Tony Abbott
First Edition: Trim 6.14' x 9.21' Hardback, Black & White, Cream paper, Gloss cover. 635 pages.Within these covers there are three great Public Domain works:Book 1) Paul Vassili was a pseudonym of Princess Catherine Radziwill, the aristocratic wife of a Prussian officer. She experienced the European courts and wrote extensively about them, whilst secretly maintaining her true identity. Two decades later in 1915 she started to write under her true name and when it was safe to announce herself, she did so in a book released in 1918, the one which is included in this volume. She offers a unique look at the Empress and her account is an invaluable version of an investigative account based not only of her experiences but mostly, more than likely, from her sources at the court and the gossip from the aristocratic families.. Her account ever so slightly varies from the official storyline, and although her talent for telling the story shines through, one cannot forget that she was exposed once for publishing untruths.Book 2) Lili von Dehn was no commoner in Russia, despite having no official position at the Imperial Court. She was raised in the French language and had an English governess. Her Russian side emerged during her upbringing at Revivka, a traditional Ukrainian village where she lived under the guardianship of her grandmother. Her release to the wider aristocracy came when she married an Estonian naval officer of German descent, who was serving on the Imperial Yacht Standart. After the marriage in 1907, the Tsarina befriended her but despite such good fortune, Dehn opposed the influence of Rasputin and remained in favour as the only opposer that was not dismissed by the Empress for her criticism of him. Book 3) Anna Viroubova, originally Anna Taneyeva, was a distant cousin of Lili Dehn but had a more immersive upbringing around the Russian court from her early childhood. It’s arguable whom the Empress preferred more and perhaps she viewed them each with the same approbation. Viroubova’s family credentials were much the same as Dehn’s but her exposure gave her the edge and access to the Empress came from her rise in an official capacity as her Lady in waiting, after she was fortuitously pressed in to service as a replacement. Her new appointment also coincided with the first rumblings of mysticism at court when her usefulness to the Empress came as a conduit to the Montenegrin sisters Milica and Anastasia, the mystics Papus and Philippe, the hiermonk Iliodor, and the starets Rasputin - all being the odd characters that populated the space left behind by Father John of Kronstadt’s death in 1909; the Archpriest of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church that had bathed the Empress in countless stories of his miraculous healings that she would cling to in the hope of finding a cure for her son, and in whom Rasputin she saw as his successor. So much could have been answered in this work, about the relationship with Rasputin, but Viroubova holds back it seems.
