Not the last book that I've read. The last was Frostbite of Vampire Academy. But this still haunts me. Remember Princess Anastasia? It's a sad, sad story. Actually, this is a history book, narrative and "novel" like in a way that only Robert K. Massie can manage. If you don't know about the Romanov Dynasty, well, the last family that held Russian monarchy came from the Romanov Dynasty. Yes--that Nicholas and Alexandra. And Anastasia. Though generation X and later would probably remember Anastasia more than anyone of the Romanovs, I would suspect, because of Disney and the controversy of those who'd pretended to be her, because that held more excitement than historical perspective in which the whole family were murdered, including poor Prince Alexei, because people wanted a "better" future. Did they get it?
Here's the synopsis from amazon.com:
The story of the love that ended an empire
In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.
Should I warn about spoilers? But this is a history book! Oh well, approach on your own discretion.
Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra did love each other when they got married. They were good parents, the princesses are well-behaved and humble royals, they loved their little brother very much, and Tsarevich Alexei seem a promise of what a good leader was going to become if he'd lived, even when he's straddled with an illness called hemophilia, which basically doesn't let his blood clot when he's injured and was very, very terrible during his time. But it was a turbulent time, Nicholas happened to be so ignorant, Alexandra happened to be so misguided (and worry for her son compounded it), Rasputin was a wretched, conniving maniac who happened to have a skill on hypnosis... so the story went on its one-way-road-to-perdition.
“They didn't know that they were going to be killed in such a brutal
fashion. But toward the end, they began to suspect something like this would
happen, and they maintained their faith. They said their prayers. You could
say: 'Well, what a silly thing!' or 'How stupid!' But I find it, and I think
that many people find it, noble.” - Robert K. Massie
Still, Massie's writing was so realistic that this history became a compelling story and even when one knew exactly how it will end, one finds himself rooting for the family to survive. But of course, they didn't. They still ended up in that basement, got riddled with bullets, were hacked to pieces, burned, thrown into a mine shaft. Jeez, did they have to die that way? Did poor Prince Alexei had to suffer? Then I remembered reading Madame Tussaud and how little Prince Louis of France (Marie Antoinette's son and was supposed to be future king) suffered before he died--which was much, much terrible. At least, Alexei had to suffer for minutes. The little dauphin, sick, cold and hungry, was humiliated, maltreated, not cared for by his captors--for months! Just remembering that history wrenches at the heart! European history seem to be harsh on little boys. The Reign of Terror followed the fall of monarchy in France, remember, wherein millions of French died--royalty, rich, poor--in a kind of witch hunt? The way millions of Russians perished in its Red Terror and White Terror immediately after the killing of the family followed the same blueprint. What's to connect the two? Indecisive king, strong personalities but wrong decisions of the queens, sick dauphin and tsarevich, uneducated and suffering mass that were easily misled by power/fame hungry opportunists, and yes, power/fame hungry opportunists. The result of this mix was already written in history.
I kind of wonder, if we can, you know, throw cable TV, WiFi and cellphones on the mix, what could have happened? Will royal families be better understood by the masses? Will kings be more aware of their subjects' plight? And I shudder as I think how something like these massacres wouldn't have happened during this time and age. Specially in my country (guess I am biased). But then I remember the Maguindanao Massacre--the tinge of politics, power hunger, evilness. And I shudder again.
I digress. Massie's inspiration in writing the story is hemophilia, which his son has contacted. He wanted to know how other families cope when they have a hemophiliac in the family. Alexei is the most famous hemophiliac, even if he's died in 1918 already (The first edition of this book was published in 1967). And that's when Massie found out how this disease had affected not only this family, but Russia. Rasputin by hypnosis (who would have known during that era?) could stop the bleeding, Empress Alexandra became dependent on him. This "holy monk" was saving her son, and noone could fault him in her eyes. She became easily manipulated--he shows her a different face than when he's with others, generally. But people in the outside knew what a sloth, rapist, manipulative little devil he was. But the emperor couldn't get rid of him (RUssia despised Rasputin) because he was worried about his wife's sanity and his sick son. This made the monarchy's already dangerous footing among its people worse and became the weak point that gave the Bolsheviks ground. Suddenly, mass hysteria wanted the monarchy removed. Leaders of the Reds (Bolsheviks-Communists) executed the whole family to make sure noone would be able to contest when they get in power. The family's death was grisly. As were other Romanovs who weren't able to escape the country before the killings. Ultimately, millions more died in the masses. It was a scar in a nation's history that, until now, has not yet healed.
Massie was able to write other "historical-novels" about Russia after Nicholas and Alexandra. He won the Pulitzer for Peter the Great, then The Romanovs: the Final Chapter after the Soviet Union fell and he was able to gain more information about the development about the Romanovs (like has Anastasia survived or what? She didn't. Those who'd claimed to be her or the little tsarevich were pretends. The bones of the princess and the prince were recovered in another site and had been tested by DNA. They matched.) Massie wrote Catherine the Great which was published last year and was another bestseller. What's best about Massie is that he explores each character so deeply, and then writes about them so engagingly, so personally that they "live" on the pages. You get a feel of them. You get to know them and see where they're coming from. As a historical writer, he's unique in that skill. He happens to believe that personalities of key players has much to do with how history happens, in equal or even more so than the events that affect them, so I would guess that this made him root on the characters and the events were just a consequence. Although some have found faults in Nicholas and Alexandra in that Massie was biased in his rendering and his research, since his original goal had been to research more about hemophilia, his leanings has been more about this disease's effect on the last Romanov family in power, and has not given more insight about the Whites. If you want to know more about Bolshevism, click Wikipedia, for example. Because you wouldn't have a full grasp of it in this book. But truly, in light of the information that this book already has in store for the readers, it in itself is a rich read. You'd want to know more about Russian history, for one. If you think you've studied enough in school, you'll be surprised. Statistics can be found through further research. But statistics couldn't give anyone that much depth this book was able to impart about its characters.
Quotes:
“From the Baltic city of St. Petersburg, built on a river marsh in
a far northern corner of the empire, the Tsar ruled Russia.”
"I
dreamed that I was loved, I woke and found it true and thanked God on my knees
for it. True love is the gift which God has given, daily, stronger, deeper,
fuller, purer."
More often, Alexis
played with his sisters or by himself. "Luckily," wrote Gilliard,
"his sisters liked playing with him. They brought into his life an element
of youthful merriment that otherwise would have been sorely missed."
Sometimes, by himself, he simply lay on his back staring up at the blue sky.
When he was ten, his sister Olga asked him what he was doing so quietly. "I
like to think and wonder," said Alexis. "What about?" Olga
persisted. "Oh, so many things," he said. "I enjoy the sun and
the beauty of summer as long as I can. Who knows whether one of these days I
shall not be prevented from doing it?"
Rasputin's eyes were the
foundation of his power, but when they failed him, he was quick to use his
wheedling tongue.
Nowhere was there
greater contrast between the effortless lives of the aristocracy and the dark
existence of the masses than in Russia. Between the nobility and the peasants
lay a vast gulf of ignorance. Between the nobility and the intellectuals there
was massive contempt and flourishing hatred. Each considered that if Russia was
to survive, the other must be eliminated.
History, with all its
sweep and diversity, produces few characters as original and extravagant as
Gregory Rasputin. The source and extent of his extraordinary powers will never
be fully known; the shadow of this uncertainty perpetually will refresh the
legend. The duality of his countenance—the one face peaceful, soothing,
offering the blessings of God; the other cynical, crafty, reddened by lust—is
the core of his mysterious appeal. In his single, remarkable life, he
represents not only the two sides of Russia's history, half compassionate and
long-suffering, half savage and pagan, but the constant struggle in every soul
between good and evil.
Kerensky once said,
"If there had been no Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin." If
this is true, it is also true that if there had been no hemophilia, there would
have been no Rasputin. This is not to say that everything that happened in
Russia and the world has stemmed entirely from the personal tragedy of a single
boy. It is not to overlook the backwardness and restlessness of Russian
society, the clamor for reform, the strain and battering of a world war, the
gentle, retiring nature of the last Tsar. All of these had a powerful bruising
impact on events. Even before the birth of the Tsarevich, autocracy was in
retreat.
Here,
precisely, is the point. Had it not been for the agony of Alexis's hemophilia,
had it not been for the desperation which made his mother turn to Rasputin,
first to save her son, then to save the pure autocracy, might not Nicholas II
have continued retreating into the role of constitutional monarch so happily
filled by his cousin King George V? It might have happened, and, in fact, it
was in this direction that Russian history was headed.
Why Lenin triumphed, why Nicholas
failed, why Alexandra placed the fate of her son, her husband and his empire in
the hands of a wandering holy man, why Alexis suffered from hemophilia—these
are the true riddles of this historical tale. All of them have answers except, perhaps,
the last.
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Synopsis:
