The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II

Review\nPraise for The Court of the Last Tsar\n"Any book by Greg King is a book to be kept and savored. He has not only given us a fresh, clear-eyed, and often startling new look at the life of the last Romanovs, but also lived up to the promise of his title. He has shown us how the whole enterprise worked, from Tsar Nicholas to his lowest cook and chambermaid. This book is a great work of scholarship—and a wonderful read."
—Peter Kurth, author of Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra and Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson\n"A mammoth, monumental achievement. No other book captures the essence and the entire scope of life at the court of Nicholas II. It's a thoroughly enjoyable and encyclopedic masterpiece that will be a major source for historians and biographers for years to come."
—Marlene A. Eilers, author of Queen Victoria's Descendants and publisher of Royal Book News\n"Greg King has truly written a tour de force. The book is extremely well researched, has over 100 illustrations and is, quite simply, marvelous."
—Coryne Hall, author of Little Mother of Russia, Once a Grand Duchess, and Imperial Dancer\n"Greg King is emerging as one of the leading authorities in today's liveliest field of Russian studies, and this is a major contribution to the study of late Imperial Russia."
—Joseph T. Fuhrmann, author of Rasputin and the editor of The Complete Wartime Correspondence of Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra\n* "...so completely approached the ear from a cultural standpoint...great companion to Russian Revolution and Nicholas and Alexandra collections in all libraries." (Library Journal, February 15, 2006)\n"...for those who are intrigued by the Russian high court, there is no better escort." (Publishers Weekly, November 28, 2005)
"…fascinating, exotic, indispensable." ( The Sunday Telegraph, December 2006)\nIt was the most magnificent court in Europe—a world of fairy-tale opulence, ornate architecture, sophisticated fashion, extravagant luxury, and immense power. In the last Russian imperial court, a potent underlying mythology drove its participants to enact the pageantry of medieval, Orthodox Russia—infused with the sensibilities of Versailles—against a backdrop of fading Edwardian splendor, providing a spectacle of archaic ceremonies carefully orchestrated as a lavish stage upon which Nicholas II played out his tumultuous reign.
While a massive body of literature has been devoted to the last of the Romanovs, The Court of the Last Tsar is the first book to examine the people, mysteries, traditions, scandals, rivalries, rituals, and riches that were part of everyday life in the last two decades of the Romanov dynasty.
It is as difficult for the twenty-first-century mind to imagine the pomp and splendor that accompanied the tsar and his family everywhere they went as it was for the simple Russian peasant toiling a thousand miles from St. Petersburg. This stunningly illustrated volume removes the mystery with more than a hundred black-and-white photos; floor plans of the tsar’s Winter Palace, the Alexander Palace, and the Grand Kremlin Palace; a map of St. Petersburg; and plans of the imperial parks at Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof.
This eye-popping tour of hedonistic imperial Russia on the edge of oblivion draws on hundreds of previously unpublished primary sources, including memoirs, personal letters, diary entries, and official documents collected during author Greg King’s fifteen years of research in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. It invites you to experience dozens of extravagant ceremonies and entertainments attended only by members of the court; exposes the numerous sexual intrigues of the imperial family, including rape, incest, and brazen affairs; and introduces many of the more than fifteen thousand individuals who made the imperial court a society unto itself.
Chief among these, of course, was Tsar Nicholas II. He ruled an empire that stretched over one-sixth of the earth