Nicholas' wife, Alexandra is not as diplomatic as Minnie and finds herself in a war of wills with Minnie. When her beloved Sasha passes, Minnie's son, Nicholas becomes Tsar. Minnie sees that the government also needs to change. Although, times are changing in Russia and things become dangerous for Minnie and her family. Minnie exceeds in her role and is a driving force within the Russian government. Minnie must adjust to Russia, a new religion and rules of royalty. However, as fate would have it, Minnie marries Nixa's brother, Sasha, Tsesarevich Alexander of Russia, and eventually becomes Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia. When she meets Nicholas Alexandrovich, or Nixa, the Tsarevich of Russia, Minnie is taken. Minnie knows she too must marry and would rather marry for love. Princess Dagmar of Denmark or Minnie is a daughter to Denmark's King Christian IX and sister to Alexandra, who would marry Edward VII and become Queen of the United Kingdom. Gortner sweeps us into the anarchic fall of an empire and the complex, bold heart of the woman who tried to save it. Petersburg and the intrigue-laced salons of the aristocracy to the World War I battlefields and the bloodied countryside occupied by the Bolsheviks, C. As the unstoppable wave of revolution rises anew to engulf Russia, Maria will face her most dangerous challenge and her greatest heartache.įrom the opulent palaces of St. Determined to guide him to reforms that will bring Russia into the modern age, Maria faces implacable opposition from Nicholas’s strong-willed wife, Alexandra, whose fervor has lead her into a disturbing relationship with a mystic named Rasputin. Her husband’s death leaves their son Nicholas II as the inexperienced ruler of a deeply divided and crumbling empire. When resistance to her husband’s reign strikes at the heart of her family and the tsar sets out to crush all who oppose him, Minnie-now called Maria-must tread a perilous path of compromise in a country she has come to love. The winds of fortune bring Minnie to Russia, where she marries the Romanov heir and becomes empress once he ascends the throne. Narrated by the mother of Russia’s last tsar, this vivid, historically authentic novel brings to life the courageous story of Maria Feodorovna, one of Imperial Russia’s most compelling women, who witnessed the splendor and tragic downfall of the Romanovs as she fought to save her dynasty in the final years of its long reign.īarely nineteen, Minnie knows that her station in life as a Danish princess is to leave her family and enter into a royal marriage-as her older sister Alix has done, moving to England to wed Queen Victoria’s eldest son. Even from behind the throne, a woman can rule.

The romanov empress