Peter the Great was transfixed by decapitation as biological experiment. And he wasn’t the worst of them. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s journey through 300 years of the Romanov dynasty is a study of brutality, sex and power. So very Russian, you might think, and that is certainly the conclusion the author wishes the reader to reach. The propensity to state-sponsored violence remains as true today as it ever was, if a tad less colourful.
Montefiore doesn’t do minimalist history. This is the grand sweep, beginning with the first, accidental, Romanov, Mikhail. Tsarinas were picked at bride shows, spectacles adorned with pageant and poisoning. Many a death in court came about through suspicious circumstances. The reluctant Mikhail “cried so much of the death of his two baby sons that the doctors diagnosed a deluge of tears in his stomach, liver and spleen, which deprived his organs of natural warmth and chilled his blood”.
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