My new book (first draft completed – yesss!) is about Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovich, daughter of Tsar Alexander III and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna. formerly Princess Dagmar of Denmark.
She was the youngest in a family of three boys and two girls. Most of her youth was spent in the palace of Gatchina with her brother Michael, living an extraordinarily modest and happy life with their father, who enjoyed simple pleasures. Meanwhile, their mother, with the three older children, spent those same months in St. Petersburg, enjoying the balls and parties as a leading light of society. Despite their differences in tastes and lifestyle, the Tsar and Tsarina had a happy marriage.
It’s hard not to sympathize with Olga. She was intent on remaining in Russia instead of being forced to marry a foreign prince and live in a strange land with a different language and faith, such as Germany – the fate of many European princesses. When Prince Peter of Oldenburg proposed, she accepted without giving the matter much thought. Prince Peter was not an attractive man, but although the Oldenburgs were originally from Germany, they had lived in Russia for many generations. He fit the criterion.
Prince Peter was not a great catch. He gambled his way through much of her fortune and was a hypochondriac; alas for Olga’s longing to have children, he was a homosexual. Their marriage remained unconsummated until it was annulled by the Pope fourteen years later.
Not to worry. Olga wasn’t entirely without a love life. More later.
DIGGING INTO THE PAST 