Nicholas and Alexandra
Nicholas and Alexandra
Robert K. Massie
Plot Summary
Historian Robert K. Massie’s historical non-fiction, Nicholas & Alexandra: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (), narrates the lives of Tsar Nicholas II, Russia’s last monarch, and his beloved wife Alexandra. Massie’s portrait of the Russian royal family is notably more sympathetic than previous historians’, focusing on Nicholas and Alexandra’s struggle with their son Alexis’s hemophilia. Starting his working life as a journalist at Newsweek, Massie’s interest in the Romanov family began when his own son, Robert, was diagnosed with hemophilia.
Massie begins his narrative with the ascension to the throne of Nicholas II after his father’s sudden death. On the day of Nicholas’s coronation, many people are killed in riots. Nicholas decides to ignore this tragedy, continuing with the planned celebrations. Massey notes that the Tsar’s inclination to ignore uncomfortable truths—especially about the people he rules—will ultimately prove his undoing.
Massie traces this trait back to the Tsar’s childhood. His father, Alexander III, was harsh and intimidating. Nicholas excelled
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
“A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek
In this commanding book, New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of the Russian empire 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.
Nicholas and Alexandra
Robert Kinloch Massie III () is an American historian, author, Pulitzer Prize recipient. He has devoted much of his career to studying the House of Romanov, Russia's royal family from Massie was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He spent much of his youth in Nashville, Tennessee and currently resides in the village of Irvington, New York. He studied United States and modern European history at Yale and Oxford University, respectively, on a Rhodes Scholarship. Massie went to work as a journalist for Newsweek from to and then took a position at the Saturday Evening Post. In he wrote and published his breakthrough book, Nicholas and Alexandra. Massie was the president of the Authors Guild from to , and he still serves as a council member. While president of the Guild, he famously called on authors to boycott any store refusing to carry Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. His title Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman made The New York Times Best Seller List for
Alexandra Feodorovna
()
Who Was Alexandra Feodorovna?
Alexandra Feodorovna (also known as Alix of Hesse, or Aleksandra Fyodorovna Romanova, among other monikers) was born on June 6, , in Darmstadt, Germany. She married Russian tzar Nicholas II in Unpopular at court, she turned to mystic Grigori Rasputin for counsel after her son developed hemophilia. When Nicholas left for the WWI front, Feodorovna replaced her ministers with those favored by Rasputin. After the October Revolution in , she was imprisoned and shot to death, along with her family, on the night of July , Feodorovna's rule precipitated the collapse of Russia's imperial government.
Background and Early Years
Alexandra Feodorovna was born Victoria Alix Helena Louise Beatrice on June 6, , in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, in the German Empire. The sixth child of Grand Duke Louis IV and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, she was called Alix by her family. Her mother died when she was six and she spent most of her holidays with her British cousins. She was educated by her grandmother, Queen Victoria, and later studied philosophy at Heidelberg University.
Alix met Grand Duke Nicholas Romanov, heir to the Russian
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