The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rapport
Review of The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rapport
The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport (2014). Published by St. Martin’s Press.
For the longest time, I have been obsessed with Russian history. It all started when I was a child, around the age of seven years old, and I used to wander the library constantly for new books to read. And it was in the Young Adult section I discovered the Royal Diaries book series, which took the lives of young influential women around the world in history and made them write diaries. They are indeed fictional, but they presented real girls and women in ways that were accessible to children. The one Royal Diaries book I never, ever forgot was the one of Anastasia Romanov’s, which had come out in 2000, years before her brother Alexei and sister Maria were found in a separate grave. The diary ended I believe only weeks or months before her death, and was my first taste at what Russian history before the Soviet Union had to offer.
I also felt a strange kinship with her at the time, one that only grew when I found out what had happened to her. The Romanovs were killed on the day I was born on, which fed into this strange fascination even more. I was originally interested in only Anastasia, but as I grow older, I find myself more curious about the web of royalty they were surrounded by, from how Alix’s died quite young in the name of her children, and then how Alix herself died in the name of her family. Rappaport had written several books on the subject of the Romanovs, so I trusted her intel, and picked this up at my local library in the history section.
Let’s dive deeper into what I liked about this book.
Content
Right off the bat, this book does something that I think is so brave when recounting the tale of the doomed Romanovs: Rappaport actually doesn’t go into detail about the death of the Romanovs. In her author’s note she discusses this, talking about how she chose to do so because she covered the topic extensively in her other book about the Romanovs, Tragedy at Ekaterinburg, but also because she didn’t want these girls, who were once vibrant and full of life, to be continued to be overshadowed by the circumstances of their death. When many think of the final czar and his family, they think about how it ended. Of murder, of how Alix’s body was sexually assaulted as they looked to destroy the bodies, of an entire family, their servants, and some of their dogs, snuffed out just like that. And how the children survived the onslaught initially and had to watch each other get plucked off one by one.
This isn’t about that. This recollection starts with the story of Alix, how she grew up in Germany with her devoted mother and father, how their own family struck tragedy when her siblings and mother died. Her dear grandmother, Queen Victoria, was someone she was close to, and she grew up in a religious household. Then we learn about how she and the future czar were smitten with each other, and, suddenly, his father died young and she was prematurely whisked away to Russia, the empire that was quickly becoming politically unstable, with any preparation. She was to be married the next week and she was.
And that is where the tale of Alix diverges into the tale of her daughters. We first learn of Olga, as the country weeps when Alix doesn’t have a son. And then Tatiana. The country becomes even more distraught as Alix continues to get pregnant and has two more girls. It is during this time she begins to become increasingly paranoid, resorting to religious men and quacks over science to figure out how to have a healthy son. It is here that we learn that Alix herself is in poor health most of the time, but when she finally has a son, he bleeds for days. Alexei, the future tsar, has hemophilia and the average age for a child with this condition is thirteen years. Aspirin, which was the medication prescribed for hemophilia at the time, actually made the condition worse, making it open for a religious man (cough cough Rasputin) to just say stop taking it and make it seem like a miracle is performed.
We don’t get as much of Alexei in this book, which is fine by me. We learn that Olga is the one who acts like a mother to him, and even how he slaps her across the face once when he gets mad as a preteen. Which is completely not okay because it then describes about how she cried afterwards. We learn that Maria feels isolated in her own family, as Olga and Tatiana, and Alexei and Anastasia, form natural pairs based on age. We learn Anastasia is slightly spoiled and imaginative. I don’t think we hear as much about Tatiana in this one, outside of describing her marriage prospects and how she became the popular one during the war years.
I felt like I really learned a lot about these girls in this book, which is impressive considering my breadth of historical knowledge, especially when it comes to the Romanovs. Often we can recite history and the facts, but these small details made them seem like so much more real people outside of their historical significance. We learn how they are often imprisoned inside of the palace because of their mother’s paranoia, how the world adores them. Then we can connect to how the Russian civilians probably didn’t like this isolation, because the royal family did not come to see their subjects. But then, because the sisters were all born women in a patriarchal society, they are forgotten by the public in favor of the son and only discussed about for their marriage.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a haunting book, that’s for sure. You see the girls on their vacations, how sheltered and naïve they were once. And then it all suddenly came crashing down for them just because of the family they were born into. I knew a lot about Romanov history going into it and I found myself learning new little details, ones that humanized them even further. One could say that this family was one built out of true love and devotion from this book, how Alix and Nicholas II did everything for each other and the family. There was paranoia and fear, and Nicholas should’ve never been tsar. He wasn’t prepared. But history cannot change itself, and here we are.
