 |
Current mood:  refreshed Category: Writing and Poetry
The youngest of the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra was the famous Grand Duchess Anastasia, the name ever fixed to the fallacious claims on her behalf that would issue in the coming decades and still generate alternative fancies that vainly dispute the final verdict of History and Science. The birth of the genuine Anastasia was the moment of a profound disappointment for the Tsar, and after the birth of a fourth daughter was announced, Nicholas was compelled to disappear into the palace grounds for some hours, wandering and bewailing the inability of his Imperial spouse to produce a son, before he returned to peer into the cradle of an unwanted child or again behold his spouse. Anastasia was an intemperate centre of vigour, radiating forth incessant acts of mischief and ungoverned capers; it must be suggested that the Grand Duchess was very early aware of the resent of her parents and of the mundane and even unattractive appearance bestowed upon her by an indifferent Nature, comprised of a stocky stature that might be further described as plump and resolved upon a compensation. Anastasia, gifted with a speedy wit, evolved a cutting, trenchant humour spoken by an adroit and agile tongue, and the sisters and even her governess and tutor were the frequent destination of the darts and sallies of her wit and might even dwell in some fear of her contempt. She also possessed a great capacity for the art of mimicry and rendered with a humorous precision the manners and the speech of her siblings.
Anastasia frequently violated the bounds and frontiers that were fixed upon the conduct of the little girls of the age, much less those expected of a Grand Duchess of Russia and she might be described as an utter genius in misbehaviour. The girl would find a great amusement in tripping the footmen of the palace, extending leg in their path; Anastasia would ascend to the uppermost reaches of the loftiest trees of the park with such intention and indomitable spirit that only the direct command of her appalled Imperial father would compel her to return to the ground. The girl would frequently and mercilessly tease and torment the rare playmates that were admitted to the palace grounds, spitting and striking and scratching at them, cheating in games and employing an almost cruel wit to abuse and to harm her companions. The niceties of rank were as nothing to Anastasia, and attending an opera in Petersburg, the young Grand Duchess was seen to greedily devour a large portion of chocolates with a hand still clad in a white silken opera glove, stained in brown hue and it was certain that Nicholas was clearly embarrassed by the conduct of his youngest daughter. Tears to Anastasia were an exceedingly rare phenomenon, akin to precipitation in the Sahara, and it is reported that such a storied event occurred during the course of a furious contest of snowballs with her sister Tatiana. During the climax of the conflict, the malicious Anastasia rolled a stone into the chill white and hurled the dangerous projectile at her sibling; it struck Tatiana in the face with such an impact she collapsed to the ground, and Anastasia at last affected by the consequences of her behaviour and frightened for Tatiana, at last wept freely.
As Anastasia aged, a tardy maturity at last intruded upon her conduct and this was further abetted by the descent of the great war upon Russia, and the establishment of military hospital upon the grounds of the palace. Anastasia, in the company of Marie, would frequently visit the wounded and the suffering, to engage in games of checkers with the soldiers and to again employ her wit to amuse and to distract the casualty with a exaggerated and amusing trod between the beds and filled the room with enjoyment and diversion when she loosed a race of laughter that in the estimation of an observer rather was akin to that that might be assigned to a squirrel.
Despite her lively demeanour, Anastasia was rather prone to ailment and suffered from the afflictions of bunions and was subject to backaches that required the therapy of a frequent massage and it was regarded along with her other sisters, Anastasia was subject to a pronounced bleeding that was derived of the haemophilia that proliferated in the family of Queen Victoria and was transmitted to Russia by dynastic links and matrimony. A tonsillectomy performed upon the Grand Duchess Marie was the moment of an episode of a profuse and severe haemorrhage and the affrighted doctor was only able to continue the operation after a stern command of the Empress Alexandra, inwardly aware of her complicity in this affliction by her role as carrier of the condition, as were her daughters, although it was not the lot of the female to endure the full measure and calamity of the disease, that was reserved to impact the days of the coveted son so earnestly desired by Nicholas and Alexandra and ultimately to affect and to impact the direction of the history of the Empire and of the wider world...
3:06 PM
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|