The Romanov Sisters

Starred review from February 24, 2014
The lives of the four daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—of Nicholas and Alexandra, Tzar and Tzarina of Imperial Russia, have been both sentimentalized and overlooked in the years since the Russian Revolution. Nonetheless, the politics of the court were such that they affected all members of the royal family, particularly through WWI and the Russian Revolution, which claimed the lives of the Romanovs. Rappaport (Magnificent Obsession), a specialist on Russian and 19th-century women’s history, works chronologically—a necessary step in understanding court intricacies and the major players involved—beginning with Alice, Princess of Hesse and daughter of Queen Victoria of England, whose own daughter, Alix, was to become the Empress of Russia. Rappaport details the difficulties leading up to the marriage of Alexandra to then tsarevich Nicholas, the birth of their children, and how the Romanov sisters blossomed into charming, capable, and affectionate young ladies. The public spoke of the sisters in a gentile, superficial manner, but Rappaport captures sections of letters and diary entries to showcase the sisters’ thoughtfulness and intelligence. Readers will be swept up in the author’s leisurely yet informative narrative as she sheds new light on the lives of the four daughters. B&w photo insert. Agent: Caroline Michel, Peters Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.).

May 1, 2014
The daughters of Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra are just the right subjects for Rappaport's (A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy, 2012, etc.) specialties in Russian and 19th-century women's history.This story of the four girls-Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia-is not just a standard Russian history; witness the passing references to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905 and the revolution of 1905. The author's goal is to expose the characters of these girls, brought up very much in their mother's vision of a simple, sheltered life. Rappaport manages to maintain reader interest even as she ticks off the repetitious tale of their boring lives: long walks with their father, sewing, study, tennis and heavy doses of religion. Each year, the family would leave the palace for vacations aboard the Shtandart, the imperial yacht, in the Baltic Sea or the Crimea, where they would pretty much do the same things. A visit to their English cousins on the Isle of Wight illustrated how little social freedom they actually had. Assassination was a way of life in Russia, and the Romanovs' security network was so strict that the family members were restricted from leaving the ship. Their social lives were nonexistent, and their playmates were the sailors on the yacht or members of the czar's guard. Alexandra's weak constitution initially created the family's isolation, which the populace saw as snobbery from the German-born czarina. Add the inept autocrat, Nicholas, the hemophilia of Czarevitch Alexei and the presence of the despised Rasputin for Alexandra's obsessive protection, and the monarchy was ripe for a fall.A gossipy, revealing story of the doomed Russian family's fairy tale life told by an expert in the field.

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June 1, 2014
Rappaport, who has previously written about the last days of the Romanov family as well as the lives of other royal families, here turns her attention to Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, murdered along with their brother and parents in 1918. Yet, in some ways, this is less about the girls and more about their mother, Alexandra, whose despair at producing four girls before giving birth to a hemophiliac son, is palpable. Rappaport uses the sisters' letters and diaries to illuminate their lives, but they rarely jump off the pages as real people, even though they are each described with specific personality traits. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is when their relationships with the magnetic Rasputin are introduced that the girls seem the most alive. What also comes through quite clearly is the great love and devotion each of the Romanov family members felt for each other, despite living through the harshest of circumstances. The haunting cover photograph of the Romanov sisters will draw readers, and the extensive bibliography will aid those who want to learn more.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)