The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II [Hardcover]

I've always been interested in the Romanovs, the last rulers of Imperial Russia, and I will usually pick up anything new that has been written about them. One author that has been providing new insights and information about the last Tsar and his family has been Greg King, who has authored three previous works on the Imperial family.

This time, instead of looking just at the personal lives, he recreates the world of magnificent palaces, grand spectacles, weddings, coronations, christenings and funerals, that the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family lived in and their lives in surroundings that were sumptuous, to say the very least. Greg King begins his journey with an overview of the Imperial family, but also the people of the court, from ministers and ladies-in-waiting, right down to the maids, footmen, chefs and nursemaids that cared for the Imperial children.

From there, we see that these people populated palaces of immense splendour, starting with the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo -- The Tsar's Village -- Peterhof, and the palaces in Moscow. A brief history of who built the palaces, what they were used for, and how they were decorated and arranged by Alexandra, along with quite a few ancedotes about them makes for interesting reading. Far from living in grand rooms decorated with gilt and malachite, both Nicholas and Alexandra preferred a rather bourgoisie style, of homey, chintz style, and heavily cluttered, and the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo was more like an English manor than the home of the man who ruled more than a sixth of the globe.

Possessions, of course, filled these palaces, and King takes a look at not just the artistry of Faberge eggs and jewelry by Cartier, but also how the Russian Court dressed and influenced fashion, from the wily tricks of the most famous dressmaker in St. Petersburg -- But I always cut my prices for you, Your Majesty! -- to the private trains that transported the Imperial family from one palace to another, and the two yachts that they used, as well as some rare photographs of the interiors.

A tsar does much more than just merely sign decrees and pack revolutionaries off to Siberia, and the next section goes into the details of the ceremonial lives of the Imperial family -- from religious and military pageantry and reviews, to the intricate planning and details of births, marriages and funerals, along with the coronation ceremonies that marked Nicholas II's ascension to the throne. The the marriage of Nicholas and Alexandra, christening of the long-awaited Tsarevich Alexei, and the funeral of Tsar Alexander III form the backdrop of these ceremonies.

Finally, there are the pleasures that the Romanovs enjoyed. From Imperial balls and the 'Season' that lasted yearly from New Years to the begining of Lent, St. Petersburg's aristocracy, State visits to other countries, and the lush palaces of the Crimea, King goes into fine detail, but refrains from bogging down the reader with unneccesary trivia.

In fact, this massive book of nearly 600 pages moves quite firmly, forming a narrative from memoirs, the family's own diaries and letters, and the massive photographic and film records that were left after the Revolution of 1917. King does not cover the events that occured after the start of World War One, only the declaration of war in 1914, and the later exile and execution of the Romanovs is only hinted at.

At first glance, this may only sound like a pegean of praise and adoration for the last Tsar and his family, but King weaves in the mistakes and blunders that Nicholas and his wife made that would send them from the popularity that they enjoyed in the early years of the reign to the sinister influences of Rasputin, to the self-imposed isolation and dislike that would eventually lead to the Revolution. Much of what King wrote about in his previous biography about Alexandra is brought up, from her extreme shyness and hateur, and her compulsive need to be in control. King refrains from making any judgements, but allows the major players in this tragedy to speak for themselves.

Along with the vivid descriptions, King includes several appendices that have maps of Imperial estates, St. Petersburg, the floor plans of palaces, the structure and organization of the Imperial court, and a genealogical chart of the Romanovs. There are also extensive notes, bibliographies, and an index.

Several inserts of colour photographs are included, and throughout the text, there are quite a few black and white photos. Unfortunately, while many of the photos are of objects and places not usually seen in books on the Romanovs, the quality of the photos leave much to be desired. They tend to be out of focus, blurry, and just plain shoddy reproduction. This is the greatest drawback of the book, and lowers the otherwise excellent quality.

For those who want to know the details of the last Romanovs, and see how they actually lived and moved in their lives, this is an excellent resource, full of entertaining stories, quite a few prophetic moments, and ultimately, an overall pall of oncoming doom. It makes a good ancillary text to the more standard biographies about the Romanovs by Massie, King and Vorres, and for fans of royalty, it's one that is not to be missed.

Greg King has recreated what seemed lost forever: the last court of the Romanovs in pre-Revolutionary Russia. This magnificent volume chronicles the daily lives of Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their children, and the dozens of Grand Dukes and Duchesses so that it becomes a group biography. Much of that material is fairly familiar and accessible. What is much more intriguing is the incredible detail which King provides on the lives of the innumerable courtiers and servants who made the luxurious lives of the Romanovs possible. Anyone who has read anything at all about the last Tsar and his family knows the names of such retainers as Count Freedericksz, Baroness Buxhoeveden, Countess Hendrikov, and Pierre Gilliard, but King gives these loyal servants life by providing biographical details and other descriptions which I would have thought impossible to track down after nearly a century. It makes Nicholas and Alexandra's story so much more real and affecting to know the stories behind the people who spent their lives serving them. There's even a picture and biography of Jim Hercules, the American "Ethiopian" guard who brought the imperial children jars of jelly after he returned from vacations in the US!

Not only are there many previously unknown human stories in The Court of the Last Tsar, there are also fascinating descriptions of the palaces, hunting lodges, yachts, trains, jewels and other possessions of the Romanovs. King's descriptions of room after room filled with magnificent treasures in the Winter Palace, Peterhof, and Tsarskoye Selo are so vivid its like taking a tour led by the most expert of guides. Here again little known details add to the pleasure: Nicholas' yacht "Standart" was actually in active service for the Soviet navy until 1963, for example. King also discusses the Romanovs' vast wealth and the complications involved in administering an income which runs into the tens of millions of dollars in present day funds.

The palaces provided the setting for dazzling ceremonies, and King provides wonderful descriptions of balls, coronations, weddings, funerals, and other festivities. The information is so detailed and complete that I feel that if somehow I could travel back to the Winter Palace in 1900 to be presented to the Tsar and Empress, I would know exactly how to dress, which entrance to use, which halls and rooms to pass through, and how low to bow.

This is a fine book on many levels. Subjects are parsed in sections - Personages, Palaces, Possessions, Pageantry, Pleasures - and the narrative is fluid and distinct. Chapters on the extensive Romanov family are fashioned with critically vivid directness, and the author comes into his own discussing the Romanov palaces. King needn't take a back seat to anyone with respect to understanding architecture and its many-layered meanings. Detailed descriptions of the various Romanov houses gives this book great value both historical and artistic, with a completeness missing in other literature on the subject. Along the way there are some real tidbits - about the emperor's library at the Winter Palace, he reveals that the Imperial Bindery provided the collection of rare volumes with new leather bindings: brown for works in Russian, blue for French, red for those in English, green for German. King reveals that the Chesme room at Peterhof took its name from twelve large canvases by Jacob Philippe Hackaert, depicting the Russian naval victory over Turkey in the Mediterranean in the early 1770s. When Hackaert worked on his commission, the Russian navy actually had a sixty-gun frigate blown up as it lay at anchor, so that the painter might accurately reflect the horrors of battle! The book contains three large sections of beautiful color photos. Unfortunately, a number of interesting photos are in black and white; one especially, the homely Lower Palace at Alexandria, Peterhof, I wish was color, but the photos are pungent and important, with the large color shots reproduced again in b/w miniature on those pages of text germane to them. Especially valuable is a rare photo of mediaeval-inspired Feodorovsky Sobor in the Alexander Park at Tsarkoye Selo, its hipped roofs and vaulted arcades topped with a single onion dome above its chapel. It's a magnificent edifice! Nicholas II, who nursed a love of mediaeval architecture, loved this anachronistic fantasy and commissioned additional buildings in the same style. The book dazzles with details, architectural and otherwise, each chosen with purpose. That purpose, it turns out, is the revealing of Nicholas and Alexandra. Strange as it seems, this book about the material, as it were, of the court of Nicholas II, ends by revealing profoundly the fated couple. Perhaps no other book has opened more deeply the mystery of Nicholas and his Empress. THIS is the real treasure of 'Court of the Last Tsar'. It's not surprising King's reputation for essential scholarship noticably rises. If you've an interest in, or better, a love for Romanov history, this is the book to read. By shaping the discussion around palaces and ceremonies and privileges, the intense mystical humanity of Nicholas and Alexandra comes screaming through - vibrant with tenderness and grief, misunderstood, sacrificial. I'm tremendously moved by this book and you will be too. One of the great mysteries of human history nobly emerges almost, it would seem, by accident. It's transfixing from beginning to end. Greatly, generously, unreservedly recommended reading.