Alexis was no intellectual or aesthete like his brother Vladimir, but rather a plain-speaking, good-natured navy man who could be an interminable bore on the subject of his glorious past days in sailing ships (equally, he would draw a veil over his incompetence as an admiral of the fleet during the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05). In exile, White Russians sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime from afar, and double agents plotted from both sides. Rappaport presents masterful portraits of these refugees… Rappaport not only crafts a lovingly detailed picture of the City of Light, she also fills its parks and cafés and boulevards with an amazing cast of characters. She is also a member of the Royal Historical Society, the Genealogical Society, the Society of Authors and the Victorian Society. There was much gossip about money destined to fund the construction of new battleships and cruisers for the Imperial Navy making its way into Alexis’s pockets during his tenure as commander in chief of the Imperial Fleet—but he was not alone in his brazen siphoning off of money from the treasury; this was but one of many “gigantic swindles” that helped boost the revenues of the unscrupulous Russian grand dukes.

Good-looking, and fairer than Vladimir, Alexis was remembered by Queen Marie of Romania as “a type of the Vikings who would have made a perfect Lohengrin, as Wagner would have dreamed of him. There was a beautiful anecdote in the last chapter of how an ordinary Russian taxi driver survived which showed the phlegmatic mindset, that maybe some of the nobility could have done with early on.

By 1903, having spent some time in Italy, Paul and Olga decided to make a base for themselves in Paris. Throughout the visit security was very tight, for the tsar was the number one target of Russian revolutionaries and anarchists. The police were sent for and, wrapping the grand duke in a tablecloth, put him in a cab to take him to the police station.

Eventually, Alexis transferred his affections and his money to a French-Jewish actress, Elizabeth Balletta, who was popular with the French theater company in St.Throughout the tour the Romanov couple’s every move was closely followed and described in detail in the French press; Alexandra’s fashion sense and beauty were widely commended. Memoirs and literature deftly round out [Rappaport’s] historical reporting to create a vivid picture of the wrenching life change that thousands of Russians underwent … This narrative nonfiction will appeal to those interested in Russian history, especially the Russian Revolution, and to readers of historical fiction by authors like Ken Follett or Marie Benedict. Nicholas had been firm about setting an example; as he told his mother, “In the end I fear, a whole colony of members of the Russian Imperial Family will be established in Paris with their semi-legitimate and illegitimate wives.