This well-researched book covers the short and insulated world of the Romanov sisters, the 4 daughters of the last tsar of Russia. Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, along with their youngest brother Alexey were the central focus of their parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, and lived loving but deeply sheltered lives as monarchs until their exile and murder during the Russian revolution.
While the main focus is on the girls, the book starts with Alexandra’s love match with Nicholas, as the foundation for the love and family-centered existence fostered in their world. The couple’s story is a tragic one, with Alexandra’s poor health, public disdain as they continued to have daughters (even though the parents are painted to be delighted with the girls), and young Alexey’s hemophilia, a devastating diagnosis for the tsarevich that had to be kept from the public.
Letters and public record give a lot of insight into the personality of the girls. Olga seemed to be a typical first-born: a leader and a support to her younger siblings. Tatiana was more reserved, beautiful, and was a devoted nurse to injured soldiers in WWI. Maria was cherubic, easy-going, and stuck in the middle as the third of five children. Anastasia was the wild child: impossible to keep focused on lessons, strong-willed, and naughty.
Rappaport seemed to choose to keep an insular focus to (successfully) illustrate the girls’ tiny world. The problem is, that this meant a lot of repetetive information about the family’s piety, their various ailments and illnesses, their discomfort with the public duties of monarchs, and the crushes and whims of the young girls. While I learned a lot about the family and the rising public disdain for the royals, viewing it from the point of teenage girls isn’t necessarily the best angle. The family’s strange relationship with Rasputin was interesting, as was the secrecy regarding Alexey’s diagnosis, but the parents’ purposeful isolation and apparently wanton disregard for their distance from the people they were to be ruling could be better explained as something other than a parent’s love.
Recommended for those particularly interested in monarchies or the Romanovs. Maybe not a great choice for me as someone new to the topic.