EDVARD RADZINSKY is Russia’s most frequently staged playwright, after Chekhov, and his plays have won him international acclaim. A trained historian, Radzinsky has been working on the life of Tsar Nicholas II for the past twenty-five years.
MARIAN SCHWARTZ is a freelance Russian translator living in Texas. Her published translations include a biography of Constructivist Liubov Popova and the prose of many contemporary Russian women, outstanding among them being Nina Berberova (The Tattered Cloak).
i1.46. Empress Marie Feodorovna with her son Nicholas, 1871.
i1.47. The heir to the throne Nicholas Alexandrovich, St. Petersburg.
i1.48. The family of Emperor Alexander III, St. Petersburg.
i1.49. Nicholas Alexandrovich, St. Petersburg, 1888.
i1.50. Nicholas and Princess Alix of Hesse Darmstadt at Coburg Castle on the day of their engagement, April 8, 1894.
i1.51. Coronation Day procession from Assumption Cathedral to the palace, Moscow, May 14, 1896.
i1.52. Nicholas, Alexandra, and their first child, Grand Duchess Olga, at Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich’s estate, Ilinskoe, 1895.
i1.53. Nicholas and Alexandra on the Kremlin walls.
i1.54. The ballerina Mathilda Kschessinska, 1897.
i1.55. Nicholas in the costume of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Winter Palace Ball, 1903.
i1.56. Alexandra in the costume of Tsaritsa Maria Ilinichna, Winter Palace Ball, 1903.
i1.57. Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and his nurse with a goat, 1906.
i1.58. Alexei with his sailor-companion Nagorny on the tsar’s yacht Standart.
i1.59. The grand duchesses with ladies-in-waiting at the beach, Livadia, Crimea.
i1.60. A picnic during a hunt at Spala in Poland, 1912.
i1.61. Nicolas and Alexandra playing tennis, Germany, 1910.
i1.62. Alexandra embroidering in her lilac study at Tsarskoe Selo, 1912.
i1.63. Alexandra and the grand duchesses. Clockwise from top: Tatiana, Alexandra, Anastasia, Marie, Olga.
i1.64. The tsar’s family on the train platform at Borodin 1912, during the center of the Russian victory over Napoleon’s forces on September 7, 1812.
Trophies from the tsarist hunt in Belorussia, 1912.
Nicholas, Alexandra, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, and his future wife Countess Natalia Sheremetievskya frolicking on the deck of the Standart.
Alexei with his playmates and his companion Nagorny.
Tsarevich Alexei.