Russia went to war in 1914 — and it destroyed the monarchy. Soldiers had no rifles, cities had no bread, and Tsar Nicholas II ...

As the last surviving royal in the Soviet Union, it would have made sense for Natalia Androsova to keep a low profile. Instead, she became a vertical motorcycle performer. Princess Natalia Androsova, ...

The most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution -- that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family -- may ...

The Romanov family had a skeleton in the closet. However, that 'skeleton', Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich, was alive, willful and a constant threat to the reputation of the royal family – so much ...

One-hundred thirty-six years ago, Tsar Alexander III of Russia commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé to create a jeweled egg as an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna. It was meant to be a ...

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived an inept king and a scorned queen (versions vary; in some she may be wicked, insane, abominable, all of the above). They needed an heir, but ...

From 1613 until the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia was ruled by tsars and tsarinas of the Romanov Dynasty. In total, there were 18 Romanov rulers, starting with Michael Romanov. Tsar Michael I, ...

Two books, one word: rebel. But the books’ three subjects were not rebels as we would think of them. They were the ill-starred wives of European dynasties, and their lives look even less appealing ...

Author Kathryn Harrison is best known for her 1997 memoir, The Kiss, an eerie book, somehow both passionate and dispassionate, about a shocking subject: her love affair with her own father. To turn to ...