Four Sisters - The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses

Helen Rappaport

Macmillan

2014

512 páginas

17h 4m

ISBN-13: 9780230768178

On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only seventeen. Together with their parents and their thirteen-year-old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias.

Much has been written about Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their tragic fate, as it has about the Russian Revolutions of 1917, but little attention has been paid to the Romanov princesses, who – perhaps inevitably – have been seen as minor players in the drama. In Four Sisters, however, acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport puts them centre stage and offers readers the most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Drawing on their own letters and diaries and other hitherto unexamined primary sources, she paints a vivid picture of their lives in the dying days of the Romanov dynasty. We see, almost for the first time, their journey from a childhood of enormous privilege, throughout which they led a very sheltered and largely simple life, to young womanhood – their first romantic crushes, their hopes and dreams, the difficulty of coping with a mother who was a chronic invalid and a haeomophiliac brother, and, latterly, the trauma of the revolution and its terrible consequences.

Compellingly readable, meticulously researched and deeply moving, Four Sisters gives these young women a voice, and allows their story to resonate for readers almost a century after their death.

Resenhas (1)

4.5 (Muito bom)

Depois de ler Romanov (da Nadine Brandes) eu fiquei com vontade de ler a real histórias das irmãs Romanov, e esse livro foi muito bom. Ele começa com o nascimento da mãe delas, a imperatriz Alexandra Feodorovna, e vai até o dia em que a família é executada. Eu gostei do foco na vida familiar, o retrato do que as crianças gostavam de fazer, o que escreviam nos seus diários, e etc. Nós ouvimos muito falar dos Romanov como personagens históricos, mas esse livro traz a parte humana deles, o que achei bem legal.