Prologue

It all started in 1895, four years after Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia lost his first wife, Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark, who had died a few days after the premature birth of their half-brother, Grand Duke Dmitri. At the time, understandably, Grand Duke Paul was quite shaken. He had loved his wife and had, quite suddenly, been left alone to deal with her death as well as to take care of his two young children (he already had a daughter, Maria, the year before Dmitri was born) and was depressed for several years.

When he talked about Olga, his second wife, Grand Duke Paul always said she was like a gasp of fresh air in a world that was slowly suffocating him. As a deeply religious and military man, he had come to terms with the fact that his days of happiness were over and that he could only hope for a quiet, uneventful life dedicated to his children and to the service of his country and his Tsar. He could never have anticipated that, one day, during a military review, he would be introduced to the wife of Erich Gerhard von Pistohlkors, a Hungarian officer who was, at the time, aide-de-camp to his older brother, Grand Duke Vladimir. And he definitely could not have anticipated that he would fall in love with her at first sight and that the feeling would be mutual.

At first, thinking that the witty Olga would be a good distraction for his brother to get over the death of his first wife, his brother Vladimir encouraged the affair. Her first marriage had not been on good terms for quite a while then, so it seemed like the perfect arrangement. The thing was, Grand Duke Vladimir overlooked the fact that his brother was, unlike himself, a man of honour, and once he started his affair with Olga, he felt it was his duty to protect and take care of her, for as long as she would want him to. It was also never considered that there might be long-lasting consequences from the affair, the type of consequence that not even time or distance could erase, however, such a consequence did come when Olga discovered she was expecting a child from Paul in 1896.

It wasn’t the first time a commoner would give birth to the child of a Grand Duke. Quite the contrary. Almost all of Paul’s uncles had had mistresses and they had given them a considerable prole of illegitimate children. Paul’s own father, Tsar Alexander II, had even married his favourite mistress only a week after his mother had died, but he was the Tsar. Paul was just a Grand Duke and, before he could do anything, he had to ask for his nephew’s permission.

The entire family knew he was having an affair, but they had expected he would be discreet about it, especially considering his mistress was a married woman. He tried to be as discreet as he could before, although it felt distressing to not be able to take Olga as his wife and to live with her legitimately. However, from the moment he knew she was expecting his child, he could not bear it any longer. He invited her to live with him at his palace in St. Petersburg. In order to safeguard the reputation of his two children, he sent Maria and Dmitri to live with their uncles, Grand Duke Serge and Grand Duchess Elizabeth. He then tried to convince his nephew, Tsar Nicholas II to grant Olga a divorce, but he refused.

When his son Vladimir was born in December 1896, Olga was still legally married, which meant the child had to receive her husband’s last name when he was baptized. This was the last straw. After the birth, he defied the establishment for the first time in his life. Anytime he was invited to a public ceremony or private event, he always appeared with Olga by his side, knowing full well it would cause a scandal and ruin his reputation. However, he didn’t care. He just wanted to pressure his family into accepting his choice. After appearing with her in a ball given by the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress, the situation finally hit the breaking point he was hoping for. Summoned by the Tsar, he was told the divorce would be granted, but only on the condition that Paul wouldn’t marry Olga. Grand Duke Paul had never lied before in his life, but this was the best chance he had for the mother of his son to be freed from her husband, so he did just that. He lied. He said he wouldn’t marry her, but it was always his intention to break his word.

As soon as Olga got her divorce, they both left Russia with their son. Their intention was for the Tsar to consider the idea of allowing them to marry. For almost five years, Paul and Olga toured Europe, living in hotel rooms while they waited for a permission from the Tsar, which never came. Finally, in October 1902, when they got tired of running away, they married in a private ceremony in Livorno, Italy. As soon as the news reached Russia, Nicholas II condemned Paul to perpetual exile, stripped him of his titles and military ranks and confiscated his property. The custody of his two eldest children was granted to his brother Serge and his wife Elizabeth.

Losing most of what he held dear was a hard blow to him, but it was also a relief to finally be free to live with Olga and their son as private citizens. They bought a beautiful house in Bologn-sur-sein, on the outskirts of Paris and, from then on, they lived mostly uneventful, happy lives. They welcomed two more daughters in the following years: Irina, born in 1903 and Natalia, in 1905.

Vladimir, Irina and Natalia had a very happy childhood, filled with the kind of love and attention that other high society children lacked. Their upbringing was very relaxed. Although they had an unchanging routine of lessons, walks in the garden with their father, church on Sundays and prayers every night before going to sleep, they were also included in their parents bustling social life. They were both very artistic people, so their house was always filled with artists of every kind, from writers to painters, ballet dancers to actors. And, unlike other children at that time, they were allowed to join the little soirées their mother held almost every week.

This close contact with the arts made all three children very precocious in their individual fields of interest. Vladimir was always a talented writer, especially of plays and poetry. Anytime there was a special holiday or celebration, like Easter, Christmas or a birthday, Vladimir wrote a play for their guests. He would hire his little sisters as amateur actresses and arrange every part of the production himself, from the costumes to the scenery. He took his plays very seriously and demanded that his sisters gave their best performances in each of them. Irina and Natalia were reciting his dialogues and poems even before they could read. Which, in Irina’s case didn’t take very long anyway.

Although he loved all his children equally, he had a very tender spot for Irina, who was the one that resembled him the most in every way. Physically, she was a living picture of Paul’s mother, Empress Marie Alexandrovna, with her long, oval face, sharp dark eyes and tall, slim body. Although she was born far from her imperial routs, there was a natural grace and elegance about her that impressed everyone who knew her, as if her blood spoke louder than any social convention. Intellectually, she was also the most gifted. By the age of 5, she could read and speak both Russian and French fluently. No one had taught or encouraged her to do it, she simply absorbed knowledge as naturally as she could make a perfect curtsey. Like her father, she was extremely shy and loathed social events, so the learning environment of her house was really the place where she felt the safest and happiest.

The youngest, Natalia, was something else entirely. She seemed to have picked up a little something from each of her siblings, but, according to her father, put it to use in an entirely wrong way. She had Vladimir’s artistic inclinations, but instead of expressing them in the most acceptable forms, like writing or painting, she was instead a wonderful actress and a talented dancer. In the same way Irina had learnt to read by herself, Natalia learnt to dance just by watching ballet performances or her parents’ friends in the ballroom. To the horror of the Grand Duke, many of them even said that, had she not been the daughter of a Grand Duke, she could have become one of the most celebrated dancers of her generation. And it was true. From a very young age, she could dance almost everything, from ballet to the waltz, and even the marzuca better than some of her Russian compatriots.

Out of the two sisters, Natalia was the one who stood out the most. Irina was very pretty, albeit too thin, but Natalia was stunning ever since she was a child. Everything from her curly blond hair to her large blue eyes, pale skin and perfectly sculpted features made her stand out from a crowd of plain looking aristocrats and royals. She was also not a bit as shy as her older sister, which, by itself, made her more memorable. She liked to have fun and to make other people laugh. Even her father, who despaired at her difficulties in learning Russian and seemingly lack of intellectual interests, simply could not get mad at her, because, despite everything, no one could resist her charm.

The sisters were raised largely alone, as their brother Vladimir left Paris in 1908 to start his military education at the Corps des Pages academy in St. Petersburg. From then on, they would only see him during his vacations. Still, they admired him greatly and remained close for the rest of their lives.

The family’s life was taking its usual and quiet course when, in 1912, a series of events changed their lives entirely. That year, the Tsar’s only son, Alexei, who suffered from Haemophilia, almost died after a serious fall. Fearing the death of his nephew might put him closer to the throne, the Tsar’s younger brother, Grand Duke Michael, decided to marry his long-time mistress, a divorced woman named Natasha. Particularly distraught at the fact that his brother had taken advantage of his son’s illness to marry without his consent, the Tsar sent him into exile, as he had done with Grand Duke Paul ten years earlier. This left the Tsar with a serious problem: if something happened to Alexei, Nicholas II would be left without heirs. His brother had been the third in line to the throne, followed by Grand Duke Kyrill Vladimirovich, who had also been exiled in 1905. In short, there was an increasingly lack of heirs to the Russian throne.

On that same year, Irina and Natalia’s half-brother Dmitri had become the Tsar’s aide-de-camp and was becoming increasingly close to him and his family. It was at this time that a faction of the court, close to the Tsar, devised a plan: Grand Duchess Olga (the Tsar’s eldest daughter) would marry Dmitri and, if something was to happen to Alexei, the succession laws would be changed, allowing her to inherit the throne and her marriage to Dmitri would be a sort of bait to make the rest of the family accept it better.

However, it would be no good for Dmitri’s position to have his father living in shameful exile in Paris, so, quite unexpectedly, Grand Duke Paul was summoned to St. Petersburg and told he was forgiven and could return to his home country. His military ranks and honours, as well as all of his properties were returned shortly after.

Grand Duke Paul was not aware of the plan being hatched behind his back to marry his son to the Tsar’s daughter, but he didn’t dare question his nephew’s decision. In the decade he had spent in Paris, he had never felt truly comfortable and the only burden he had throughout all those years was being away from Russia and from his other children. He felt that was as good a time to go back as any, since his daughters were still very young (Irina was 8 and Natalia 6) and he still hoped there would be a chance they would feel like they were true Russians and not French.

He immediately made all arrangements necessary to build his own palace in Tsarskoe Selo, a few miles away from St. Petersburg, and to provide his family with a comfortable and speedy return to their origins.

Irina and Natalia never forgot the day they first entered the gates of their new palace in early 1914. They had lived in quite a large house in France, but nothing could be compared to the enormous yellow building surrounded by a beautiful park they were moving into. While in Paris they had managed with 16 servants, they were greeted in the main entrance by a large group of 64. It was then that they were first addressed as “Their Highnesses, the Princesses Irina and Natalia Paley”, which they thought rather strange and never really got used to. They had been born with the title of Countess von Hohenfelsen, a courtesy title granted by the King of Bavaria, but it was hardly used in Paris.

They were also introduced to a whole new family. Their core of five was broadened to include their mother’s three children (Alexander, Olga and Marianna), their maternal grandmother and their father’s two children. They were also living close to the Tsar, his wife and his children, but they only saw them at church during those first months. They were closer to Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and her family, who lived just across from them.

Although it was a sudden and dramatic change, it seemed promising at first. They had more children to play with now, a larger house and could be with Vladimir during all weekends. However, they could not have anticipated another twist in their fate.

Irina and Natalia were playing outside by themselves on a hot August morning when their father came to them. He never went to see them in the morning. They usually had lunch together, then took a walk in Alexander Park, which was nearby. He came with a discouraged countenance, and stood there, looking at them in silence for a very long time. The sisters kept looking at him and at each other, not knowing what to do or what to say. Something serious had happened, that much they knew, and none of them wanted to talk about it. At some point, their father asked them to stop playing and to go with him on a walk, which they immediately accepted.

As they walked among the tall trees of the park, they could feel that the air itself was different. The park, which was usually filled with people, was empty and a heavy, dark silence seemed to dominate everything. Their father walked slower than usual, his hands behind his back, his gaze fixed on the ground. It was only when they got to the other end of the park, and after he had taken a deep breath that he told them the news:

"Yesterday, my nephew, the Tsar, declared war on Germany. Do you know what that means?"

Their hearts raced at the word "war". They thought they knew what it meant, so they nodded to their father. It wouldn't take long for them to find out that all they knew about it was just a faint concept. War meant much more than guns, cannons and battles. War meant loss, an ever-lasting state of despair.

But they did not know about it then.

next chapter

© 2016 Sara Araujo Marques

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emmajoy

This really steamed on like a runaway train!

There's such a lot to take in, too much perhaps. May i suggest that in spite of reading like a Prologue, you convert it into distinct sections of this one chapter? Then, go back over each but with the added detail and some dialogue. As is it, though a very fine idea, it's almost 'bitty' because you skate over a main theme to create too many sketchy sub.plots and also, so many characters.

Typed my thoughts/opinions somewhat quickly because i felt the need to. However, i think your have a great idea here and so want it to be successful, it's obviously very dear to you.