Originally posted by Antonio
Annie, do you mean that Zenaida was already pregnant when she married Felix???
She was pregnant when she married Felix!!!??? :o
I've never seen this written, but I noticed that they were married on April 9, 1882, and her son Nicholas was born in July of that same year.
Their silver (25th) wedding anniversary was in April 1907.
When the duel was mentioned in Lost Splendor, Felix stated that Zenaida was increasingly worried because Nicholas was only a few days shy of his 26th birthday, and for several generations in her family only one heir of each generation had survived past age 25. Nicholas died in the summer of 1908, just before reaching 26. 1882+26=1908.
Also, Felix mentions many times a 5 year age difference between he and his brother, 1887-5= 1882, so there, you do the math, it all adds up.
She was not only pregnant but likely starting to show at the time of her wedding, perhaps this is to account for the small ceremony at the chapel of the Chevelier Guards instead of the much bigger extravaganza one might expect for the richest and most beautiful girl in all of Russia.
I can only image, but won't bother to speculate, on how long it took her to admit her condition to her father and what a difficult situation that must have been for both of them. So while it is often boasted that she was 'determined to choose her own husband' and her father, who had 'imagined his daughter on a throne' reluctantly agreed to the match, there seems to have been more to it than that.
We learn something new about those alleged stuffy and virtuous Victorians all the time ;)