Romanovs

On the last Thursday each month I go to the library to meet with a group of women to talk about a book we’ve all read. I enjoy the discussions, but . . .

This month we read “The Romanov Prophecy.” One of the silliest books I’ve ever read!

The novel tells about a conspiracy to restore the Romanovs to the throne in Russia, with a cabal of American industrialists and corrupt Russians conspiring to elect a puppet so they can control the country, a plot which is threatened by a group which has secretly hidden the true successors to Nicholas II. Many murders occur as the hero tracks down the heir of the Czar’s son Alexis, who survived the massacre of Nicholas and Alexandria and their family and who ended up living with his sister Anastasia in secret in North Carolina.

Did you ever read anything more ridiculous?

On the bookshelf in my living room I took down my copy of “The Tragic Dynasty”, subtitled “A History of the Romanovs” by John Bergamini. The last chapter is “The Romanovs Since the Revolution” which tells about all the various relatives of the last Czar who managed to escape Russia when the Bolsheviks took over. According to Bergamini, in 1969, when this book was published, there was a large group of Russian nobility living in New York, where “It is easy to encounter (them) at their church on Ninety-sixth Street.”

According to Bergamini, a successor to the Russian throne was not the buffoon portrayed in “The Romanov Prophecy” but Cyril Vladimirovich, the last Czar’s first cousin, who was proclaimed “Emperor of All the Russias” in France in 1924. “Cyril I” died in Paris in 1938, “leaving his London-educated son the empty title.” This son, “Vladimir has stayed out of the news and quietly celebrated his fiftieth birthday at St. Briac in September, 1967.”

I said it was ridiculous to portray Nicholas’ two youngest children surviving (they didn’t!). But migrating to North Carolina?

Nicholas II’s two sisters, Xenia and Olga, both escaped the Revolution. In 1948 Olga and her husband, Colonel Koulikovsy, moved to a farm in Canada. As an elderly invalid she lived with a Russian family over a barbershop in East Toronto. “Her being invited to appear at a shipboard reception for Queen Elizabeth in 1959 startled her unsuspecting Canadian neighbors.”

Why do readers lap up “historical” novels? Just read history. The truth is often more interesting than any thing a novelist can imagine.