I just finished the book last night. I couldn't put it down! Theresa, so well done!!!!! What a new a different kind of insight and view of the Hesse family and their relations.
The ending is wonderful and I had to read the last page twice the second time with tears of joy!
Just two things. I thought that the Julian Calendar was 12 days behind the Georgian not 10 in the 19 century. And I thought that Ella bequeathed Illinskoye to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavolovich. I never heard that she sold it.
Also, somehow I never knew that Alice (mother of Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) was deaf. But then I was never very interested in that branch of the family.
Thank you again for all of your hard work. And for producing a "keep me awake until I'm finished" book.
Russka Princess - It would seem that Victoria of Hesse was intrigued by Louis when she was 5 and he was 12. I think that the love grew slowly for her as she was so young, but he seems to have seen something in her even with the great age difference. Of course, Louis did have other affaires besides Lilly Langtry, but the only child was Lilly's and that seems, as Theresa would have Queen Victoria say, "mysterious". Lilly was such a larger than life figure in her own right.
As far as I have read, and that is not as much a Theresa of course, Victoria did not have any big "crushes" on any other boys or men as she grew older.
