◎ Yang Yanqian
Regarding the last 14 days of the Romanov family's life in Yekaterinburg, and the mystery of their deaths, I believe that friends who know Russian history have read countless versions. The last Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, four grand dukes in their prime, Olga, Taziana, Maria and Anastasia, as well as the young Crown Prince Alexei, who was suffering from hemophilia, died under machine gun fire, and their bodies were randomly discarded in the mine.
Because the bodies were so badly damaged that later generations could not even count the number of eventual deaths, from 1920 in Berlin, countless impersonators appeared, trying to convince the world that they were one of the four sisters, and miraculously escaped in the final bloodbath.
However, modern rigorous scientific analysis, together with DNA tests collected in the Kopchachi Forest in 2007, points to the fact that all four daughters of the Tsar were killed in the atrocity and that no one survived.
At the time of his death, the oldest Olga was 23 years old, while the youngest Anastasia was 17 years old.
"Nobody wants them but their parents"
"The Tsar has one more pleasure, but it is almost impossible to satisfy," the British newspaper reported in 1897, "the Queen yesterday added another daughter to the Tsar, which will not satisfy a monarch who prays for a son and heir to the throne." ”
Then the major newspapers began to imagine Nicholas's frustrated look and resentment of the Queen's Anglo-German ancestry (she was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England), and these evil slanders and rumors would accompany the royal family for a long time, until the birth of the young Crown Prince Alexei in 1904.
In fact, Nikolai was not disappointed, and he greeted the arrival of his second daughter happily like any ordinary father, writing in his diary: "The second bright, happy day in our family life... This little daughter is so cute, she and her mom are like two peas in a pod! Her mouth was small, so pretty. ”
Just as Nikolai loved his wife, he selflessly loved his four daughters and gave them the best education possible: English, French, German, Russian history, European history, arithmetic, everything. It can be said that even without the arrival of Crown Prince Alexei, any of his daughters would have emulated Catherine II and were competent to administer the empire.
But obviously, the Russian people do not think so. The queen repeatedly gave birth to daughters to ignite the fire of superstition, and after the birth of the third daughter Maria, some began to see the marriage without a male heir as a precursor to the decline of the Romanov dynasty, and there was even speculation that Nikolai had "associated himself with a Russian legend" that the childless tsar would be replaced by another tsar destined to occupy Constantinople.
In fact, under heavy pressure, Nikolai gave his wife a cardiotonic agent—"How dare I complain a little, having such happiness in this world, having you like a treasure, dear Alex, and now there are three little angels." I am grateful from the bottom of my heart for God's blessing and for giving you to me. It has given me heaven and a peaceful and happy life. ”
If Nicholas II was politically weak, he must have been a strong and resolute patriarch when he was trying to maintain the dignity of the small family.
"Sun, clouds, sky, rain"
Circulating rumors affected the family's life, especially Empress Alexandra, who had been weak since she was a teenager. In order to keep these injuries away from his family, Nikolai took his family to live for many years on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, in the isolated imperial village of Alexander Palace.
This habit became even more necessary when it became known that little Alexei had hemophilia. This "European royal disease" weakened the only successor to the Romanov dynasty and faced various death threats from infancy. Such news must not be known to the outside world!
Therefore, few people know the true face of the four Romanov sisters. For a long time, the public could only see the four sisters from the photos on the holiday cards — dressed in white embroidered linen skirts with blue ribbons tied to their heads, showing sweet smiles. Such images have always been distant and solidified, with Nikolai and his wife isolating their daughters from society, and no one knows that they have gradually grown into girls with very different personalities.
But perhaps related to the environment in which they grew up, they all became religious, simple people. Before Alexei was born, people liked to call Olga the "Little Queen" because she would greet the guards as they passed. She had a sincere, mature temperament, always the smartest one, and loving, sensitive to the situation of those who were less fortunate.
On one occasion, she drove through the streets of Poland, surrounded by poor peasants kneeling on the side of the road, which made Olga feel very uncomfortable, and begged the female officials to let them not do so. Another time after Christmas, Olga saw a little girl crying on the side of the road, and she shouted excitedly: "Santa Claus may not know where she lives." Then she threw her doll at her—"Don't cry, little girl." Here's a doll for you. ”
When they play games, they have to come up with a word, olga always thinks of "the sun, the clouds, the sky, the rain or something that belongs to heaven" because it makes her feel very happy.
The second daughter, Taziana, was unusually beautiful, with snow-white skin and deeper blue eyes than her sisters. When Taziana found out that her lady, Miss Ig, was out working for money, she came to her room the next morning, slipped into the duvet and hugged her, and said, "Anyway, this is at least not your reward." ”
The third daughter, Maria, who had large, beautiful blue eyes, had been the dream lover of her cousin Lord Mountbatten, who had dreamed of marrying her home from the first time he had met her until he was assassinated in 1979, with a picture of Maria at his bedside.
Maria was such a straightforward, likable girl who always showed affection for others—she was "willing to shake hands with any court servant and would exchange kisses with the cleaning maid or peasant woman she had met by chance." She once saw a group of scouts walking by from the window of the Winter Palace, and she cried out, "Oh, I love these lovely soldiers, I want to kiss them all over again!" ”
The youngest daughter, Anastasia, is a "little devil", the most difficult of the sisters to deal with. If you tell her not to climb a tree, she will definitely climb a tree, and at a young age she shows a sense of complete rebellion. It is conceivable that if she had grown to be old enough to marry, she would not have married some European prince arranged by her parents—unless she herself liked it.
"Where it starts and ends"
In the early hours of July 17, 1918, nikolai's family was unexpectedly awakened by the captors and told to be moved to the basement to escape the infestation of artillery fire, and they silently obeyed. Nikolai and his wife, his five children, and some heartfelt servants lined up neatly and walked quietly down the stairs, "without tears, without sobs, without doubt."
Alexander Palace, where the Tsar and his wife once lived, was open to the public at about the same time. To the surprise of tourists, this simplely decorated house turned out to be the residence of the "richest man in the world". In any case, this was the place where Olga, Taziana, Maria and Anastasia were born and raised, and they spent most of their lives here, and there are traces of girls learning and living everywhere.
Piles of exercise books on the desk, each cover framed with pictures of family and friends; small brushes, jewelry boxes, combs on the dresser; gospels, crosses, and candles by the bed.
There were also many clothes and skirts in the closet, and the wide-brimmed hats were neatly tucked away in boxes, as if they would come back at any moment. There were also half boxes in the hallway outside, something for the girl who had not had time to be taken away.
When the four young grand dukes left, many of the servants of the past and those who had dealt with them secretly prayed that they would find an ordinary sweetheart in the exile and live an ordinary but happy life.
In The Daughters of the Last Tsar, the British writer and historian Helen Rapaport portrays the lives of the sisters in detail, recreating the wisdom and joys of four girls through letters, diaries and private records, who did not know the tragedy that was bound to come, and only lived seriously and lovingly.
The revolution is like a fire, and no one can take care of the last decency of the Russian royal family. Nicholas II's political cowardice and incompetence no longer allowed him to assume the role of the beloved "little father" in the hearts of commoners—as tsar, he was indeed a loser—but few mentioned that he had been a tolerant, doting husband, a qualified father who had placed family life at the center, the most fatal mistake a man born into the Romanov family and who had become in power could have made.