The women of Russia’s most famous dynasty tell their stories.

The Romanov dynasty began and ended in civil wars. In the three hundred years between these violent events, each of the dynasty’s women lived under very different circumstances.

Romanova: Women of the Empire, Volume II, begins with Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna. She was a princess of Saxe-Altenberg who fought for a unique patrionymic when marrying into the Russian Imperial Family, rather than being forced into taking the Romanovs’ traditional patrionymic for foreign brides. This volume also tells of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, who established Russia’s first musical conservatory. It tells of Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Nicholas II, who came to Russia as a young Danish bride after losing her first fiancée. Grand Duchesses Xenia Alexandrovna and Olga Alexandrovna, sisters of Tsar Nicholas II, grew up in the last years of Imperial Russia and witnessed the Russian Revolution; here, they tell their stories. Among the other stories in this volume is that of Princess Vera Konstantinovna, who also fled the Revolution and ended up in New York; she lived until 2001 and was the last Romanov to remember Imperial Russia.