Messages

1

Imperial Succession and the Throne / Re: What if Russia brought back the monarchy?

« on: Today at 04:47:53 AM »

His daughter Olga or his sister Xenia?

Olga Nikolayevna. See Chapter Two of the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire: http://www.imperialhouse.ru/en/dynastyhistory/dinzak1/442.html

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Imperial Succession and the Throne / Re: What if Russia brought back the monarchy?

« on: Yesterday at 07:11:23 PM »

Short lived indeed. Daughters aren't in the succession.

You mean in this scenario or according to the actual Pauline and Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire? The latter were semi-Salic and allowed for female succession or succession through the female line (with the senior female descendant of the last reigning emperor expressly mentioned as keeping her right) if all agnatic dynasts were extinct.

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Imperial Succession and the Throne / Re: What if Russia brought back the monarchy?

« on: Yesterday at 01:45:56 PM »

Corrections:

.... a jurist born in 1982 as son of Putin's old Petersburg cronies....

.....son of one of.....

The one married to Shamalov, Yekaterina, has taken her maternal grandmother's patronymic and is called Yekaterina Vladimirovna Tikhonova.

.....patronymic as surname....

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Imperial Succession and the Throne / Re: What if Russia brought back the monarchy?

« on: Yesterday at 11:09:37 AM »

Since none of Putin's two daughters seem to want to play any prominent political role, a short-lived House of Putin would most likely be succeeded by a House of Shamalov, as his son-in-law Kirill Nikolayevich Shamalov, a jurist born in 1982 as son of Putin's old Petersburg cronies, became Russia's youngest billionaire thanks to his father's and father-in-law's influence, based on control of the banks Bank Rossiya (his father's) and Gazprombank and the petrochemical giant Sibur. A pure product of oligarchic nepotism.

The man looks like an anti-Semitic caricature (google him!), but despite its sound the surname Shamalov is apparently geuinely and ethnically Russian, but based on various Turkic first names allegedly given as mocking nicknames to children of small stature! So he is nearly the same age and of similar outlandish appearance and oligarchic tendencies as Grand Duke Georgiy Mikhailovich.

Putin's other son-in-law, the mysterious but apparently handsome Dutch businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen (born in 1980), is much less prominent and of course a foreigner, though no doubt Peter the Great would have smiled in his grave if a Dutchman was to sit on his throne!

BTW only one of Putin's daughters, Mariya, is called Putina. The one married to Shamalov, Yekaterina, has taken her maternal grandmother's patronymic and is called Yekaterina Vladimirovna Tikhonova.

5

The Final Chapter / Re: Attempts of European royal families to save the Imperial family?

« on: October 13, 2017, 05:15:04 AM »

Interesting about Haakon. I wonder why he proposed to send a warship rather than offer to receive the family at the Norwegian border (Norway has a land frontier with Russia - did it then?).

Norway did share a 196 km long border with the Russian Empire, but with no railway and hardly any road crossings. (I doubt there were roads at all on the Russian side leading to the then border crossing at Skafferhullet / Skafferholet between Borisoglebskiy on the Russian side and Kirkenes on the Norwegian side, a little to the west of the present border crossing at Storskog. Much of the border is in rivers and lakes and there was no effective border control untill after WW2.) Probably impenetrable with a motor vehicle in the snowy, rainy and thawing seasons. Sleighs (with horses or reindeers) could be an option during winter. Trains or roads through Finland or boat from Romanov-na-Murmane (now: Murmansk) to Norway would be more practical options.

From 1920 to WW2 Norway and the Soviet Union did not share a border, because the Pechenga area was Finnish. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93Russia_border. BTW a unique pidgin language, Russenorsk (Russo-Norwegian), unique in giving equal status to the two source languages, was the result of nearly two centuries of trading across this border.

6

Scandanavian Royal Families / Re: King Haakon & Queen Maud of Norway (nee Princess Maud of Wales), Part II

« on: October 13, 2017, 03:58:22 AM »

If it is true that Maud's family disapproved of her marriage to Haakon, I wonder why. They were first cousins, but that was not normally considered a problem by royalty, and he was younger than she was. However, as the second son of a future King of Denmark he was a good dynastic match (far better than the Duke of Fife, who married her sister!) and a thoroughly decent man.

Based on Tor Bomann-Larsen's multi-volume biography of the couple I'd say that the British RF's lack of enthusiasm (instead of active disapproval) of the marriage was due to:
- his mother and her purported negative influence on her children.
- his lack of independent means. (His annuity was very small compared to a British prince's and he literally owned nothing compared to a landed magnate like a British duke. He mostly had to survive on his officer's pay, although he had free room and board (later also lodgings in the Bredgade palais) at the expense of the Danish RF.
- the "fear" that he, as a penniless foreign prince, would look to his in-laws for lucrative employment in the British Navy.
- Queen Alexandra's general unwillingness to part with her daughters, especially if they married men who would struggle to provide them with the leisurely, wealthy lifestyle they were used to.

7

The Final Chapter / Re: INVESTIGATION OF THE ROMANOV REMAINS HAS BEEN REOPENED

« on: October 08, 2017, 03:37:19 PM »

Is the delay perhaps due to God and Christ being too busy attending to the many weak, downtrodden and persecuted in today's Russia?

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Servants, Friends and Retainers / Re: Pierre Gilliard

« on: October 08, 2017, 05:11:52 AM »

Having grown up in Switzerland, is it possible that Gilliard knew any German or Italian? I haven't seen or read anything that suggests so, but many Swiss people do speak French, German, and Italian.

Obviously he knew French, and I'm certain he knew Russian, but I'm not sure whether or not he knew English well either.

There were certainly plans and efforts to teach German in some or all high schools and some lower schools in his native Francophone Canton of Vaud in the last half of the 19th century. But whether it by that time had become mandatory in all high schools (as it appears to be today) I cannot say for sure. You can probably find the answer in this book:

Blaise Extermann: «Une langue étrangère et nationale. Histoire de l’enseignement de l’allemand en Suisse romande (1790-1940)», Editions Alphil, Presses universitaires suisses, 2013.

I would say it's quite likely that Gilliard, as a Vaudois born in 1879 (when German had enormous and rising prestige for the middle classes due to the unification and ensuing economic boom) and as a gifted and professional linguist knew German. It is much less likely that he knew Italian or English.

9

Imperial Claimants Post Here / Re: Samuel Petuhov

« on: October 05, 2017, 05:45:16 PM »

He has a YouTube personæ with a short, lovely video of Vologda, titled "Где я родился" - Where I was born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT8Jy0DdtoU

BTW the name Petuhov / Petukhov / Петухов is derived from пету́х, cock, rooster.

10

Having Fun! / Re: A New AU fic - title, ideas, help with accuracy?

« on: October 05, 2017, 12:55:31 PM »

Oh, and do note that the Hesse-Cassel-Rumpenheims' estate Panker in Holstein is only 20 km from Friederikenhof / Weissenhaus, where Franziska Schanzkowska worked and Bathildis's actual sons' extended in-laws, the Counts Platen-Hallermund, lived

11

The Final Chapter / Re: The Jewels

« on: October 04, 2017, 04:52:21 PM »

Read the book "The Greatest Heist" which deals with how the Bolsheviks sold all the loot they took and how it enabled them to stay in power.

You mean "History's Greatest Heist".
https://www.amazon.com/Historys-Greatest-Heist-Looting-Bolsheviks/dp/0300135580

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Having Fun! / Re: A New AU fic - title, ideas, help with accuracy?

« on: October 04, 2017, 04:18:12 PM »

BTW a perfect (or disastrous!) match for melancholic Olga would have been the tragic Grand Duke Adolf Friedrich VI of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Yes, 15 years her senior, but a fellow tortured soul and a bachelor untill his suicide. The same goes for his six years younger brother Duke Karl Borwin, if he didn't die in a duel 20 years old, also with regard to Tatiana.

And of course - in alternative history everybody would love to see one of OTMA married to one of the sons of Friedrich Karl of Hesse-Cassel-Rumpenheim, chosen King of Finland and thus one of OTMA as Crown Princess and eventually Queen of all Finland, Carelia and in particular Virolahti Bay.

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Having Fun! / Re: A New AU fic - title, ideas, help with accuracy?

« on: October 04, 2017, 03:54:39 PM »

I also have a list of possible husbands for Tatiana and Maria! Here is the lists!

Tatiana:
Philipp Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg (George Philipp Albrecht Carl Maria Joseph Ludwig Hubertus Stanislaus Leopold Herzog von Württemberg, 14 November 1893–17 April 1975)
Surprisingly, that's it. Wikipedia can only take me so far.

As an author you are probably interested in knowing that he has already been used as a literary model already: He is the inspiration for Jewish Hans Schwarz's aristocratic high school infatuation Konradin von Hohenfels in Fred Uhlman's brilliant, haunting short autobiographical novel "Reunion" from 1971. (Read it! It is so sad and beautiful!)  In reality Uhlman and the Duke met as university students, but many assume the inspiration is Claus von Stauffenberg, because of how the novel ends. But Philipp Albrecht didn't die resisting Hitler's tyranny, although he was a passive opponent of the Nazis.

Interestingly the enormous social and racial divide between the Jew Hans Schwarz, with roots in an Eastern European ghetto or shtetl, is stressed in contrast with Konradin's mother, who is an unnamed anti-Semitic, icy Slavic princess. (Not a Romanov, but a Polish princess, whereas Philipp Albrecht's mother was in reality an Austrian archduchess -  the sister of Franz Ferdinand with his Slavic duchess.)

In the novel their adolescent romantic friendship develops in the classroom of an elite high school in Stuttgart where the wall shows the imprint of two pictures that used to hang there before the WW1: Those of Philipp Albrecht's cousin the King of Württemberg and Emperor Wilhelm II. A very poignant image of Weimar Germany!

Speaking of the characters haunting Weimar Germany and shadows of the past: Do you plan any references to the two sons Bathildis does not get as a fictional character - and their comital Platen-Hallermund brides, with their links to the estate in Holstein where Franziska Schanzkowska worked?

14

Imperial Russian History / Were Lenin's Peasants Muslims?

« on: October 04, 2017, 11:58:29 AM »

I noticed from its Wikipedia article that the village connected with Lenin's (maternal) family estate, Lenino-Kokushkino (originally Kokushkino, in Tatar Apaqay), has a mosque, in addition to a church (a ruined old one and a new one, it seems). Quite logical, as it is located in Tatarstan, just outside of Kazan, with a majority of Tatar inhabitants. My question is thus: Were the peasants on Lenin's estate Muslims or is the mosque a recent addition because of demographic changes?
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenino-Kokushkino

If this is the mosque it doesn't look that old:
http://wikimapia.org/5099723/ru/%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE#/photo/1723645

http://wikimapia.org/5099723/ru/%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE#/photo/1723647


(Lenin also briefly owned the estate Alakaevka in Samara Guberniya, bought for him by his mother, but it was later sold and was not in a Muslim area).

15

Books about the Romanovs and Imperial Russia / Re: Just a Few Thoughts on King & Wilson's FOTR

« on: September 28, 2017, 05:32:25 PM »

Listen to his remarkable lecture at Gresham College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whdt5xCzwHQ

Interesting scenario of alternative history that he presents in the beginning: What would the great powers have done if the Revolution of 1905 had been sucessfull and the monarchy had fallen? Germany would have intervened on behalf of the German minority in Russia (Baltic Germans and others), France and Britain would have reacted to that and acted to protect their economic interests in Russia (loans and investments). WW1 would no doubt have errupted, with Russia as a passive part.

It would have been the 1905 Dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian Union x 1000!