Author Topic: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)  (Read 18029 times)

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Offline TimM

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #45 on: February 05, 2013, 03:27:31 PM »
Another excellent update. 
Cats: You just gotta love them!

t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #46 on: February 06, 2013, 09:58:16 PM »
Chelyabinsk approached on their right, church spires and tile under a lapis lazuli sky, bright blue with streaks of brilliant gray.  A factory puffed out of three smokestacks, like a brown-faced man chewing a trio of oversized cigars.

Alexei looked pale.  The violent recoil of the Canton Repeater had jarred his precious scab loose, yet he insisted on keeping his fresh bleeding a secret; when Ben asked why, he had simply pointed at Tatiana fussing over Olga behind their seat, and Botkin and the Empress gathered around the rosy-cheeked daughter.  Nevertheless, he was conscious, eyeing the skyline with what appeared to be a casual interest--that is, until Ben saw the the rifle cradled under a bloody cloak, its muzzle following the Tsarevich's line of sight.  The buildings grew larger; their scars became obvious.  Alexei traced the muzzle from one broken window to the next, until the convoy met a voice.

"Halt!  Identify yourselves!"  An accent, heavy.

Alexei coughed, then muttered a single word-- "Czechs."

Ben breathed a sigh of the relief; he noted cries of joy from the girls and the Empress and satisfied looks from the Tsar and Botkin.  The soldiers emerged from the shadows of buildings, most with looks of confusion.  The Czech captain wore a look of stunned disbelief.  Karchenko leaned forward and shook the captain's hand as if he had just defeated the Kaiser.  Alexei turned towards Ben, grinned weakly, and slumped onto the dashboard.


Ben felt as useless as tits on a bull.  He sat on a bench against the outer canvas wall of the impromptu field hospital, watching white-smocked nurses and Botkin rush to and fro.  From within, there Ben heard a steady drone of sobbing.  Across from the tent, Karchenko stood, pacing about with all the nervousness of a gambler at a horse race.  Then the tent flap lifted, revealing an ashen-faced Tsar.  Nicholas sat beside Ben, offered a cigar.  Ben shook his head.  "I'm sorry, Your Imperial Majesty, I don't smoke."

The Tsar shrugged, put them back into a buttoned pocket.  "Please, just call me Nicholas."

Ben shrugged back.  "Nicholas it is."

The two said nothing for a while.  Twice, the Tsar attempted to say something, then caught himself and turned away.  Finally, he broke the silence. "I heard from Tanya that you and your friend were after the jewels."

Ben nodded.

"You may take a few.  We only hid them because we needed money to book safe passage out of the country.  We will not need all of them."  He took a breath, continued, "Though it breaks my heart to say it, I fear Russia is no longer welcoming of her former Imperial Family."

"I--I, well, thank you, sir--I mean, Nicholas.  Is there anything I can do for--"

The Tsar silenced Ben with a wave of his hand.  "I'm afraid not, Veny.  The doctors said the boy has lost a lot of blood, and he's still bleeding.  One of the surgeons--an Englishman from the Western Front--suggested that we do what he called a 'blood transfusion'--although he is not sure of its success."  He turned back towards Karchenko, who was still pacing about in the middle distance.  "What a plan God has demanded that I fulfill.  He gave me a palace--and turned it into a prison.  He gave me two cousins who became Emperors--and set us at war with each other.  He gave me Russia, and then made the Rodina want to murder me.  He gave me a son, and wants him to rejoin his heavenly kingdom before I myself am to see Him.  What a plan.  What a plan."

The Tsar's eyes welled up.  Ben turned away--along with several of the Russian soldiers as well.  The Tsar--crying?  Something horrible must be happening, they all realized.  Only Karchenko remained oblivious.

After ten long seconds, the tent flap opened again.  It was Botkin.  He called for the Tsar.  Ben followed.

The tent flap swung inward and Botkin led them into the smell of antiseptic.  They stood in a clearing, dense tangles of doctors, nurses, and medical equipment rising on either side to walls lined with figures wrapped in so much gauze they resembled Egyption mummies.  The equipment looked alive; menacing; a tangled grove of rust, wood, and guts.  Ben could pick out individual objects, but then they seemed to blur back into the mass: crutches, the handles worn smooth by countless crippled men, a crumpled pile of filthy bandages, a half-rusted set of surgical knives floating in a strong-smelling mixture of blood and alcohol.  Separate from the men, along one of the cleaner edges: Olga, Maria, and Anastasia.  In the middle, under a single electric bulb: the Tsarevich, framed by the rest of his family.

Ben felt the flap close behind him.  He didn't look back.

"Time," Botkin said, straightening up, "is our enemy.  Every minute this boy functions without the proper amount of blood is another minute he risks going into a sleep from which he cannot awake.  Tsar Nicholas, you have the best chance of giving this boy the blood that will match his type."

"His type?  What do you mean?"

"It's complex to explain--I do not fully understand it.  But Doctor Marbury studied with Landsteiner in Austria, and Doctor Laszlo here studied blood types with Jansky, and--"

"Enough of that.  If it works, I'll do it."  The Tsar rolled up his sleeve.  "How much does the boy need?"

"More than you can give alone."

"And what about the other children?"

Botkin bit his lip.  "I had hoped not to involve them in this."

The Tsar shook his head.  "They can handle it just as well.  They are Romanovs, after all."  Then he turned to Tatiana, who nodded and rolled up her sleeve as well, without saying a word.  Anastasia looked down for a moment, nudged her sisters.  All three locked eyes with their father and offered their arms.

Ben turned, left the tent.  It was his turn to well up.
« Last Edit: February 06, 2013, 10:17:07 PM by t_co »

Offline edubs31

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #47 on: February 06, 2013, 10:56:58 PM »
Good stuff t_co. You have me excited to read on...

Quote
He turned back towards Karchenko, who was still pacing about in the middle distance.  "What a plan God has demanded that I fulfill.  He gave me a palace--and turned it into a prison.  He gave me two cousins who became Emperors--and set us at war with each other.  He gave me Russia, and then made the Rodina want to murder me.  He gave me a son, and wants him to rejoin his heavenly kingdom before I myself am to see Him.  What a plan.  What a plan."

This in particular I found to be fantastic! The sort of language I would love to use for my own writing...if it was a direct quote of course and not something I lifted from you :-)

Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #48 on: February 21, 2013, 06:45:24 AM »
Two hard eyes opened, focused into chips of ice on the cement-like mixture of blood and cordite dust caked over the floor.

Pain.

He tried breathing through his mouth--and couldn't.  Human flesh, aged past its expiration date, teased his nostrils.  From somewhere below his sternum, he felt the casual throb of a bullet that had gone deep, leaving a wound clotted against his undershirt.  He wrenched himself up, took in the bodies.  A slient curse escaped his throat, only to meet teeth and bone mangled by a lucky miss.

Clarity.

It had not been a dream.  The chop of a Chinese typewriter, the crack and whistle of rounds sailing inches from his eardrums.  The thud of boots stalking past his head, delivering one shot apiece, the way he had trained his own men to do it.

Grief.

Yakov Yurovsky steadied himself against the pockmarked plaster, forced himself to count.  He would have to report.

Anger.

Then he would finish the job.

"Forty?"  The silken-haired Georgian manning the cart threw a quizzical glance at Ben, then at Anastasia.

Anastasia nodded back.  "It's for our friends," she added on a whim. The cook then started packing as many skewers as he could onto the glowing box of charcoal.  As the pleasant aroma of cumin and mutton wafted past him, Ben felt a hand clap him on the shoulder.

He turned and saw a man in a finely-tailored overcoat--as tall as Karchenko, but thin, as if he had been vertically stretched to fit his clothes rather than the other way around.  The slim man took in the Grand Duchess and grinned.  "Good friends you have.  Are they paying you well for this?"

Ben, blank.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

Chuckles.  "No sense hiding in your good deed."  Turning to the vendor, the man raised his voice in a saccharine manner.  "Don't you know?  This man here was the one who saved the Romanovs from those dastardly Bolsheviks.  And this," he said, making an exaggerated gesture of introduction towards Anastasia, "is none other than one of the Romanov daughters.  I believe she is the youngest, if I am not mistaken."

The cook raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.  The thin man continued talking.

"Look at these two.  What a fine young hero we have here--never mind his Mongol looks--and he has won his maiden as well!  Oh, this is such a good example of the fine state that the Rodina finds herself in today."  The man produced a box camera from his coat and snapped a photo from the hip.  "I simply must record this moment--"

Anastasia slapped the camera from his hands.  "Why don't you leave us alone?"

The man bent over and picked up his Kodak Brownie, smiling all the while.  "Why should I?  When have you left all of us alone?"  He dusted the camera, then placed it back in his pocket.  "I know, I know.  The Tsar can't leave us alone--he loves his people.  All of them--even a wayward seminary student like myself."

His smile grew wider.  Ben realized the man was missing all of his front teeth.  "For six years, your father's men showed me their... affections.  Right there, right in those woods."

Anastasia recoiled from the sight.  "I--I--"

The man's smile overripened into a sneer.  "At a loss for words, Your Imperial Highness?"

Ben unslung his rifle.  "Leave her out of this.  She didn't hurt you."

"A gun?"  He laughed.  "I have stared into more guns than this, comrade."  But he began to leave.  "You will have to excuse me.  I would not want to cast a shadow upon such an innocent face as hers."

Ben watched the thin man disappear down the street, then heard someone apologize behind him.  The cook had burned the first set of kebabs.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2013, 06:56:33 AM by t_co »

t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #49 on: February 21, 2013, 07:17:23 AM »
bah writing this next part is so hard.  gotta flesh out lines for a full family meal, plus slice in dialogue that relates to the rude awakening towards politics that Anastasia just received, plus advance the plot, plus keep things interesting...

t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #50 on: February 23, 2013, 11:42:51 AM »
Quick question to everyone here: what were the love lives of OTMAA like?  Did any of them have any sweethearts?  Need some content for the dinner table conversation.

Offline edubs31

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #51 on: February 23, 2013, 12:12:04 PM »
They didn't have love lives. They had crushes. Some notable officers and perhaps one likely exaggerated instance of affection between Marie and one of her guards while in captivity. You could probably exploit the latter for your writing purposes.

In reality no one was allowed to get close enough to them for there to have been the natural development of a relationship. What's more they had to marry other royals, not the attractive soldiers and officers they regularly came in contact with.

But for the sake of your story you can have OTM giggling about over some of the men they found attractive, and naturally visa-versa. Maybe Anastasia poking fun at her older sisters while concealing her own secret crush. Alexei is not even fourteen yet on the other hand and his existence was shelter even by the standards of the imperial bubble his sisters lived in.
Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #52 on: February 23, 2013, 04:13:24 PM »
They didn't have love lives. They had crushes. Some notable officers and perhaps one likely exaggerated instance of affection between Marie and one of her guards while in captivity. You could probably exploit the latter for your writing purposes.
Got it.  I think I could have a telegram come in from one of the White officers fighting for Kolchak to wish well towards the IF, and possibly mention one of OTMA by name.

Quote
In reality no one was allowed to get close enough to them for there to have been the natural development of a relationship. What's more they had to marry other royals, not the attractive soldiers and officers they regularly came in contact with.
I'd assume Alexandra would be the one responsible for managing the whole betrothment process?

Quote
But for the sake of your story you can have OTM giggling about over some of the men they found attractive, and naturally visa-versa. Maybe Anastasia poking fun at her older sisters while concealing her own secret crush. Alexei is not even fourteen yet on the other hand and his existence was shelter even by the standards of the imperial bubble his sisters lived in.
I'm setting up Anastasia to fall for an anarcho-socialist, lol.  I hope that's not too heretical

Offline Kalafrana

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #53 on: February 25, 2013, 11:12:12 AM »
'I'd assume Alexandra would be the one responsible for managing the whole betrothment process?'

Ideally it would be a matter for both parents, but I imagine that Alexandra would be the dominant party.

Some communication from a White officer would be fine, but that would have to be during the time in Tobolsk, as the IF were incommunicado while in Ekaterinburg.

Ann


t_co

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #54 on: February 25, 2013, 07:06:37 PM »
'I'd assume Alexandra would be the one responsible for managing the whole betrothment process?'

Ideally it would be a matter for both parents, but I imagine that Alexandra would be the dominant party.

Got it.

Quote
Some communication from a White officer would be fine, but that would have to be during the time in Tobolsk, as the IF were incommunicado while in Ekaterinburg.

Ann



Yep--in this story, they've already escaped Ekaterinburg and the Czechs are telling Kolchak they have them in custody in Chelyabinsk.

Offline JamesAPrattIII

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #55 on: February 28, 2013, 07:30:45 PM »
 I have some historical and firearms info for you: I don't think this guy would have heard anything about the BAR at this time production started in Feb 1918 and it was first used in combat in Sept 1918. having a cocked revolver in your pocket is a stupid idea. It's libel to go off and shoot you. kolchak did not become the leader of the Whites until oct/Nov 1918. There were also a number of other guards at the IP house besides the 9 shooters which makes shooting their way out alot more difficult. and there are more outside. If they did take them out they would not have have time to worry about the dead servants. They would have just piled into the Fiat 15 ter truck and drove for it. The wagon would have been left behind by the 40kmh truck. I believe there was at least one machine gun position set up nearby covering the outside of the house and no doubt somebody would give the alarm and armed red soldiers and Chekists would be convergiung on this house from all directions. So their chances of getting out of town are pretty slim. FOTR has a map of the interior of the house and a list of the guard posts. If some how they got out of town. The situation was fairly fluid so getting through Red lines wouldn't be to much of a problem if they went sort of a roundabout way to the north and east from what i know of the area. I don't think they would be making too many stops or remain stopped for long they needed to get away fast. They did have flashlights back then. Alexei was still very weak and i don't see him doing anything except laying in the truck. You mention TNs hair brushing against one of the rescuers. OTMA all cut their hair really short about two weeks before they were murdered see the recreations of OTA on their wiki bios and this site. Also Nicholas, Dr Botkin Olga and possibly one of the others would have grabbed at least one firearm as they left the room. I also don't think Nicholas would have any cigars left at this time. I believe tobacco was in short supply in the house. The book "Civil War In Siberia" is a fine account of the the Russian Civil war in Siberia. For the LDR, FOTR and File on the Tsar readers this gives you the big picture on whats going on at this time and why the Whites lost. i hope this is of some help.

Offline JamesAPrattIII

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Re: untitled Romanov story (feedback welcome!)
« Reply #56 on: March 07, 2013, 09:46:46 PM »
More historical stuff:
Russian maps in use at the time were 20 or 30 years old and not to accurate as the Russians found out the hard way during WW I. So i can see these people getting lost or stuck or both and beinging helped by the local peasants
The last newspaper the IF recieved was from early june 1918 so they would have wanted to know how the war was going.
As for Alexandra she had a bag around her waist containing a number pearl necklases, and i don't see her leaving Alexei alone for very long. Being strong willed and having plenty of fortitude she would have been giveing the driver orders ect when she wasn't taking care of Axelei or one of her daughters.
Clothes; Nicholas and Alexei officers uniforms,OTMA white blouses and dark skirts, Alexandra a lilac suit, Dr Botkin a suit and tie.
if they got to Czech/white lines they would be contacting Gilliard, Buxhoeven and the rest of their entrorage and try and figure out who was missing ect.
They would have made a trip to toblosk to get Alexandra jewels and would gone to Ekaterinburg after it was captured to get their clothes and belongings that are still there
Then they would have probably left the country and went into excile.