Confessions of a Ci-Devant: Missing Royals and Murder Mysteries

I am in the middle of reading a book about the infamous Anna Anderson case, The Resurrection of the Romanovs (which I hope to review this month!) and I came across an interesting post by Gareth Russell about the enduring legacy of the survival of Anastasia and the persisting  'romance' of other survival stories that found their beginninigs in the secreative deaths of royal children.

Missing Royals and Murder Mysteries: Anastasia and the Allure of Romance

All four of these young royals – Edward V, his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Louis XVII and Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia – disappeared in times of turmoil and secrecy. Richard III could not reveal what he had done with the boys, or allowed to be done to them, without fears of toppling his own regime. The French Republic felt that drawing attention to the appalling treatment the little boy had suffered in jail would only inflame royalist sympathies and the fledgling Bolshevik movement were concerned that Kaiser Wilhelm II would back-out of his recent truce with them if he discovered what had happened to his cousins. The myths about their survival are therefore perfectly explicable by a process of historical logic: initially, no one knew exactly what had happened to them which led to them speculating about possible explanations. I suspect, of course, that it’s more than that and that the reason why so many people believed, or believe, in these fantastic tales of  imperial survival is because the allure of fairy stories never quite leaves us – however hard we try. We want to believe in royal glamour, excitement, danger and happily-ever-afters. We want to believe, I suppose, in some form of magic.

 What do we do with these stories, though, once we know they’ve been disproved?

Read more.

Featured Book: An Imperial Concubine's Tale by G.G. Rowley

Who doesn't love a bit of unique history? I'm a big fan of "hidden" history (as this blog would suggest!) and this upcoming title from Columbia University Press certainly fits the bill. An Imperial Concubine's Tale: Scandal, Shipwreck, and Salvation in Seventeenth-Century Japan by G.G. Rowley is the tale of a scandalous imperial concubine who finds herself banished, shipwrecked, and thrust into an entirely new life.

Amazon.com description:

Japan in the early seventeenth century was a wild place. Serial killers stalked the streets of Kyoto at night, while noblemen and women mingled freely at the imperial palace, drinking saké and watching kabuki dancing in the presence of the emperor's principal consort. Among these noblewomen was an imperial concubine named Nakanoin Nakako, who in 1609 became embroiled in a sex scandal involving both courtiers and young women in the emperor's service. As punishment, Nakako was banished to an island in the Pacific Ocean, but she never reached her destination. Instead, she was shipwrecked and spent fourteen years in a remote village on the Izu Peninsula, before being set free in an amnesty. Returning to Kyoto, Nakako began a new adventure: she entered a convent and became a Buddhist nun.

Recounting the remarkable story of this resilient woman and the war-torn world in which she lived, G. G. Rowley investigates aristocratic family archives, village storehouses, and the records of imperial convents to re-create Nakako's life from beginning to end. She follows the banished concubine as she endures rural exile, receives an unexpected reprieve, and rediscovers herself as the abbess of a nunnery. As she unravels Nakako's unusual tale, Rowley also profiles the little-known lives of samurai women who sacrificed themselves on the fringes of the great battles that brought an end to more than a century of civil war. Written with keen insight and genuine affection, An Imperial Concubine's Tale tells the true story of a woman's extraordinary life in seventeenth-century Japan.

Featured Book: The Salem Witch Trials by Marilynne K. Roach

I admit, like many people, that I have a certain fascination with some rather depressing and even gruesome aspects of history. I remember reading about the Salem Witch Trials when I was a young girl and was always fascinated by the sense of mob hysteria that took over th etown. A few years ago I purchased The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach to help refeed my childhood fascination. The book is about what you would expect from the title--a day by day account of life in Salem as well as the nearby towns and villages, including (of course) the proceedings of the witch trials. Although I've had this book for a few years, I've yet to get through it... it is very, very thorough. Below is an excerpt of one of the smaller 'entries' included in the book.

September 9th, 1672; Friday; Salem Town

The Grand Jury heard testimony concerning Giles Corey. The court had summoned witnesses to testify about him and his wife, but if he were scheduled to stand trial today, he did not cooperate. Although pleading innocent to all the indictments as they were read, he refused to answer when asked the formality of how he would be tried. Giles was expected to answer "By God and my country." Until he spoke those precise words, his case could not proceed. This situation, despite his not-guilty plea, was technically known as a "standing mute" and, under English law, was punishable by [pressing under heavy weights] until he cooperated. ... The court postponed Giles Corey's trial.

Featured Book: Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith

 Lately, I've been on a little bit of a Russian history kick. And since I've always, like many people, had a fascination with revolutions and the concept of "fallen aristocracy," I thought that this upcoming book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux looked particularly interesting.

Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith recounts the story of the aristocrats of Russia, many of whom found their homes burned, their wealth and liveliehoods lost, and even their lives threatened--or ended.

From Amazon.com: 

Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin’s Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries’-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia.

Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called “former people” and “class enemies”—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted   dddby the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on.

Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia’s most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.

Former People is due to be released on October 2, 2012.