After the revolution, civil war between the Bolshevik “Red” army and the anti-Bolshevik “White” Russian forces broke out in June. By July, the White army was advancing on Yekaterinburg.

Everything is turned upside down at once,’ he wrote to one of his best friends. 'Absolute power disrupts everything. It is impossible for me to enumerate all the madness' in a country that had become 'a plaything for the insane.’” (p. 266) Certainly, Montefiore has a way with words. For example, when discussing the many enemies of Empress Alexandra (wife of Nicholas II), he states that they libelously “depicted a traitorous German pornocracy with naked lesbian hellions Alexandra and Anna [Vyrubova] in thrall to Rasputin’s throbbing phallus.” At another point, he gives a great thumbnail sketch of Mikhail Kutuzov, bête noire of Napoleon: Amongst these 18 Romanovs, a few are incredibly famous, including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I, and the last one is Tar Nicholas II. The Romanov Empire was put to an end by the Bolshevik revolutionaries. Still the relation between Alexander and Napoleon is very interesting and dramatic in twist and turns, with Moscow burning and Paris occupied in the eb and flood of fortunes of Russia. I can finally see why War and Peace would choose to focus on this period.Alexander his sons Nicolas and Konstatin fighting to not be emperor after his death is also interesting, the burden of ruling seems to become much larger after the excess under Peter and Catherine. Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions, albeit taking place under the intimidating shadow of a massive Stalinist portico." The National While the book does indeed provide facts of interest I feel the author all too often sensationalizes, emphasizes the bad over the good and has excessive details on the sexual behavior of not only of the Romanovs but also every darn person mentioned. I really don't need to know the size of Rasputin's penis. Seriously, given the amount of details pertaining to sex, a more appropriate title might be: The Sex Lives of the Romanovs and Their Compatriots 1613-1918. I am kind of joking but there is also a message to be taken note of. The mix of historical facts and the pronounced emphasis on sex is just plain weird. In any case a prospective reader should be warned. The sex is not graphic, but excessive and unnecessary. I’m just puzzled as to why the French-educated Romanovs had not learned from the downfall of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

In general I feel that the Revolutions podcast about the Russian revolution is much more in depth/helicopter view than this book: Mystery Solved: The Identification of The Two Missing Romanov Children Using DNA Analysis, PLoS One. Alexandra was unwell, so she asked for a chair to have a seat. Tsar Nicholas II also asked for one but not for himself but for his only son, who was just 13 at that time. They were supplied the chairs, and they had to wait there. Then a group of 11 or 12 armed men entered the cellar. What took place next was something no one had ever imagined.

7. The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children (Awards) by Candace Fleming

acceptance of most historical sources at face value rather than querying the interests and biases of those who wrote them At time of writing the book seems to have done the main thing I expected from it, improved my sense of the personalities of various Russian monarchs. I never wanted to hear this much about Nicholas and Alexandra. (It confirmed just how unsuited to rule they were, at most they should have been some middling aristos on a country estate - suburbanites, even - and also unfortunately made their personalities, which I'd only had a hazy sense of previously, less likeable as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless the family's strength of character after being deposed may be admired.) But it was probably a good thing I heard more about the international politics leading up to the First World War (which I'd never been interested enough to look into otherwise). With much of the book being about personality and atmosphere rather than a bombardment of facts (though there was more regular, precise info in the early twentieth century material) it worked well as audio. Perhaps the book’s wide scope, covering all of the Romanovs, makes it difficult to achieve adequate depth. The Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean and Balkan Wars, the Russian Revolution and the First World War are all, albeit cursively, covered. Below I have recommended books by Robert K. Massie, but also George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I should be mentioned. I gave it 4 stars. occasional embarrassing problematic phrasing (Did he really use that adjective about Pushkin? What was that he said about women and binge drinking? And how does the latter fit with the author being married to one of the Palmer-Tomkinson sisters - socialites famous for their partying in the 90s.)

Alexandra—with a brusque demeanor and distaste for Russian culture—was disliked by most of the Russian people. Her German ancestry and her devotion to Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin contributed to her unpopularity. She believed the self-proclaimed holy man could cure her son Alexei’s chronic illness. About the layout of the book: the content structuring is almost written as if it were a play. There are three acts (Rise, Apogee, and Decline). Each chapter in the three segments is introduced by The Cast. This lists the main people, Courtiers, and everyone else relevant to what you're about to read. The author includes helpful family trees, maps, and three clusters of photographs. The story of Catherine the Great and Potemkin is largely a story of sex, though there was also much armed conquest at the time, including major campaigns in Ukraine where Mariupol, Kherson and Odessa were founded. Catherine and Potemkin were ravenously libidinous. With Potemkin usually serving as both lover and pimp; that is, securing handsome young men for her from his armies. At the end of a given lover’s tenure, usually a few years, Catherine pensioned him off with thousands of rubles and serf-laden estates. Then she moved onto the next. But it must also be said that she loved; the young men weren’t simply diversions, though they were surely that too. A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption, it transcends boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint Stalin in such a way to make the reader quake with fire is matched by talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy, the parents…. A gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013. ” NY Journal of Books Montefiore covers the 304 years of the Romanov line of tsars from 1613 to 1917. His presentation gives us a different perspective than that provided by individual biographies. We are able to judge the individual tsars and empresses in the context of the traditions they inherited and the flow of history. We see how each dealt with similar circumstances. We learn how the differing personalities, capabilities and temperament of each autocrat changed history. From the pinnacle of the bold ruthless Peter the Great to the nadir of the abysmally weak Nicholas II.But again here the book choses to focus on the lover of emperor Alexander II, with him being in his mid 40’s and she 18, and him having first met her at 11. I felt great sympathy for Nicholas and Alexandra after reading this. I mean, he was the worst tsar ever. The worst. He never should have been in a leadership position of any kind, and he was barely even trying to rule, even during the war. He was a racist, an anti-Semite, and kind of an idiot, but he could have muddled along quite nicely in life as a devoted husband and father, if only he hadn't been put on a throne. But he was. He had no training, no specific education, and everyone knew he would be a terrible ruler, but they crowned him anyway because the DYNASTY MUST GO ON. And Alexandra was a hot mess as well. Yeesh. Together and separately they were responsible for many horrible deaths, and so much sorrow. But nobody, and I mean NOBODY deserves to be trapped in a cellar with their CHILDREN and shot approximately 1,000 times. NOBODY. As I grew, I continued to write stories. But I never really thought of becoming an author. Instead, I went to college where I discovered yet another passion—history. I didn't realize it then, but studying history is really just an extension of my love of stories. After all, some of the best stories are true ones — tales of heroism and villainy made more incredible by the fact they really happened.