Yes. I think it may be deliberate. The letters I heard from John Wimbles (which Diana paid a great tribute to at the end of the book) were more explicit. She blamed Missy for not listening to her and but as the book shows she was the one who went in and rescue Missy from a desperate situation. The Pakula book states that Missy approached King Carol I stating that she was caring Boris's child (even though the most recent lover was Zizi). It also made Missy's later relationship with her son Carol more tragic, since she was not so tolerant about his weakness in the flesh. A trait that he shared with his mother.
What all of the cross referencing (i.e., Nando, Boris, ZiZi, Ernie, Kyril., etc) make clear was that there was so much double dealing, self deception, and the expedient covering of tracks to survive with respect to "Missy's" & "Ducky's" convoluted personal affairs that it is all but impossible to discern which version of events is the truth. DNA would determine paternity but not much else.
A royal mess.
It's difficult to determine paternity. Children can look like neither of their natural parents or look the spitting image of an adoptive parent. The Romanov family siblings were light and dark haired/features interchangeably. Examples: Alexander 111 and the Grand Duke Serge did not share a physical resemblence--nor the Grand Duchess Olga & Tatiana. The Tsarvich Alexis didn't particularly look like either of his parents.
It's possible "Missy" sought an abortion because she panicked and wasn't sure who the father was. If Ferdinand didn't know for certian whether he could claim paternity, how could his wife?
The correspondence between "Missy" & VM would be extremely insightful, but even more fascinating would be a series of volumes devoted to the letters of Marie Alexandrovna and all of the Coburg daughters until her death post World War One/Russian Revolution, and continuing until Marie of Romania's demise on the eve of World War Two.
