Alix And Nicky

There are few characters in history about whom opinion has been more divided than the last Tsar of Russia Nicholas II and his wife the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. On one hand they are venerated as saints innocent victims of Bolshevik assassins and on the other they are impugned as the unwitting harbingers of revolution and imperial collapse blamed for all the ills that befell the Russian people in the 20th century. Theirs was also a tragic love story; for whatever else can be said of them there can be no doubt that Alix and Nicky adored one another. Soon after their engagement Alix wrote in her fiances diary: Ever true and ever loving faithful pure and strong as death" - words which met their fulfilment twenty-four years later in a blood-spattered cellar in Ekaterinburg. Through the
letters and diaries written by the couple and by those around them Virginia Rounding presents an intimate penetrating and fresh portrayal of these two complex figures and of their passion - their love and their suffering. She explores the nature and possible causes of the Empresss ill health and examines in depth the enigmatic triangular relationship between Nicky Alix and their favourite Ania Vyrubova protegee of the infamous Rasputin extracting the meaning from words left unsaid from hints and innuendoes. The story of Alix and Nicky of their four daughters known collectively as OTMA and of their haemophiliac little boy Alexei is endlessly fascinating and Rounding makes these characters come alive presenting them in all their human dimensions and expertly leading the reader into their
vanished world."