When I first thought of writting a novel about Alexei, my mother asked me a curious question: "Why Alexei?"
Why indeed?
Anastasia and all the people who claimed to be her is facinating stuff, Nicholas is interesting because he was the Last Tsar. (Although technically it was Alexei and his Uncle.)
It was something that drew me to Alexei, I can't quite explain what it was, I was wondering through my local library and I was walking through the ancient history section as part research for my current novel.
I turned my head and I saw in the aisle across was the back of a book about the Russian Revolution. And on the back of the cover of the fairly old book was a picture of someone I recgonised as Tsar Nicholas II. (I'd done a study of the English Royals and had seen the famous picture of George V and Nicholas together.)
With him was a woman with sad eyes, (Alexandra) and a little boy standing between them, I blinked, because for a momment it looked like he smiled at me. But after a closer look his face was in a serious little expression that reminded me of my brother as a little boy.
I'd only briefly look at the Romanovs after my Mother took me and my sister to see Anastasia. She scoffed at how childish and fairy-tale like it was and borrowed Anastasia's album for me. Needless to say, it frighted the eleven year old me that such a thing could be possible and I gave it back to her.
But suddenly I found all the books I could about the Romanovs and I began to become facinated with the boy-Tsar, the more I read, the more he seemed to be reaching out to me saying:
"This. This is me. My story has never been more then a paragraph in history, but it was more then that, I wasn't a Saint, though they have made me one, I was a normal boy in abnormal circumstances."
I know it sounds strange, but that's how Alexei affected me to the point I had to do my part and try to unravel the mystery of the last of the Tsars.
There is far more information that mysteriously finds it's way to me, though emails or through books I'd never have thought of looking through for information.
I'd like to think Alexei's keeping a close eye on what I do, and I feel sometimes when I'm writting he's there saying: "no, that's not right, it was like that," or "Naysta wouldn't say it like that, she'd make a joke out of it." Or maybe even, "yes, that exactly what they were like."
So he's really changed my life for the better, he's given me a totally different perspecive on life and enabled me to see past what history says about a person and focus on the person themselves.
