Historical Information - Marceline

Marceline – the history behind the novel

I always pride myself on accurate research and attention to detail so that, while Marceline and some other characters in the novel are fictional, the settings, events and characters with which and with whom they interact are based on actual recorded events and accounts.

The one exception I make to this is, of course, the events in the cellar at The House of Special Purpose in Ekaterinburg. I have based my version on a mix of fact and conjecture and would strongly recommend readers wishing to find out more about both to read ‘Nicholas and Alexandra’ by Robert K. Massie, ‘The File on The Tsar’ by Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold (but do get the latest edition, published after the 1991 discoveries and after the DNA analysis on the most famous Anastasia claimant of all, Anna Anderson) and ‘The Fate of the Romanovs’ by Greg King and Penny Wilson. Greg King has also written the excellent ‘The Murder of Rasputin’ which is well worth a trip to Amazon!

Tsar Nicholas II – although undoubtedly a diligent man with a strong sense of duty – was first and foremost a family man who would have, quite probably, happily settled into a quiet and peaceful obscurity, tending his garden and bringing up his five children, had he been allowed to stay at Tsarskoe Selo following his abdication. He was certainly heavily influenced by his wife, Alexandra and the one ingredient which undoubtedly sealed their fate was the haemophilia of their only son, Alexei. Owing to Russia’s longstanding law, only sons could inherit the throne. It was Nicholas and Alexandra’s tragedy that, while Queen Victoria (from whom Alexandra inherited the haemophilia gene) only had one haemophiliac son among a stable full of healthy ones, the sole son born to them should be so afflicted. It was small wonder that, in their desperation, they should turn to the one person who appeared to have the power to save him – Grigori Efimovich Rasputin.

Much has been written about him – most of it rumour, conjecture and nonsense. He was not a priest or a monk – at least not in the generally accepted sense, as he had no formal affiliation to any particular religious order. He certainly wasn’t mad. He certainly ‘appears’ to have had powers of hypnosis, the ability to heal and a sense of timing which seems to have helped him to be in the right place at the right time. For someone who rarely washed or changed his clothes, he also seems to have had a remarkable way with some of the best connected women in Russia – although the idea that he would have had an affair with the fervently religious and utterly faithful Alexandra can only be put down to vicious propaganda against a deeply unpopular Tsaritsa.

In my own opinion, I have wondered if many – if not all – of the apparent miracles he performed could be attributed to the use of similar ‘tricks of the mind’ to those currently employed by Derren Brown. I would welcome his – and anyone else’s comments on the subject!

As for the Romanovs’ youngest daughter, Anastasia, the bones of one of the Grand Duchesses and Alexei have not been conclusively found. The results of DNA tests on Anna Anderson Manahan’s samples proved, almost without doubt that not only was she not Anastasia but she was almost certainly a long missing Polish woman called Franziska Schanzkowska. In my opinion, having read Peter Kurth’s fascinating book, ‘Anastasia:The Riddle of Anna Anderson’, and other accounts of interviews with her, I believe she suffered with amnesia and, over the months and years, came to believe she really was Anastasia – an example of false memory syndrome.

At this distance from the events of 1918, we will almost certainly never know all the answers to this fascinating story as even if anyone survived, they would be dead through natural causes by now. So, in lieu of that, it will continue to be a story that both horrifies and fascinates.