The last empress : the life and times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia /

Consort of Nicholas II, who was removed from the Russian throne by a provisional republican government in 1917, which was itself removed later that year by the Bolsheviks, Empress Alexandra has garnered bad press from her day to the present. In a popular but not unperceptive treatment, King lends sympathetic understanding to the apparently unsuccessful life of this unliked but significant figure. One of Queen Victoria's numerous grandchildren, Alexandra was born a daughter of the grand duke of Hesse; and it is into her girlhood that King delves most tellingly. The aloofness, religious fanaticism, and meddlesomeness for which she became known after marriage to the czar, and which played their decided role in the disintegration of the imperial regime, are seen to have had their roots in the first two decades of her life. Because of the circumstances of her childhood and young womanhood, and the fashion in which she was raised, she failed in her performance as the first lady of Russia. "With each party, each dinner, each reception, the gulf between Tsarina and society widened. With each stumble, each mistake by Alexandra, the criticism grew louder, the gossip more bold. Hurt and insulted, Alexandra stopped entertaining. The dinners, receptions and balls ceased and, one by one, the lights in the Winter Palace went out, leaving its marble halls, and society, in darkness." For all popular history collections. ~--Brad Hooper

Despised by Russia's masses as the heartless ``German Bitch,'' Tsarina Alexandra, consort of Tsar Nicholas II, has been maligned and misunderstood by historians, stresses King in this wonderfully vivid biography. Princess of a grand duchy on the Rhine, and granddaughter of England's Queen Victoria, moody, fatalistic, obstinate, fervidly religious, Alexandra came to Imperial Russia's throne at age 22. Her democratic heritage, rooted in consitutitional monarchy, was quickly jettisoned in her marriage to a man regarded as semi-divine. King, a freelance writer who has mined unpublished archival material in England and Russia, argues provocatively that the Empress put her faith in debauched holy man Gregory Rasputin with good reason, for the evidence points to his uncanny faith-healing powers in alleviating her son Alexei's hemophilia. King further maintains that Rasputin's political influence on the Tsarina has been greatly overestimated; real power lay with her, King concludes, and Alexandra's sway over her husband led to the Romanov's fall. This biography is a worthy companion to Edvard Radzinsky's The Last Tsar. Photos not seen by PW. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In this fascinating biography of Queen Victoria's granddaughter, King thoroughly disscusses Alexandra's childhood in an effort to explain the reserved woman who believed that the tsar had a divine right to rule though her actions actually helped bring about the end of the Russian monarchy. Alexandra married Tsar Nicholas over the strong objections of Victoria, who rightly believed the Russian throne to be unstable. The marriage, a rare royal love match, was a success, but their efforts to rule Russia were disastrous. King quotes extensively from diaries, letters, and contemporary accounts and covers the recent discovery and positive identification of the remains of the tsar and tsarina and three of their five children; the bodies of young Alexei and Anastasia were not found, leaving that famous mystery unsolved. Readable and involving, this book is strongly recommended for popular biography and history collections.-Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline P.L., Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.