Customer Reviews

Once a Grand Duchess: Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II

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This book is the first full length biography of Tsar Nicholas II's sister Xenia. Xenia is less well known than her brothers Nicholas and Michael or her younger sister Olga, whose biography/memoir The Last Grand Duchess by Ian Vorres, was published in 1964 and recently republished in paperback. Part of the reason for this is that Xenia was the "good girl" of the Romanov family. She married young to her cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and raised a family that included one daughter and six rambunctious boys. She was not a rebel like Olga or Michael, both of whom had very public marital difficulties and tended to be embarrassments to the Tsar before the Revolution. Nor was she in the spotlight like the Tsar and his family, so that her life was exhaustively chronicled. She and her husband Sandro married for love, later fell out of love and conducted discreet affairs with others, and in general lived quiet lives. During the Revolution they escaped to their palace in the Crimea where they lived until rescued in 1919. From then on Xenia lived quietly, mainly on the charity of her cousin King George V of England, until her death in 1960. She seems primarily to be of interest because she was the Tsar's sister and the mother-in-law of Prince Felix Yussoupov, one of Rasputin's murderers.

This book tends to be a bit dull because there is very little first hand information that come directly from Xenia. We never get the full names of her lover or lovers, for example. Much of what we are told is extrapolated, for instance we are told that Xenia was shocked by Rasputin, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever met him! (Olga's memories of Rasputin are among the most compelling sections of The Last Grand Duchess). Because there seems to be so little real information about Xenia's own personality, the authors spend an inordinate amount of time on unnecessary details, like for example, who her visitors were on her birthdays and what they wrote to her in letters (Few of Xenia's own letters seem to have been located and used.)

So this is a fairly interesting book with some new details about Xenia's life and family, but by reading it you are not going to feel that you knew her or have any real sense of what she was like as a person.

Grand Duchess Xenia is usually a shadowy figure in most books about the Romanovs. She usually gets a mention as Nicholas 2nd'sister and will appear in some of the family portraits, along with a mention that she spent the years after the revolution in a grace and favour flat in London. Past this information is usually scanty.

This is the first full biography of Xenia's life. The first section dealing with her life as a member of the imperial family in Russia is not terribly enlightening. This is probably a reflection of lack of documentation available, and the fact that Xenia was naturally a shy and retiring person.

Where this book comes into it's own and provides masses of new information is in dealing with Xenia (and the Royal families) experience in the Russian revolution and in her life in exile after the revolution. Xenia became the hub of a large family and the focal point of many émigrés in her long exile and this book brings that into focus at last.

This book also has a pile of new Romanov illustrations, though sadly missing any of Xenia in all her court finery, we do get to see photos her large extended family at last.

This book is actually a UK publication, and can be bought cheaper at amazon.co.uk

If you are interested in the life of the Romanov survivors after the revolution this a book worth buying.

I was fascinated to read this new book about such an obscure character. After so many Nicholas and Alexandra books, this made a pleasant change. The authors have done well to access the Hoover Institute Archives and also get what was probably the last interview with the Queen Mother before her death in 2002. An essential read for any Romanov devotee!

I have read other books by Van der Kiste and always found them to be of interest and quality. This collaboration with Coryne Hall is a must read book.

Anything to do with the Romanovs has interest and appeal but this book comes from a different angle. It looks at the downfall of the Romanov Dynasty and the lives of the surviving members of the family. The book concentrates on the Grand Duchess Xenia, the younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II. Although this period in history has been well documented, nothing has been written about Xenia before. This gives a very different perspective to the norm.

This is a book full of detailed descriptions of the lifestyle of the Russian aristocracy prior to the revolution. I found this very helpful in setting the scene for what was to come.
Much new material was found and researched. Thirteen boxes of archive material were found in the Hoover Institution, among them Xenia's diaries covering the Rasputin affair and the Tsar's abdication. As a point of interest, the late Queen Mother provided some insights into Xenia's life in Britain in what proved to be her last ever interview.

The authors take us from the opulence and magnificence of her childhood in Russian palaces through to her death in exile in England at the age of eighty five.
Xenia was no stranger to personal heart ache, and the book deals with the Rasputin saga and the downfall of the Romanovs. Her son in law was involved with Rasputin's murder which caused her some angst. She was increasingly exasperated by her sister in law the Empress Alexandra, who seemed to her, to be bringing disaster on them all. For months Xenia did not know what had happened to her brother the Tsar, and eventually rumours of execution began to circulate. One can barely imagine what she must have felt when the appalling truth came to light.

This wonderful book covers in lavish detail the life of the Russian Imperial family immediately before and after the revolution,it is also an excellent insight to the problems faced by the Romanovs in exile.

There are 75 plates, many of which have not been seen previously, the quality and quantity of the research was self evident. The text brought the family to life and I was especially struck by the quiet dignity of Xenia.
The book is beautifully laid out and has detailed family trees at the beginning of the book, which are very interesting. Unlike some historical biographies this book is not at all heavy going. I could barely put it down.

I cannot recommend this book enough. If you already have an interest in the Russian Revolution you will be captivated, as I was. If not, I can think of no better place to start.
The authors should be very proud of themselves- my best read of the year so far.

A bland presentation of facts, most of which have been better told elsewhere, and almost devoid of anything approaching incision or deduction. It is as though the authors contracted to write this bio before investigating its subject, and, obligated, proceeded to do as formulaic and polite a job as possible. There is neither insight nor color here. Xenia may well have been as uninteresting a woman as herein conveyed (odds are that she was), but her circumstances -- both before and after the Revolution -- were altogether otherwise. The prime fault of this book is its utter lack of delving, into Xenia as an individual or the world in which she moved as either Grand Duchess or exile. Facts are of the "guest list at birthday parties" variety; speculation is non-existent; conclusions vague; deductions passed up in favor of bloodless recitation of names or dates. A woman of little insight or imagination? probably. A woman of great discretion? undoubtedly; but a biographer ought to plunder that discretion, or take up another profession. The subject of the "last" Romanovs, their milieu and personalities is best investigated by reading the myriad memoirs published immediately after 1918 (when exiles were forced to sing for their suppers), and by researchers who neither shrink from stirring up imperial dirt nor who run the danger of permitting it to dull the very lustrous, fascinating colors of a vanished world. Van der Kiste & Hall have written a slight, superficial and tedious book (accompanying photos no better). Perhaps Xenia merited that, but her situation, surely, did not. Stick with her husband's volumes of memoirs; he may have had his own ax to grind, but knew how to tell a ripping good tale & pepper it with vivid, sardonic, informative detail.

Xenia seems so little-known, and Van der Kiste and Hall have done a wonderful job in rescuing her from obscurity. I was interested in criticisms made by other reviewers on this site. She was clearly not a dominant personality, but as one of the survivors her story was worth telling, and it makes a pleasant change from the endless Tsar Nicholas tomes. The detailed account of her later life may have been something of a comedown after what went on before, but it's a story that needs to be told - and the authors have told it very well.

Lots of new info and great insight on HIH Grand Duchess Xenia.As someone at the centre of the romanov family her observations are especially salient.A must read for devotees of the Russian imperial family.

Grand Duchess Ksenia Aleksandrovna has been horrible neglected in history. She was a very important figure in the story of the last Romanovs, especially considering she was the Tsar's first sister! I thouroughly enjoyed the book, because it has opened the door to Xenia's life, which had been closed for so long. Now perhaps more "biographists" will become interested in HIH's life and more books will be written on her, divulging even more of her intriguing life and showing even more photographs of her which are nearly impossible to find.I was quite satisfied with the book, because it was the first one on her, and it can't be expected to be the greatest biography ever written. Like I said, it was a door-opening biography. If you're interested in the lives of the last Romanovs, this would be a very good book to read. It gives an entire other perspective to the Russian Revolution and the last Imperial Family.

At last someone has brought Xenia; out of the "shadows"; of her imperial brother and his family..The author has taken the facts and wove his usual interesting approach; to this little known Grand Dutchess. A thoroughly enjoyable book that opens the door to glimpses; not only to Xenia; but to her royal relations thru-out Europe..Hopefully as more archives are opened and studied; more will be written about this most interesting Grand Dutchess..

This is a good is somewhat ploddy read. Most Romanov books focus on Nicholas II and family, so it's refreshing to read about another family member. Very scholarly book with several pictures.