Customer Reviews

The Romanovs 1818-1959: Alexander II of Russia and His Family

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If you've read any of Mr. Van Der Kistes works you will usually find them to be sound bytes rather than a volume filled with information. The Romanovs is a decent book, but hardly worth this price. Mr. Van Der Kiste as usual skims the surface, doesn't even go near his subject matter. He crams a history of a family, into two hundred pages, five generations, and at least 100 members. Some he mentions some he doesn't. And unfortunately it's been done much better. Perry and Pleshakov recently did a very good job with The Flight of the Romanovs. If one is going to tackle such a subject, one should be able to provide information, rather than sound bytes. But this is the fourth book I've read by Mr. Van Der Kiste, and they're all pretty much the same. Lacking in substance.

Focuses on the family and descendants of Alexander II. Primarily concerns secondary members of the Imperial Family. If you are familiar with the Romanovs, you'll enjoy reading about the lives of some of the lesser known family members. The book contains some nice photos of the family. I recommend this book to anyonewho has an interest in royalty.

Mr. Van Der Kiste has once again given the reader a history of a royal family that presents the members as real people and not just historical personages. He also mentions collateral members of the family, not just the czars. Many photos enhance the text. A very enjoyable read.

This novel focuses mainly on Tsar Alexander II, his children, and grandchildren. It also follows the lives of the children from Alexander II's second family with Catherine Dolgoruky. The novel reveals just how many colorful characters the were in the Romanov family besides Nicholas and Alexandra. In my opinion the book really doesn't go into as much depth when it comes to the section on Nicholas II than the ones on his father or grandfather and the last 2 chapters that are supposed to be for Nicholas seem to deal more with his uncle Paul Alexandrovich than with the emperor himself. That aspect of the book is actually kind of refreshing considering the deluge of information on Nicholas II, and by writing less about him may have the author's aim. The section on Alexander III, Nicholas' father, was very revealing seeing as how not much is written about him. The information on Alexander II's youngest child Catherine, by his second wife, was also equally revealing especially her life after the revolution. The book also throws in political information with the personal to create the prevailing moods of the different time periods.

This book on the Romanovs is a good description of the Romanov dynasty in its last century, concentrating primarily on the lives of Tsar Alexander II and his descendants. It does a good job covering the political and military events of the time, but is quite sketchy on the personal lives and characters of the last three Tsars and their relatives. This is a good book to have along with Charlotte Zeepvat's "Romanov Autumn", which covers the same time period but with a more personal slant.

Focuses on the family and descendants of Alexander II. Primarily concerns secondary members of the Imperial Family. If you are familiar with the Romanovs, you'll enjoy reading about the lives of some of the lesser known family members. The book contains some nice photos of the family. I recommend this book to anyonewho has an interest in royalty.

This book, which could have been so beautiful, is a huge disappointment. It reads almost like a list rather than anything engrossing and lacks any feel for or sense of the real people behind the names. The description of Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, for example, is a huge generalization based on rumour and hearsay. This book is nothing like Charlotte Zeepvat's wonderful "Romanov Autumn" which goes deeply into the characters and personalities of the people she describes. Reading this I felt as though Mr. Van der Kiste was merely churning out a book about people for whom he had no respect or with whom he had no empathy at all.

Most Beautiful Princess

Van der Kiste is a prolific author on the subject of modern British and Continental royalty, and this is one of his better efforts. While the Romanovs had ruled imperial Russia since 1613, the male line died out in the mid-18th century. The succeeding Holstein-Gottorp dynasty (a branch of the Oldenburgs), in the person of Peter III, took the Romanov name and produced five more tsars before the Russian monarchy came to an end in 1918. Tsar Paul was idealistic and generous but also vindictive and paranoid, and ultimately was assassinated. Alexander I, a complex and contradictory figure with mystical leanings, was also the most powerful ruler on the Continent after the fall of Napoleon. Nicholas I was a repressive autocrat of limited intellectual ability and was succeeded by Alexander II, a despotic but soft-hearted reactionary, nevertheless emancipated Russia's serfs. He, too, was assassinated, which led his son, Alexander III, to tighten his control of the Russian state. And his son, Nicholas II, was totally incapable of meeting the demands of the job in an age of world war mixed with long-simmering revolution. Moreover, all the tsars in this period married German princesses, which did nothing to endear the ruling family to the Russian people during the Great War. The author does a good job of tracing the psychological threads and social and political environments that formed this disastrous family.

Although you say Alexander II was the last tsar's father, actually Alexander III was, the second was his grandfather who after being blown up by a bomb died right in front of his 13 year old grandson Nicholas II, making him on the spot the new heir and Tsarevich.