If I had to pick a favorite historic royal family, I would definitely pick Nicholas II and his family. This was a nuclear family, with no extramarital affairs or scandalous children. They were together until the very end.
No matter how many times I read different biographies or historical fiction books about the last Romanovs, there is a part of me that always, always,
always hopes that they would survive. Like any 90's kid, I watched the animated film
Anastasia, which, even before I knew it was (very loosely) based on real historical events, intrigued me. My return to the Anastasia Romanova's tale was in 7th grade, when I started reading The Royal Diaries series (a historical fiction series from the first-person view of famous royal women as children). I quickly gobbled up everything I could find concerning the Romanovs. Coincidentally, around this time, DNA tests had confirmed that
all Romanov children were accounted for, so from the start of my fascination with them, I always knew that Anastasia had died with the rest of her family.
Some of the books I read were
Anastasia's Secret (complete fluff where Anastasia falls in love with a soldier while in captivity),
The Diamond Secret (a retelling of the Anastasia myth),
The Secret Daughter of the Tsar (complete fictional fluff, but still entertaining)
From Splendor to Revolution, Born to Rule, and
Doomed Queens. I bought
The Lost Crown ages ago, but I never got around to reading it until now.
What I loved about this novel was that, instead of focusing on Anastasia (as so many books do), but split its point-of-view between all four Romanov sisters: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia. The author, Sarah Miller, did an excellent job portraying each sister's personality. What she did best, however, was her vivid description of the Romanov family's time in captivity. It's such a clichè thing to say, but I felt like I was really there. Not even the nonfiction biographies I've read gave me such a clear insight on what it was like during their final days in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg. I was in the car on the way home when I got to the last few pages. Not to sound like a drama queen, but when I reached the last page, which describes the last few minutes before they were executed, I felt like retching. It was especially tragic reading it from Tatiana's PoV, because, she, like her siblings, were innocents. They had no political motives or roles. All they were guilty of was being the children of the tsar (as a side note, I also never believed the tsar to be guilty of much, either. He was incompetent, but who wouldn't be? He was only a few years older than me when he became ruler of 1/4 of the world). I'll stop here, because any more writing about this topic will probably send me into a fit of sobbing. But I'll leave with this passage from the novel, which hints at the legacy their gruesome murders left behind.
