The Royal Diary/Diaries series

Ditto Ritka and Holly. I admittedly still love the books...however I am smarter now when it comes to knowing what's fact and what's fiction. They are still fun to read though. My all time favourite is Jahanara's diary. Cleopatra's and Anastasia's are a close second. 

I think I've only read one Royal Diaries book -the one about Sisi. This was a few months ago and I saw it at the library and thought why not? I'd only ever heard of her on these boards, so I have no idea how accurate it was. Basically the whole thing was her just sort of talking about her perfect life, beauty, and how she was so excited about becoming engaged to an emperor. About 100 pages of "la de da, life is grand" and then the postscript at the end talks about how basically the rest of her life sucked eggs. The page (couple of pages?) of the postscript was the most interesting thing about the book. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who already knows a great deal, but for someone who has no prior knowledge of the subject they're reading about, it's a good way to get them hooked into further reading....hopefully accurate in nature.

I thought the Sisi one was okay. Toward the end, when she goes on about being afraid to marry the emperor and excited to marry the man, it seemed like the author was pushing it a little. I mean, she was my age. I find it hard to imagine being able to articulate that. But it did inspire me to read more about her.

The series really isn't very good, with the exception of a few books. I like Anastasia(of course), Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth. The rest are all the same...

Formula for writing a Royal Diary book:
1) Make the main character a tomboy, even if they weren't in real life.
2) Have them be about 11 years old, but write in a style someone in their 20s would use.
3) Start nowhere, and end nowhere. A few didn't. Anastasia's starts a few months before the war, and ends before she leaves for Ekaterinburg. Elizabeth's didn't start anywhere important, but ended after her father died. Although I enjoyed Mary's, hers did the same. The rest begin in some random place, continue without a plot, and end randomly.
4) This goes along with number 2. Have the kids do things they'd never think of doing in real life, simply because they're too young. I realize depending on the time period, children were raised differently, and may have been seen as an adult earlier than we would, but some of them are laughable. Like Mary sneaking out in a maid's uniform at age 11 or 12 to see Nostradamus about a prophecy he made.

Yes, they are written for young people, but I noticed this stuff at age 14, when I began reading them.

1) Make the main character a tomboy, even if they weren't in real life.
 

Anastasia was.   But Marie Antoinette was NOT.

This is the first book i have ever read about the romanovs and i wanted to Finish it (so i didnt take alot in) and when i got to the end i started to become very sad (i was about 8 but even then i didnt really get sad that  often) then i re-read it again and a gain. I owe my Love to that book and mystery hunters (which was a show where they track ghost mysterys ect.. sand they did one about anna anderson ect. ect.. and thats what made me buy the book ( allso thats why i never beveled she lived) so i owe alot to that book)

In England, these books are called 'My Royal Story', a special spin off from the 'My Story' books, about children living in the past. For my holidays in '09 I brought the Elizabeth, Mary QOS and Anastasia books to read, and although they were rather short, I was entertained by them. The Anastasia book really captured by attention, as I remembered the cartoon from my early childhood, and I began to do some research on the Romanovs in general which eventually lead me here.
Like Holly, I own a lot to the book, but now I know what I know it does annoy me slightly with its inaccuracies. Also, it was the Victoria book which inspired me to write one for her daughter, Princess Beatrice, which has now evolved into a book in it's own right, so I do have a soft spot for those books, even to non royal ones.

(I love the cover art as well, Anastasia's in particular, which I can now see was based on her dress from the declaration of war ceremony:
http://images.scholastic.co.uk/assets/a/74/1b/128808-ml-313035.jpg)

I always thought the American version looked pretty accurate as well:



The dress looks like the 1914 dresses, and the face actually resembles the real Anastasia.

I always thought the American version looked pretty accurate as well:



The dress looks like the 1914 dresses, and the face actually resembles the real Anastasia.

I do like the American picture too. I like that it shows her face and that the hair is accurate. The girl on the British book cover has hair like mine, which is not like Anastasia's at all!