her with her boots. They were intimate that way or so I gather.

Oh, I think so too. But from what I heard, the movie makes it look like she bosses him around all the time and treats him like a servant. Which wasn't true at all. Alix's supposed conceit was really due to being painfully shy.

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Was Victoria legitimate? Her daddy and mom or mum were very dodgy---sexually and ethically.

And I always thought that it was very interesting that the mad disease of porphyria that George III had has never showed up downline in any of his supposed descendents. And that hemophilia that appeared with Victoria's children and helped bring the Tsar down? Now where did that come from? I've heard that it was a spontaneous mutation but I don't know that I buy that. A genetic marker disease dies with George III and IV and a new genetic marker disease appears with Victoria?

Very suspicous. And intriguing.