Sebastian

“It was first love and it was painful. But it also had no future whatsoever.”
― Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra

“Happy voices, smiling faces, golden memories of a summer afternoon, of a world that could still laugh and talk of war as something far away.”
― Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra

“So anxious was the tsar to keep the Balkan states faithful to Russia, it was asserted, that he intended ‘to utilize his four daughters, who are not to marry four Russian Grand Dukes, nor even four unorthodox Princes of Europe’. No, the four grand duchesses of Russia, so the rumour went, were to become ‘Queens of the Balkans’, with Olga a bride for Prince George of Serbia; Tatiana for Prince George of Greece; Maria for Prince Carol of Romania and Anastasia set for Prince Boris of Bulgaria – although other press reports had gone so far as to claim that Boris was in fact about to be betrothed to Olga.29”
― Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra

“History may have condemned him many times over for being a weak and reactionary tsar, but he was, without doubt, the most exemplary of royal fathers.”
― Helen Rappaport, The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra