Audrey Carlson > Recent Status Updates

Reading the chapters about Baghdad and Cordoba - the highlighted themes of cosmopolitanism and intellectual development, and then it is destroyed by extremism and regime change.
“…championing the greatest cultural efflorescence” to “declaring war on intellectual freedom”
It felt like watching Episode 3 of Star Wars, you desperately want the ending to change this time, but it doesn’t.

Although I cannot understand where Alexandra is coming from, with her chronic health issues - I wonder how public perception of the imperial family would have been changed if she had done more public facing service and appearances more often.

I have found up to this point, the book over Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia in any significant detail; Only recently exploring Olga’s development as a teenager into a young woman. The book, up to this point, presents the sisters as accessories to the focus of the political climate in Russia, their mother’s health, and Alexei.

“Alexei was clearly the center of their mother’s universe. As a result of which, the Romanov girls seemed doomed to a bland interchangeability forever in the shadows of their charismatic brother”