Rosemary Crawford (1)

A dual biography of Grand Duke Michael and his wife Natasha - he was the younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II, and was legally Tsar for a day, March 3, 1917. Their marriage was an enormous scandal - Natasha was a divorced woman of much lower legal status, and she was never accepted by other members of the royal family. In particular, the Dowager Empress Marie was adamantly opposited to the match - she was apparently the Queen Mary of her generation. The authors, Rosemary and Donald Crawford, do an excellent job of bringing out the tragic romance behind their union - the tumultuous circumstances of the Russian Revolution separated them, and Michael was murdered by his Bolshevik prison guards in the early summer of 1918. Natasha was also arrested by the Cheka, but she managed to escape to the west. Forced into a vagabond exile in London and Paris, she was depressed as only Russians can be depressed, never forgetting her halycon love, and struggling to pay her bills. She died forgotten and alone in a pauper's hospital in Paris in 1952. I like these royal biographies - evidence of the mutability of human existence, good reminders not to take happiness for granted. Nice summer reading.… (meer)